Leave real-time feedback on documents, designs, or presentations, and sketch new ideas directly on shared screens. Screen Annotation is designed to make your virtual meetings as productive and collaborative as in-person sessions.

Screen Annotation is only available for Remote Office Spaces on the Gather Desktop App and desktop browsers. This feature is not available in Conference Spaces or via the Gather Mobile App.

Overview

Screen Annotation is available to all Members and Guests in an Office Space.

To start annotating, hover over the shared screen you want to collaborate on and click the pencil icon that appears. Your cursor will switch to a Live Cursor, meaning everyone can see it.

The Annotation Bar will appear as a separate window with options to draw and create shapes. You can pin this bar to the top, bottom, left or right of the shared window by clicking and dragging the dots on the left.

Annotation features include:

• Drawing with a pen tool
• Changing the color and width of the pen tool
• Removing your own annotations with the erase tool
• Creating shapes, including circles, arrows, lines, and squares/rectangles
• Changing the color of shapes
• Undoing and redoing annotation actions
• Clearing all your own annotations off the screen
• Downloading a PNG file showing all annotations on the shared screen

When using Gather in a browser, you can only annotate within Gather. This means you need to share a screen, window, or tab, and then return to your Gather tab to actually add and view annotations.

When using the Gather Desktop App, you can annotate within Gather or directly on the window you’re sharing. You will also be able to see Live Cursors and Annotations directly on that window without needing to return to the Gather app.

Ideas for Using Annotations

Curious when to use this feature while collaborating with your team? Here are some of the use cases we’ve seen from other Gather users:

• Pointing to a specific line of code during code reviews
• Sketching feedback on mockups during design critiques
• Circling UI elements while reviewing prototypes
• Playing Pictionary on a Google Doc as an icebreaker at the start of a meeting