Version History

Find your recordings in one click, and hear your narration clearly.

• New “Open Recordings Folder” and “Open Screenshots Folder” in the Penmarka menu and the tray menu. Click the “Recording saved” or “Screenshot saved” notification to show the file in File Explorer.
• Recorded narration is levelled automatically, so a quiet microphone still gives a clear, normal speaking volume.
• All of Penmarka's program files, including the bundled video encoder and audio components, now carry a verified digital signature, not just the app and installer. This meets the Microsoft Store's requirements and helps antivirus tools recognise Penmarka.
• Updating keeps your drawings, recordings and license.

Recording works smoothly alongside antivirus protection.

• The Recorder no longer triggers “protected folder” warnings from antivirus tools such as Norton, and Stop no longer pauses while such a warning is open. Work-in-progress files now stay in Penmarka's own app data folder; only the finished video is saved to Documents\Penmarka Recordings.
• If a recording can't be saved to its folder, it is kept and Penmarka tells you where to find it.

Penmarka is now digitally signed.

• The installer, the app and the uninstaller carry the signature of Vawick Consulting UG (haftungsbeschränkt), verified by Microsoft, so Windows can confirm they come from us and haven't been altered.
• No feature changes.

Try every Pro feature free for 14 days.

• New 14-day Pro trial: every Pro feature unlocked from the first launch, with no card, key or account. Updating from an earlier version starts it too.
• The toolbar menu and About show how many trial days are left. When the trial ends, Penmarka says so once and continues as Personal, free forever.
• Pro licenses are re-checked about once a day in the background, so a refunded or cancelled license no longer keeps Pro. Startup is never delayed by it.
• Offline? Pro keeps working for 14 days after the last successful check, then pauses until you're back online and returns automatically.
• When Pro ends, Pro features that are switched on turn off cleanly. A recording that's running is allowed to finish and save.

Easy installation with a setup wizard.

• Penmarka now comes as a single installer, Penmarka-Setup.exe: run it, click through a short wizard, done. No zip to unpack.
• Installs for your Windows user only, so no administrator rights are needed.
• Adds Penmarka to the Start menu, with an optional desktop shortcut, and can launch it right away.
• Updating is just running a newer installer over the old version. If Penmarka is running, setup asks you to close it first.
• Uninstall anytime from Windows Settings → Apps → Installed apps. Your settings and license are kept, and “Start with Windows” is removed too.
• Each download comes with a published SHA256 checksum so you can verify the file.

Screen Recorder with voice narration.

• New Recorder (Pro), the Record toggle (D) in the Tools flyout: records your screen, your live annotations and your microphone into one MP4, with sound and picture kept in step.
• Click ripples, the laser pointer, Spotlight and the Magnifier all appear in the recording.
• A floating recording bar shows elapsed time with Pause/Resume and Stop. Paused time is left out of the video.
• Recordings save to Documents\Penmarka Recordings, with a “Recording saved” confirmation right next to the recording bar.
• If no microphone is available, or Windows privacy settings block it, you’re warned the moment recording starts, and it continues as video only.
• The Shapes, Screen and Tools flyouts now list every tool with its name and keyboard shortcut, highlight the active one, and show a clear ON/OFF pill for Fill, Click Highlight, Timer, Teleprompter and Record.
• Flyouts stay fully on-screen when the toolbar sits near a screen edge.
• Launching Penmarka while it’s already running now brings the existing toolbar forward (“Penmarka is already running”) instead of starting a second copy.
• If Penmarka ever fails to start, it now shows a plain explanation instead of a technical error box.

Toolbar tooltip polish.

• Fixed illegible dark-on-dark tooltip text inside the Shapes and Screen flyouts (e.g. hovering “Arrow Tool” or “Whiteboard Mode” inside their popup menus).
• Refined every tooltip across the toolbar to a crisper style: pure white text on a dark background with a clearly visible border, replacing the slightly muddier off-white/low-contrast look from v1.3.0.

Pro Licensing.

• Introduced two plans: Personal, free forever, and Pro, which unlocks the full toolset.
• Activate Pro in one step from the toolbar’s menu — Enter License Key… — no account, reinstall, or restart required.
• Manage or remove your license at any time from the same menu, which also doubles as your current plan status.
• Personal includes Cursor, Pen, Highlighter, Eraser, Undo/Redo, Clear Screen, and Screenshot — a genuinely usable free tier. Pro adds every shape and text tool, Select, Fill, the full Presentation suite, Presenter, multi-monitor support, and the whole project save/open/import/export workflow.

Presenter Tools.

• Timer — a small floating stopwatch HUD next to the toolbar: start, pause, and reset with one click, badge-indicated on the toolbar.
• Teleprompter — a resizable, independently-movable script window with adjustable scroll speed. Your script text is saved automatically.
• Both are independent toggles, so you can run either, both, or neither alongside any drawing tool or presentation mode.

Renamed to Penmarka, plus a performance pass.

• PenLog is now Penmarka. Your saved projects and settings carried over automatically.
• Startup is now consistently well under a second on typical hardware, and idle memory usage sits comfortably around 80MB.
• Saving, opening, and importing large, heavily-annotated projects is substantially faster, with file sizes on disk cut by roughly two-thirds.
• Extended stress testing confirmed no memory growth over long sessions.

Rendering performance and screenshot feedback.

• Significantly reduced CPU usage while Spotlight, Magnifier, Laser Pointer, or Mouse Click Highlight are active.
• Added an on-screen confirmation toast whenever a screenshot is saved (and a clear one if it fails).
• Fixed unreadable tooltip text inside the Shapes and Screen flyouts (refined further in v1.6.1).

Multi-Monitor Support.

• The overlay now spans every connected display as one continuous canvas.
• Connecting or disconnecting a monitor is handled live — no restart required.
• Screenshots and exports are computed per-monitor, so annotations land correctly even across displays with different Windows scaling percentages.

Projects: Save, Open, Import & Export.

• Save Project… / Open Project… — save your entire annotated canvas and restore it exactly later.
• Import… — merge another saved project’s annotations into your current canvas as one undoable action.
• Export… — flatten your canvas to PNG, JPG, or PDF.

Initial release.

• Transparent, always-on-top overlay with a click-through Cursor mode (Esc).
• Draggable toolbar with grouped tool flyouts, remembering its position across restarts.
• Core drawing: Pen (P), Highlighter (H), Eraser (E), Select (S), Text (T).
• Shapes: Arrow (A), Line (L), Rectangle (R), Circle (O), Triangle (3) — each with an outline/fill toggle.
• Full color picker with recent colors, plus six adjustable pen sizes.
• Complete undo (Ctrl+Z) / redo (Ctrl+Y) history, including Clear Screen (Ctrl+Alt+C).
• One-click Screenshot capture (Ctrl+Alt+S) with annotations composited directly into the image.
• Show/Hide Ink (V) — instantly hide every annotation without deleting anything.
• The full Presentation suite: Whiteboard Mode (W), Black Screen Mode (B), Mouse Click Highlight (C), Spotlight (F), Magnifier (M), Laser Pointer (K).
• Global show/hide hotkey (Ctrl+Alt+P), system tray integration, Start-with-Windows.
• Continuous automated testing and quality checks on every release.