Show HN: PinkArrows – An open-source Skitch alternative on the web

[rob313]

I really loved Skitch. In fact, the pink Skitch arrows and dumbed-down text became a trademark of mine in multiple jobs. In a sea of text on Slack and email, Skitch annotations are a refreshing way to make a single, obvious, and easy to digest point. Since Skitch shut down, I've looked for multiple alternatives that are: Free-ish, have similar styling, and are lightweight (no signin, no server syncing). I didn't find any, so I built PinkArrows. Live version at https://pinkarrows.app

[sam29681749]

I never used Skitch, but I love this. The controls are simple and intuitive, and the lack of styling options means I won't waste time playing with different fonts, colours, etc. What would make this perfect for me is the ability to paste/copy to your clipboard. Regardless, I'll be using this from now on.

[rob313]

Added and pushed! This idea cuts my workflow way down. You've also showed me that it needs the ability to paste an image from clipboard to the canvas. Adding as an issue.

[sam29681749]

Love your work. I also just noticed resizing keeps the aspect ratio when you hold shift. Nice touch.

[cyanydeez]

If you move towards PWA, you can make it a share tsrget

[rob313]

Thank you! Copy directly to clipboard is a great idea that I’d totally use too. I’ll see if I can add it today

[mcbetz]

I loved Skitch as well and this is a neat app. I wish there was some way of saving a sketch (maybe in LocalStorage) and edit it later (e.g. replacing with new screenshot but keep the markers). I can't remember if Skitch could do it, I use Figma for this today (but it comes with a huge overhead).

[rob313]

What's your use case for persisting the annotations but new screenshots?

Excalidraw.com does exactly this but their arrows just aren't as in-your-face as Skitch's.

[mcbetz]

Documentation of processes with annotations. There's lots of steps, each step with a screenshot and ~10 annotations and if steps change, I need to recreate from scratch. Doable, but also lots of manual work.

Yes, exalidraw or tldraw are drop-in replacements for Figma that make it save and easy to share, but they are general purpose tools, I prefer single-purpose tools with limited features.

[rwbayer]

I didn't know skitch shut down! Love the app & will definitely try this out

[cyanydeez]

Very rough on mobile. Probably need a text entry sticky