TL;DR: I built Lasso for people who teach on a shared Mac screen and need to point at something without leaving the window. Press Option-Shift-A, draw over your code or slides, press Escape when you're done. Students see the marks if you share the entire display. It's $4.99 once, no subscription. I'm the person who makes it.
If you teach people to code over a video call, you already know the failure mode. You're in VS Code or a terminal, you say "this line, right here," and the student is still hunting for your cursor. On a compressed shared screen, a tiny pointer is a weak teaching tool.
This isn't a new complaint. In r/macapps, someone planning a live tutorial asked for a way to draw, circle, and put text on a shared screen. Another person who runs weekly online lessons wrote that they were stuck with a meeting app's built-in tools, and those tools were not good enough. I just kept seeing the same request, and I already had a Mac app that does this job.
Lasso sits on top of whatever you're already teaching from. You don't switch into a separate whiteboard unless you want to.
A lesson, from a test circle to "any questions?"
When you need to point, press Option-Shift-A. I use numbered steps more than anything else when I walk through a function. Click 1 on the input, 2 on the messy conditional, 3 on the return. The student can follow the order without me saying "no, the other if."
If a question needs a diagram, press W for a whiteboard (or K for a blackboard), sketch it, then go back to the editor. You can pin a drawing if you want the marks to stay up while you click through the apps underneath.
The keys I actually use
You don't need a tablet just to circle a step
A lot of tutors end up buying a drawing tablet, or pairing an iPad, just so they can write on a problem. That works, and for handwriting-heavy math it may still be better.
It is also, as one tutor put it when schools first went remote, annoying to set up and keep working alongside a laptop camera and a call.
For circling a line of code or numbering three steps, a $4.99 overlay on the Mac you already teach from is a simpler tool.
Lasso is a one-time payment, including tax as shown at checkout, with no account and no subscription. It runs on macOS 14 Sonoma or later, Apple silicon or Intel. It's signed and notarized.
Recording a lesson, or sending a still
The marks are on the screen itself, so they show up in a screen recording of the display you're drawing on. That's the path I have in mind for a short homework recap. Lasso is not itself a meeting recorder.
You can also press S for a full-screen shot, or Shift-S for an area, and drop the annotated image into Slack, email, or the course chat. Screenshots and blur need macOS Screen Recording permission. Drawing alone does not.
Blur, if you need it, is the B key. It's a still patch. It does not follow code as you scroll, so don't treat it like perfect redaction.
A light note on AI, because some of you will ask
Lasso also ships a local MCP server. Claude Code, Cursor, or Claude Desktop can connect on the same Mac, see what you circled, and draw an arrow back. The tools do not click or type into other apps. This is optional, and the teaching workflow above does not depend on it. Setup lives in Settings → Agents, and the MCP guide has the one-liners.
If you do connect an agent, your AI client may send screenshots to its model provider. Don't put a student's homework into a model unless that's appropriate.
What it doesn't do
It's Mac only.
Students do not get their own pen. This is a presenter-side overlay. They can see your marks in the shared display. If you need a shared whiteboard everyone can draw on, use the meeting app's tools for that part.
If people on the call can't see what you're drawing, it's almost always the share source. Stop, share the entire display, and check again.
If you only draw, you can skip Screen Recording permission until you want a screenshot.
If you want to try it on a real lesson
Lasso is at https://www.trylasso.online/. Four dollars and ninety-nine cents, once.
Do a two-minute test share before the first class: draw a circle, ask if it's visible, press Escape. If something about the overlay or the shortcut feels off in Zoom or Meet, tell me which app you were teaching in.
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