My annotations disappear when I write, draw or click somewhere on the screen | Community
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Newcomer
August 24, 2023
Question

My annotations disappear when I write, draw or click somewhere on the screen

  • August 24, 2023
  • 3 replies
  • 258 views

Hello! I updated Zoom a couple of days ago. Since then, my annotations have started to fail. While I am screen sharing and using the annotate tools, they disappear for a few seconds while I add text boxes, draw lines, use highlighters or shapes, click on tabs, and practically do anything that requires clicking or moving the cursor. It's really annoying because I use tools throughly, which means the participants can barely see what I am annotating.

 

Edit: I played around with the controls in a Zoom meeting. I discovered that pausing the shared screen is what triggers the annotations to fail. Unpausing does not solve the issue.

 

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling Zoom to no avail. I have a Macbook Pro 13-inch M1 from 2020 with MacOS Monterey 12.6.1. I would appreciate any feedback or recommendations to fix this issue. Thanks in advance!

3 replies

Newcomer
November 15, 2023

I am having the same issue. Have sent multiple complaints to Zoom with no response. Has anyone figured out a fix for this? Extremely frustrated. This is on my 2019 iPad mini.

New Member
August 8, 2026
  1. Disable hardware acceleration on the Mac (then restart Zoom)
  • Zoom Workplace (Mac) → Settings/Preferences → Video (and/or Share Screen / Advanced, depending on version)
  • Turn off any hardware acceleration options (video rendering / sending / screen sharing), then quit Zoom and reopen.
Raina Roy
Explorer
Explorer
August 9, 2026

Hi! I’ve experienced something similar with Zoom annotations, and the detail about pausing the shared screen seems like an important clue. Since reinstalling Zoom didn’t help, it sounds more like a compatibility or software issue than a problem with the installation.

I’d try updating macOS if possible, making sure you’re running the latest Zoom version, and testing the same annotation tools without pausing the shared screen to confirm the behavior. It may also be worth checking Zoom’s screen-sharing and annotation settings and reporting the issue to Zoom Support, especially since you’re using an M1 Mac with Monterey.

Hopefully Zoom can reproduce the issue and provide a fix in a future update. Thanks for sharing the workaround you discovered—it could help others experiencing the same problem.