How to Annotate a Screenshot Before Sharing It (Arrows, Highlights, Text)

A screenshot on its own often needs a little context — an arrow pointing at a button, a highlighted line of text, or a short note explaining what went wrong. Rather than opening a separate image editor, you can annotate directly with the free sshot.online browser extension.

Capture the region

Press Ctrl + Shift + S (or click the toolbar icon and choose Select area & capture). The page dims and you drag to select the area you want.

Use the annotation toolbar

Once the region is captured, a floating toolbar appears with several tools:

  • Pen — freehand drawing for circling or underlining something.
  • Line & arrow — point directly at a button, field, or error.
  • Rectangle — box off a specific part of the interface.
  • Highlighter — draw attention to a line of text without covering it.
  • Text — add a short label or explanation, with a color picker for all tools.

Undo, cancel, and finish

Press Ctrl + Z to undo the last annotation, or Esc to cancel the whole selection. When it looks right, click Upload to get an instant share link — it opens automatically — or use Copy / Download if you would rather keep it locally.

On restricted pages such as chrome:// settings or the Web Store, the extension cannot draw an overlay directly on the page and opens a full-tab editor instead, with the same annotation tools.

Do not have the extension installed yet? Grab it from the extension page — it takes under a minute to load and works on Chrome, Edge, Brave, and Opera.

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