Help & troubleshooting

You're almost certainly sharing a single window. Window shares exclude overlay layers by definition, on every platform — the operating system composites only that window's own pixels into the share. No overlay tool can appear in a window share; it's not a bug or a setting.

The fix: share your entire screen ("Screen", "Desktop", or "Entire Screen" in your meeting app). With a full-display share, PointerPop's bursts, ink, boards, and timer all show up — verified live in real meetings on both macOS and Windows.

PointerPop even reminds you: the first time you use an effect while a conferencing app (Zoom, Teams, Webex) is running, a one-time reminder appears. You can turn it off in Preferences → System.

Yes — any recorder that captures the full display includes the overlay. Recorders set to capture a single window have the same limitation as window shares above.

Start a test meeting alone (or a recording), share your entire screen, fire a particle burst (⌘⇧P / Ctrl⇧P), and look at the preview or a second device. Thirty seconds of checking beats finding out mid-demo.

Three features read the screen, live on your machine: the magnifier loupe, screenshots, and the full-screen zoom (which freeze-frames the display on macOS). "Screen Recording" is simply the macOS permission that covers reading screen pixels.

Nothing is captured in the background, stored by us, or uploaded — the app makes no network calls in normal use (see the privacy policy). If you never grant it, the rest of the app (particles, ring, spotlight, drawing, boards, timer) works fine.

1. The first time you use the magnifier, a screenshot, or zoom, macOS shows a prompt. Click Open System Settings.
2. In System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording (older macOS: "Screen & System Audio Recording"), turn PointerPop on.
3. Quit and reopen PointerPop — macOS only applies the grant on the next launch.

macOS ties the Screen Recording grant to the specific app it approved. Replacing the app (reinstalling, or updating an early-access build) can orphan the old grant — the switch may even still look "on".

1. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording.
2. Select PointerPop and remove it with the − button (or toggle it off).
3. Launch PointerPop and trigger the magnifier or a screenshot — the prompt reappears; grant it again and relaunch the app.

Showing keys as they're pressed requires a global keyboard monitor, which macOS gates behind System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility. PointerPop prompts and deep-links you there the first time you turn the feature on. macOS never reports secure (password) fields to the app, so passwords stay hidden even while the display is on. Windows needs no extra permission for this feature.

Early-access builds aren't notarized by Apple yet, so Gatekeeper is wary. Right-click (or Control-click) the app → Open → Open. You only need to do this once; after that it opens normally. On macOS Sequoia and later you may instead need to go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down, and click Open Anyway. Notarized builds are on the roadmap and this warning will disappear.

Early-access Windows builds aren't code-signed yet, so SmartScreen warns about the unfamiliar publisher. Click More info → Run anyway. One time only. A Microsoft Store version (signed and auto-updating) is planned.

Only do this for the zip you downloaded from pointerpop.com or the official releases page — those are the only two places PointerPop is distributed.

That's normal — PointerPop has no main window. Look for the star icon in the menu bar (macOS, top right) or the system tray (Windows, bottom right — it may be tucked behind the ^ overflow arrow). Then press ⌘⇧P / Ctrl⇧P and enjoy the burst.

Each display gets its own overlay on both OSes. Effects follow your cursor from screen to screen; drawings live per-display; the break timer covers every display; screenshots capture the display the cursor is on. You can pin the drawing toolbar to one display (handy when only one screen is shared) in Preferences → Drawing.

Supported — overlays are placed per-monitor with per-monitor DPI awareness, which is exactly where most overlay tools fall apart. If you plug in or unplug a monitor, or change scaling, while the app is running and something looks misaligned, quit and reopen PointerPop from the tray — it rebuilds the overlays on launch.

Both are configurable: the keystroke display has a "display" picker in Preferences → Break, and the drawing toolbar's home is set in Preferences → Drawing. Display numbering starts at your primary monitor.

Locally, in your user profile's standard preferences storage — settings never leave your machine. Custom particle images and stamps you import are copied into the app's local data folder, so the originals can be moved or deleted.

Rather than digging for files, use the built-in backup (below) — it's the supported way to copy or move everything.

1. On the old machine: Preferences → System → Backup → Export. You get a single .pointerpop-backup file containing every preference, hotkey, color profile, and custom particle/stamp image.
2. Copy the file to the new machine (it works across macOS and Windows — platform-specific hotkeys adapt).
3. There: Preferences → System → Backup → Import, pick the file, confirm.

Importing writes a safety copy of the machine's current settings first, so an import is never one-way.

Preferences → System has two buttons: Reset Shortcuts (puts every key binding back to the platform defaults, touching nothing else) and Reset to Defaults (resets all settings, but deliberately keeps your custom images, saved color profiles, and chosen screenshot folder — those are yours).

Global hotkeys are first-come, first-served across the whole OS. If another app already owns a combo (or the OS does), rebind PointerPop's: every feature card in Preferences has a hotkey recorder — click it and press the new combo. ⌘⇧6-style combos with a number are usually safe bets.

Preferences → System → About → Check for updates. It makes one HTTPS request to GitHub's public API to read the latest release number and tells you if you're current. There's also an optional check-at-launch toggle — off by default, because the app promises to make no network calls unless you ask.

New versions are zips on the releases page: download, quit PointerPop (tray → Quit), replace the app, and reopen. Your settings are kept — they live outside the app. macOS users: if the magnifier or screenshots stop working after an update, re-grant Screen Recording (see above).