Vellum is a small native Wayland overlay for drawing directly over the live desktop.
demo.mp4
Vellum began as a fork of Chameleos by Thomas Lindae.
Vellum requires a Wayland compositor that implements wlr-layer-shell. This includes niri, Sway, Hyprland, river, Wayfire, labwc, KDE Plasma, and COSMIC, though niri is the only compositor currently tested.
See the NixOS options.
Install the dependencies for your distribution:
Arch dependencies
sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel git rust wayland libxkbcommon fontconfig mesa vulkan-icd-loaderDebian 13+ dependencies
sudo apt install build-essential git pkg-config rustup libwayland-dev libxkbcommon-dev libfontconfig-dev libgbm-dev libvulkan1
rustup default stableFedora dependencies
sudo dnf install cargo gcc git pkgconf-pkg-config waylan
7546
d-devel libxkbcommon-devel fontconfig-devel mesa-libgbm-devel vulkan-loaderBuild and install to ~/.local:
git clone https://github.com/greyxp1/vellum
cd vellum
cargo xtask installRun vellum & and bind vellum toggle to a compositor shortcut. For example, in niri:
Mod+A { spawn "vellum" "toggle"; }Running as a systemd user service
Save this as ~/.config/systemd/user/vellum.service:
[Unit]
Description=Vellum screen annotation overlay
After=graphical-session.target
PartOf=graphical-session.target
[Service]
Type=exec
ExecStart=%h/.local/bin/vellum
Restart=on-failure
[Install]
WantedBy=graphical-session.targetEnable the service:
systemctl --user enable --now vellum.service| Action | Mouse | Trackpad | Pen |
|---|---|---|---|
| Draw or manipulate the selection | Left drag | One-finger drag | Drag with the pen tip |
| Open the radial picker | Right-click | Two-finger click | Briefly press the barrel button while hovering |
| Choose a tool or color | Hold the right mouse button, move, then release | Open the picker, move, then one-finger click | Hold the barrel button while hovering, move, then release |
| Erase | Middle drag, or middle-click then left drag | Three-finger tap to toggle, then one-finger drag | Hold the barrel button while drawing or drag with the eraser tip |
| Change size | Mouse wheel | Two-finger scroll | Mouse wheel or trackpad scroll |
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Ctrl + click in selection mode | Add or remove an annotation from the selection |
| Double-click selected text | Edit it |
| Shift while drawing | Constrain the shape |
| Alt while drawing | Draw triangles, rectangles, and ellipses from their center |
| Ctrl + scroll | Change opacity |
| Shift + scroll | Change roundness |
| Drag a selection handle | Reshape the selection or stretch text |
| Shift + drag a text handle | Resize text without stretching |
Configure Vellum in ~/.config/vellum/config.toml. See the default configuration for options and shortcuts.