GUIDE
How to annotate and blur a screenshot
6 August 2026
A screenshot with an arrow on it answers the question. A screenshot with someone’s email address on it creates a different one.
The free way
The Snipping Tool has a pen, a highlighter and a ruler, and Windows 11 added a basic redaction tool. Paint will do rectangles and text. For a quick circle around a button, that is enough and costs nothing.
The limit is that everything is destructive. Draw an arrow in the wrong place and your options are undo, immediately, or start again.
Editable annotations
In Clarus every mark stays an object. Move the arrow an hour later, change its colour, resize the box, retype the text. Save does not flatten it: the annotations come back editable when you reopen the capture, and the original file is never overwritten.
The tools are the ones this job actually needs: arrows and curved arrows, rectangles and ellipses, a pen and a highlighter, text, numbered step badges that count up as you place them, and a highlight that snaps to the words underneath it rather than making you draw a neat box by hand.
Hiding things properly
Two redaction tools: pixelate and a smooth blur. Both destroy the pixels in the exported file rather than covering them, which matters. A black rectangle drawn over text in some editors is a layer sitting on top of readable content, and the content is still in the file.
In a recording, blur is applied per frame from the source, so it stays over the thing you blurred even as the content moves and scrolls. A static box would drift off the target within a second.
Numbered steps
For anything you are explaining in order, the step tool places badges that number themselves. It is the difference between "click the thing in the top right, then the second option" and a picture with a 1 and a 2 on it.
What it costs
The annotation editor, including both redaction tools, is free. Backgrounds and the beautify options are Pro.