wayscriber.com

wayscriber includes a full annotation toolkit in a single native Rust binary — no plugins, no accounts. The tools cover freehand drawing, shapes, text, boards, and zoom, and they're all reachable from one keybind that drops a drawing layer over any application. If you present, teach, or review work on Linux/Wayland and want to mark up the screen live, the toolset below is what you get.

The drawing toolkit

• Pen, highlighter, eraser — the core freehand tools.
• Shapes — lines, rectangles, ellipses, and fillable polygons.
• Arrows with auto-numbered labels — useful for pointing at steps in sequence.
• Step markers — numbered callouts for walkthroughs.
• Blur — hide sensitive regions on screen.
• Multiline text and sticky notes — annotate with typed content, not just ink.
• Screen eyedropper with a magnified pixel loupe — pick an exact color from anywhere on screen.
• Undo and redo — works across all of the above.

The page describes the ink as keeping up with your hand: 8–9 ms p95/p99 input-to-commit at 120 FPS, with 120 FPS as the default cap (vsync off, 144/240+ configurable). That matters for annotation because laggy strokes make handwriting and quick arrows unusable in a live setting.

Interaction: command palette and radial menu

Two mechanisms keep the ~130 rebindable actions out of your way:

• Command palette — fuzzy search over actions with icons and category headers. You can reopen a recent item, save a preset slot, or edit a shortcut in place. Open with Ctrl+K or Ctrl+Shift+P.
• Radial menu at the cursor — a fixed eight-way compass with tool glyphs, recent colors, and an outer size ring. Hold middle-click, move the pointer to a tool, release.

The radial menu is the faster path during a live session because it appears where your cursor already is; the palette is better when you know the action name but not the binding.

Boards, pages, and backgrounds

Every board keeps separate pages with auto-contrast pens, so ink stays readable regardless of background.

Navigation details from the site: Ctrl+Shift+1..9 jumps to a slot, and Space+drag pans a solid board.

Setup and verification

1. Install the package — native repositories exist for Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora, plus the AUR for Arch, a Nix flake, and one-off .deb/.rpm downloads.
2. Bind one key — run the daemon, then bind wayscriber --daemon-toggle to a global shortcut. The configurator can do both steps for you; the service command shown is systemctl --user enable --now wayscriber.service.
3. Draw over anything — press your key, and the overlay appears with pen, shapes, text, boards, and zoom. Press F1 for searchable, clickable Help, and Esc to hide the overlay.

To confirm it works for your use case, open a slide deck or a browser page, trigger the overlay, and test a stroke, an arrow with a numbered label, and a board switch. If strokes track your hand without visible lag and the radial menu opens on middle-click, the toolset is behaving as documented.

What to check before committing

• Compositor support — the site lists Hyprland, Sway, River, Wayfire, Niri, COSMIC, KDE Plasma, and GNOME with limits. If you're on GNOME, treat the annotation layer as partially supported rather than equivalent to the others.
• Configuration surface — roughly 130 rebindable actions live in one TOML file, so budget a little time if you want custom bindings instead of defaults.
• Licensing and cost — free and open source under MIT, with no plugins and no accounts mentioned.

If your workflow is live markup during presentations, teaching, or screen review on a supported Wayland compositor, the toolkit here covers the common cases — freehand, shapes, numbered arrows, text, boards, and zoom — without leaving the overlay.

wayscriber is a free, open-source, MIT-licensed live screen annotation tool for Linux, written in Rust. One keybind places a drawing layer over whatever is on screen, so you can annotate, present, zoom, and capture, then hide the layer again. It is a good fit if you run a Wayland compositor such as Hyprland, Sway, River, Wayfire, Niri, COSMIC, or KDE Plasma, or GNOME with limits, and you want ZoomIt-style markup without leaving your desktop. It is not a general-purpose drawing app: the overlay is temporary and meant for live use over other applications.

How it works

The model is deliberately small. A daemon runs in the background, a global shortcut toggles the overlay, and everything happens on top of the current screen.

1. Install the package. Native repositories exist for Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora, plus the AUR for Arch, a Nix flake, and one-off .deb and .rpm downloads.
2. Bind one key. Run the daemon, then bind wayscriber --daemon-toggle to a global shortcut. The configurator can handle both steps for you, or you can enable the user service directly:

   systemctl --user enable --now wayscriber.service
   

3. Draw over anything. Press your key and the overlay appears with pen, shapes, text, boards, and zoom. Press F1 for searchable, clickable Help, and Esc to hide the overlay.

What you can do with it

All features are included. There are no plugins and no accounts.

Drawing toolkit

• Pen, highlighter, and eraser
• Lines, rectangles, ellipses, and fillable polygons
• Arrows with auto-numbered labels, step markers, and blur
• Multiline text, sticky notes, and a screen eyedropper with a magnified pixel loupe
• Undo and redo across all of the above

Command palette

A fuzzy search over actions, with icons and category headers. You can reopen a recent item, save a preset slot, or edit a shortcut in place. Open it with Ctrl+K or Ctrl+Shift+P.

Radial menu at the cursor

A fixed eight-way compass with tool glyphs, recent colors, and an outer size ring. Hold middle-click, move the pointer to a tool, then release.

Boards and pages

Backgrounds include a transparent overlay, whiteboard, blackboard, blueprint, and corkboard. Each board keeps separate pages with auto-contrast pens. Ctrl+Shift+1..9 jumps to a slot, and Space+drag pans a solid board.

Performance and configuration

The tool ships as a single native Rust binary, with no Electron and no webview. On the project's own hardware measurements it reports 8–9 ms p95/p99 input-to-commit at 120 FPS, with 120 FPS as the default cap and vsync off; 144/240+ is configurable. Around 130 actions are rebindable through a single TOML file.

Is it right for you?

The main constraints to check before adopting it are your compositor (GNOME is explicitly limited) and your willingness to set up a daemon plus a global keybind. If those are fine, the install-to-drawing path is three steps, and the overlay is available from any application.

wayscriber is a Wayland-native screen annotation tool written in Rust: one keybind puts a drawing layer over any application, and you annotate, present, zoom, capture, then hide it again. To get it running you need three things: a package for your distro, the daemon running, and a global shortcut bound to wayscriber --daemon-toggle. The configurator can handle the daemon and shortcut steps for you. Note the compositor requirement: Hyprland, Sway, River, Wayfire, Niri, COSMIC, and KDE Plasma are supported, while GNOME works "with limits."

Step 1: Install the package

Pick the source that matches your distribution:

The project ships a single native Rust binary — no Electron, no webview — so there is no runtime stack to install alongside it.

Step 2: Run the daemon and bind one key

The overlay is driven by a background daemon, so it needs to be running before your shortcut will do anything.

1. Start the daemon. As a user service:

   systemctl --user enable --now wayscriber.service
   

2. Bind a global shortcut in your compositor to:

   wayscriber --daemon-toggle
   

If you'd rather not do these by hand, the configurator can perform both steps — starting the daemon and setting up the shortcut — for you.

Step 3: Draw over anything

Press your bound key and the overlay appears with the pen, shapes, text, boards, and zoom. Press F1 for searchable, clickable Help. Press Esc to hide the overlay again.

What you get once it's running

Everything below is included — no plugins, no accounts:

• Drawing toolkit — pen, highlighter, eraser; lines, rectangles, ellipses, fillable polygons; arrows with auto-numbered labels, step markers, and blur; multiline text, sticky notes, and a screen eyedropper with magnified pixel loupe. Undo and redo cover all of them.
• Command palette — fuzzy search over actions with icons and category headers; reopen a recent item, save a preset slot, or edit a shortcut in place. Open with Ctrl+K or Ctrl+Shift+P.
• Radial menu at the cursor — a fixed eight-way compass with tool glyphs, recent colors, and an outer size ring. Hold middle-click, move to a tool, release.
• Boards and pages — transparent overlay, whiteboard, blackboard, blueprint, or corkboard backgrounds, each with separate pages and auto-contrast pens. Ctrl+Shift+1..9 jumps to a slot; Space+drag pans a solid board.

Common snags

• Shortcut does nothing — the daemon isn't running. Check the user service before rebinding anything.
• Overlay never appears on GNOME — GNOME support is explicitly limited; the compositors listed above are the reliable targets.
• Latency or tearing — the default cap is 120 FPS with vsync off, and 144/240+ is configurable. The project reports 8–9 ms p95/p99 input-to-commit at 120 FPS on local hardware.
• Rebinding — roughly 130 actions are rebindable through a single TOML file, so you don't have to live with the defaults.

wayscriber is a Linux/Wayland-only tool, so it does not run on X11 sessions, macOS, or Windows. On the Wayland side, the project lists support for Hyprland, Sway, River, Wayfire, Niri, COSMIC, and KDE Plasma, with GNOME supported only "with limits." If your compositor is in that first group, you can expect the full overlay workflow; if you are on GNOME, expect some functionality to be restricted.

Supported compositors

The list comes directly from the project's own compatibility line, which pairs the "Free & open source · MIT" note with the named compositors and the GNOME caveat.

What "with limits" means for GNOME

The site states GNOME is supported "with limits" but does not enumerate which features are affected. Practically, that means you should treat GNOME as a try-it-and-verify environment rather than a guaranteed one: install it, bind the toggle key, and confirm that the overlay, drawing tools, and zoom behave as expected on your setup before relying on it for a live presentation. If a specific capability matters to you, test that capability first.

Why the compositor matters at all

wayscriber works by placing a drawing layer over the screen and toggling it with a global shortcut. That design depends on Wayland compositor features for global keybindings and overlay surfaces, which is why the supported list is compositor-specific rather than "any Linux." It also explains the hard boundaries:

• Wayland only — an X11 session is not a supported target.
• Linux only — the package channels are Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, Arch (AUR), Nix, plus one-off .deb and .rpm downloads, so there is no macOS or Windows build to fall back on.

Checking your own setup

1. Confirm you are running a Wayland session, not X11.
2. Match your compositor against the table above.
3. If it is listed as supported, install from your distro's channel (native repos for Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora, AUR for Arch, Nix flake, or the .deb/.rpm downloads).
4. Run the daemon and bind wayscriber --daemon-toggle to a global shortcut — the configurator can do both steps for you.
5. Press your key and confirm the overlay appears with pen, shapes, text, boards, and zoom; press Esc to hide it.

If step 5 fails on a listed compositor, the likely culprit is the global shortcut binding rather than the overlay itself, since the toggle is what summons the drawing layer in the first place.

wayscriber reports 8–9 ms p95/p99 input-to-commit latency at 120 FPS, with a default 120 FPS cap and vsync off. That is fast enough that ink appears to track your hand rather than lag behind it, which is the threshold that matters for live annotation during a presentation or call. The figures come from measurements on local hardware, and the site points to a performance section for details, so treat them as the project's own benchmark rather than an independent test.

What the numbers mean

Input-to-commit is the delay between your input (pen or pointer movement) and the frame being committed to the screen. Reporting it at p95/p99 means 95% and 99% of frames stayed within that 8–9 ms window — a tail-latency measure, not just an average. For annotation, tail latency is what you feel: occasional slow frames read as stutter even when the average looks fine.

At 120 FPS, one frame is about 8.3 ms. So 8–9 ms p95/p99 is roughly one frame of latency — about as tight as a 120 Hz pipeline allows.

Why it stays responsive

• Native Rust binary. No Electron and no webview, so there is no browser engine between your input and the drawn output.
• Vsync off by default. Frames are not held waiting for a display refresh, which removes a common source of added delay.
• Configurable frame cap. The default cap is 120 FPS; 144/240+ is configurable if your display and hardware can sustain it.

What to check on your own machine

The published numbers are hardware-specific. To judge whether wayscriber is fast enough for your setup, verify:

1. Your compositor is supported — Hyprland, Sway, River, Wayfire, Niri, COSMIC, and KDE Plasma are listed, with GNOME supported "with limits."
2. Your display refresh rate and whether you raise the frame cap above 120.
3. Whether the overlay keeps up during the tasks you actually do — freehand pen strokes, zoom, and multi-board switching.

If you present or annotate live and need ink that keeps pace with your hand, the reported latency and the native-binary design are the two signals to weigh. If you are on a compositor outside the supported list, or on GNOME, confirm behavior on your system before relying on it.