DemoInk v1.0.0 is live

Not much of a secret for anyone who’s watched me present — but it’s now official: DemoInk v1.0.0 is out, for Windows.

In one line: a straight-to-the-point tool for drawing live on your screen during a presentation — without ever breaking the flow of an explanation.

The problem it solves

I’ve watched too many presentations where someone tries to explain a complicated flow with big hand gestures into thin air — and you can watch the confusion land on the other person’s face in real time. Attention drops off at the exact moment it matters most: when things get complicated. It’s no accident that, in person, people naturally get up, grab a pen, and draw on a whiteboard. It’s the single most effective reflex there is for pulling someone back into an idea.

The problem is that remotely, that reflex became impossible to pull off cleanly. Either you waste time switching to another tool — and by then ideas move faster than you can draw them — or you give up and keep talking into the void.

DemoInk starts from a very simple idea: make that reflex possible remotely, just as naturally as at a whiteboard. I’m not reinventing anything — it’s just better storytelling, backed by the right tools. As it turns out, it’s also a great way to hold attention — clients regularly ask me for the screenshots from my presentations.

What v1.0.0 brings

• Free drawing: freehand strokes, straight lines, arrows, rectangles, ellipses.
• Text directly on screen, with configurable font and size.
• Swappable backgrounds: transparent to annotate the live desktop, solid light/dark, or a classroom-style “board” mode.
• Auto-screenshot on exit, filed by date.
• Fully rebindable shortcuts, runs from the tray, single instance.

Windows only for now. The macOS build has its own timeline — more on that soon, separately.

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The code is open: github.com/kevinmazille/demoink. (Built on top of DemoHelper, by Stefan Küng.)