Guides
Everything the overlay does.
How to put your keystrokes, shortcuts and pointer on screen on macOS — for recordings, live shares, streams and lessons, plus the permissions behind it.
Why anyone needs this
A shortcut is invisible. You press ⌘⇧K, the screen changes, and everyone watching has to guess what you did — or you stop and say it out loud, which is the fastest way to lose a room. An on-screen overlay removes the guessing: the keys appear as you press them, over whatever you were already showing.
Because it is simply drawn on your screen, it needs no plugin and no integration. Anything that captures a display — a screen recording, a stream, a shared desktop — captures it as well. The one exception is capturing a single application window: an overlay drawn outside that window is not part of it.
What it needs from macOS
One permission: Input Monitoring, which you grant yourself and can revoke at any time. Not Accessibility, and not Screen Recording — the overlay draws, it never reads your screen.
While macOS Secure Input is active — in password fields, and anywhere an app asks the system to protect typing — key events are not delivered to the app at all. That is the operating system withholding them, not a promise the app is making about its own behaviour.
Set it up for the job
Most of the settings only matter once. These are the combinations worth starting from, and each guide below explains the reasoning.
| What you are doing | Display mode | Where to put it | What to show |
|---|---|---|---|
| Recording a walkthrough | Stacked History | Bottom centre, clear of the dock | All keys |
| Streaming to Twitch or YouTube | Latest | A corner away from webcam and chat | Shortcuts only |
| Sharing your screen on a call | Latest | Near the content you are pointing at | Shortcuts only |
| Teaching a shortcut | Latest, longer timeout | Centre, large | Shortcuts only |
| Showing someone how to type something | Stacked History | Below the text field | All keys |
Start here
What the overlay is, what to look for in one, and how to make it yours.
- How to show keystrokes on screen on a MacDisplay your key presses on screen on macOS: what the system provides, what it does not, and how to set up a keystroke overlay in a few minutes.
- Keystroke visualizer for Mac: what it is and what to look forWhat a keystroke visualizer does on macOS, the eight things worth checking before you install one, and how Show KeyPress handles each of them.
- Keyboard overlay themes and keycaps on macOSNine keyboard overlay theme families on macOS, three keycap styles, framed or frameless, plus per-category colour, depth, corner and shadow overrides.
By what you are making
The overlay is drawn on screen, so anything that captures the screen captures it too. What changes between these jobs is where you put it and how much of your typing you show.
- Keyboard overlay for screen recording on macOSAdd an on-screen key overlay to a Mac screen recording so viewers can follow every shortcut, and learn which capture methods include it and which do not.
- Record your Mac screen with keystrokes visibleUse macOS Shift-Command-5 or QuickTime with a keystroke overlay on screen. The recorder captures the overlay because it is drawn on the display.
- How to show keystrokes in OBS on a MacShow KeyPress draws keys onto the screen itself, so an OBS display capture already includes them. No plugin, no extra source, no video pipeline.
- Keyboard overlay for live streaming on a MacPin the overlay to the display you stream, keep it off your second monitor, and learn the global shortcut that clears it before you type something private.
- Show keyboard shortcuts during a screen shareMake your shortcuts visible on a Zoom, Meet or Teams call by running a keystroke overlay, and understand why a single-window share can leave it out.
- A keyboard overlay for tutorials and course videosSettings that make keystrokes readable in a lesson: Latest versus Stacked History, Shortcuts Only, and sizing for the screen your students actually watch on.
By who is watching
The overlay does not change between these, but what you show does — a colleague on a code review needs every keystroke, a room at a conference needs one chord at a time.
- Recording a coding tutorial on a Mac, end to endThe whole pass for a programming screencast: prepare the repo, make the code legible, silence the Mac, record in takes, and keep secrets out of the file.
- A screencast setup for developersTurning a working developer Mac into a capture environment: a recording account, the right resolution, a stripped-down desktop, and an overlay layer that earns its place.
- A keyboard overlay for remote pair programmingRemote pairing hides the driver's hands, so the navigator loses the thread every time a shortcut fires. An on-screen key overlay puts the chords back in view.
- Walking a colleague through a code review on a screen shareWhen a pull request deserves a call instead of another comment thread, and how to run that call so the decisions end up back in the review where they belong.
- Onboarding developers to your stack's keyboard shortcutsA wiki page of shortcuts never gets read twice. Showing the chords on screen while you work spreads them faster, and this is how to run that session.
- Onboarding a remote engineer by showing, not tellingA remote hire loses the over-the-shoulder channel entirely. Here is how to replace it with screen shares and recordings that survive a time zone gap.
- Keyboard overlay for product demosA demo where the product responds and nobody knows why reads as luck, not as a feature. Show the chords on screen so buyers can see the workflow you are selling.
- Live demos on stage: making your keystrokes readableOn stage the back row is thirty metres away and nothing can be repeated. Here is how to set up a keystroke overlay so a live demo survives the room.
- Screen sharing with customers: show the keys you pressA support call ends and the customer has to redo it alone. Showing your key presses on the shared screen means they can actually follow the steps back.
- Show your keystrokes in a Zoom callPut your key presses on screen for a Zoom call so participants can follow along, and learn why sharing one window can leave the overlay out of the meeting.
Permissions and privacy
Anything that can draw your keystrokes can, by definition, see them. Here is exactly which permission that takes, and what macOS withholds from it regardless.
- Input Monitoring on Mac: what the permission grantsInput Monitoring is the macOS permission that lets an app be told which key you pressed. What it grants, how to turn it on, and how to take it back.
- Secure Input on macOS: why a key overlay goes blankSecure Keyboard Entry stops macOS handing key events to other apps. That is why keycaps stop in a password field, and why a banner appears in their place.
- Is a keystroke overlay a keylogger?A keystroke overlay asks for the same macOS permission a keylogger would. What separates them is everything after: nothing stored, nothing sent, nothing logged.
Questions people ask
Do I need all of these to get started?
No. Install the app, grant Input Monitoring when macOS asks, and the overlay appears as you type. The guides matter when you want it in a particular place, in a particular mode, or you want to understand the permission before granting it.
Does the overlay appear in recordings automatically?
It appears in anything that captures the display it is drawn on, because it is simply on screen. The exception is capturing a single application window: an overlay drawn outside that window is not part of it.
Which macOS versions do these guides apply to?
Show KeyPress requires macOS 14 or later. The permissions behaviour described in these guides is the system behaviour on those versions.