GhostDraw is a lightweight, cyberpunk-themed Windows desktop application that lets you draw directly on your screen with a simple keyboard hotkey. Perfect for presentations, tutorials, collaboration, or just having fun!
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- Multiple Drawing Tools - Switch between Pen (freehand), Line (straight lines), Rectangle (boxes), Circle/Ellipse, text, and Eraser tools with keyboard shortcuts
- Perfect Shapes - Hold Shift while using Circle or Rectangle tool to draw perfect circles/rectangles
- Customizable Color Palette - Create your own color collection and cycle through them while drawing
- Variable Brush Thickness - Adjust brush size from 1-100px with configurable min/max ranges
- Smooth Drawing - High-performance rendering for fluid strokes
- Mouse Wheel Control - Change brush thickness on-the-fly while drawing
- Global Hotkey - Activate drawing mode from any application
- Customizable Shortcuts - Define your own key combinations
- Two Draw Modes:
- Toggle Mode - Press once to start, press again to stop
- Hold Mode - Draw only while holding the hotkey
- Transparent Overlay - Draw on top of any application without blocking input
- System Tray Integration - Runs quietly in the background
- Emergency Exit - Press
ESCto instantly hide the overlay - Right-Click Color Cycling - Quickly switch between your palette colors
Customize every aspect of GhostDraw with the intuitive settings panel:
- Color palette management with add/remove/reorder
- Brush thickness range configuration
- Hotkey customization
- Drawing mode selection
- Logging level control
- Operating System: Windows 10 or later
- .NET Runtime: .NET 8 Desktop Runtime (automatically included in releases)
- Download the latest release from the Releases page
- Extract the ZIP file to your preferred location (e.g.,
C:\Program Files\GhostDraw) - Run
GhostDraw.exe - The application will start and minimize to the system tray 👻
💡 Tip: Create a shortcut in your Startup folder to launch GhostDraw automatically when Windows starts!
-
Activate Drawing Mode Press your configured hotkey (default:
Ctrl+Alt+X) -
Start Drawing Click and drag with your left mouse button to draw
-
Cycle Colors Right-click while drawing to switch to the next color in your palette
-
Adjust Thickness Scroll the mouse wheel while drawing to change brush size
-
Exit Drawing Mode
- Press the hotkey again (toggle mode)
- Press
ESCfor emergency exit - Release the hotkey (hold mode)
-
Open Settings Right-click the system tray icon → Settings
-
Edit Palette Colors Click to expand the color palette section
-
Add Colors Click + ADD COLOR and choose your color
-
Reorder Colors Use the ⬆ Up and ⬇ Down buttons to arrange colors (Press ⬆ on first item to move it to end, ⬇ on last to move to start)
-
Remove Colors Click the 🗑️ Delete button (minimum 1 color required)
-
Select Active Color Click any color swatch to set it as your active brush color (Indicated by pink border and ✓ checkmark)
- Open Settings → Navigate to HOTKEY section
- Click the hotkey input field
- Press your desired key combination
- Save & Close to apply changes
⚠️ Note: Some key combinations may conflict with system shortcuts or other applications.
- Lock Mode (Toggle): Press hotkey once to start drawing, press again to stop
- Hold Mode: Drawing is only active while the hotkey is held down
Change modes in Settings → MODE section
All settings are automatically saved to:
%LOCALAPPDATA%\GhostDraw\settings.json
{
"activeBrush": "#FFFFFF",
"brushThickness": 3,
"minBrushThickness": 1,
"maxBrushThickness": 20,
"hotkeyVirtualKeys": [162, 164, 68],
"lockDrawingMode": false,
"colorPalette": [
"#FF0000",
"#00FF00",
"#0000FF",
"#FFFF00",
"#FF00FF",
"#00FFFF",
"#FFFFFF",
"#000000",
"#FFA500",
"#800080"
]
}GhostDraw is built with modern .NET practices and WPF:
- WPF - UI framework and overlay rendering
- Global Windows Hooks - Low-level keyboard/mouse capture
- Dependency Injection - Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection
- Structured Logging - Serilog + Microsoft.Extensions.Logging
- .NET 8 - Latest LTS framework
✅ Safety First - User must never be locked out of their system ✅ Fast Hooks - All hook callbacks complete in < 5ms ✅ Graceful Failure - Exceptions are caught, logged, and handled ✅ Clean Resources - Hooks and resources always released on exit ✅ Structured Logging - Comprehensive diagnostics without performance impact
- Check if the hotkey is conflicting with another application
- Try changing the hotkey in Settings
- Ensure .NET 8 runtime is installed
- Right-click
GhostDraw.exe→ Run as administrator - Check Windows Event Viewer for crash logs
- Review logs in
%LOCALAPPDATA%\GhostDraw\logs\
- Reduce brush thickness range (lower max value)
- Close other resource-intensive applications
- Check CPU usage in Task Manager
- Verify the key combination isn't used by Windows or other apps
- Try a different key combination
- Restart GhostDraw after changing hotkeys
GhostDraw uses structured logging with configurable levels:
- Verbose - Everything (very noisy)
- Debug - Detailed diagnostic information
- Information - General application flow (default)
- Warning - Unexpected but recoverable situations
- Error - Errors that don't crash the app
- Fatal - Critical errors requiring restart
Logs are stored in: %LOCALAPPDATA%\GhostDraw\logs\
Access logs via Settings → LOGS → OPEN FOLDER
We welcome contributions! Whether it's:
- 🐛 Bug reports
- 💡 Feature suggestions
- 📝 Documentation improvements
- 💻 Code contributions
Please check out our Contributing Guidelines to get started.
This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.
- Segoe MDL2 Assets - Microsoft's icon font
- Serilog - Flexible logging framework
- WPF Community - Inspiration and best practices
- Issues: GitHub Issues
- Discussions: GitHub Discussions
Made with 💜 for creators, presenters, and anyone who loves drawing on their screen
⭐ Star this repo if you find it useful! ⭐