Contents

1. Cheatsheet

Every default shortcut is Ctrl + Alt + <letter> and can be changed from the tray menu's Hotkeys item. This page is meant to be printed or kept open on a second screen.

Ctrl+Alt+1 through Ctrl+Alt+9, then Ctrl+Alt+0 for a 10th, instantly switch to that numbered profile in the tray menu's Profiles list. See Profiles.

Drawing mode shape keys (hold + drag)

All shape keys are individually configurable in Settings > Drawing mode, and PointCue prevents assigning the same key to two tools.

2. Getting started

PointCue runs from the Windows system tray (the icon group near the clock). Click the tray icon to open the menu and turn tools on or off; each toggle shows a checkmark when active. Right-click behaviour is the same as left-click for opening the menu — the special case is a plain left-click, which instantly hides every enabled visual pointer aid (see Tray menu & pause-all), letting you quickly clear the screen without hunting through the menu.

Open Settings from the tray menu to adjust any tool — sizes, colours, opacity, position, and shortcuts. The settings window lists every tool in a tree on the left, grouped by what it does; changes apply instantly so you can see the effect on your screen as you adjust. A Standard / Pro toggle above the profile bar switches every page between just the commonly-used options (Standard) and every option, including fine shape/colour/thickness tuning (Pro) — remembered across restarts, independent of any profile. Open Hotkeys from the tray menu to remap any shortcut; every shortcut requires at least one modifier (Ctrl, Alt, and/or Shift), and PointCue blocks assigning the same combination to two different actions. Its own "Reset to defaults" button restores every shortcut to its original key in one click, separate from the main Settings window's Factory reset.

3. Global Theme

Global Theme is a shared palette of five colours plus a shared shape/opacity/thickness that other tools can optionally follow, so the whole overlay looks coordinated without recolouring each tool by hand. Ten built-in presets are available (Classic, Ocean, Sunset, Forest, Neon, Pastel, Monochrome Blue, Warm, Cool, High Contrast), or set all five colours yourself.

• 5 theme colours — a primary accent plus four secondary colours other tools (like Drawing mode markers) can cycle through.
• Shape, thickness, opacity — a shared shape (circle or 3–20-sided polygon, with corner rounding, aspect ratio, and rotation), border thickness, and opacity that Halo and other tools can optionally match instead of using their own settings.

Every tool that supports "Match Halo" / "Same as Halo" / "Match Global Theme" style checkboxes will follow the shared theme automatically until unchecked, at which point it reverts to its own independent settings. Almost every one of these colour checkboxes (Pointer trail colour/spark/colour-shift target, Click ripples' and Mouse strokes' Left/Right/Middle/Scroll colours, Laser pointer, Custom pointer, Spotlight frame, Magnifier border, Keystroke border, Break timer border, and Webcam border) also shows a "Theme colour" dropdown next to it, so you can choose which of the 5 that slot follows instead of always defaulting to theme colour 1 — letting a fully-matched set of tools spread across the palette instead of repeating a single colour everywhere. Halo's own colour and glow are the shared reference point the palette is built from, so they stay tied to theme colour 1 rather than offering the same dropdown.

4. Cursor & pointer tools

Shared "Move out of the way": for any tool pinned to a fixed spot on screen, enabling this jumps it to the opposite corner whenever the pointer gets close, so it never blocks what you're pointing at.

5. Screen tools

6. Keystrokes & Mouse strokes

7. Drawing mode

Ctrl+Alt+D toggles Drawing mode, which lets you draw directly over whatever is on screen — ideal for annotating during a live demo or recording. While active, a small help bubble shows the exit shortcut and key shape reminders; press F1 at any time to show or hide the full on-screen key list.

Drawing toolbar

An optional small floating icon palette can appear alongside Drawing mode — one icon per shape tool (Freehand, Line, Rectangle, Circle/Oval, Arrow, Polygon, Highlighter, Marker, Move). It's off by default: turn on "Drawing toolbar" in Settings > Drawing mode to have it appear automatically every time you enter Drawing mode, or leave it off and press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D to show or hide it just for the current session, regardless of that setting. Click an icon to make that tool the active default: it stays selected until you click it again (back to Freehand) or pick another tool, so you don't need to hold a key for every single stroke. Holding a different tool's key still works as a one-off override without disturbing what's selected on the toolbar.

• Polygon from the toolbar — since there's no key to release, close it by right-clicking, pressing Enter, or clicking back on the first corner once you've clicked all its corners.
• ↔ button — flips the toolbar between a horizontal row and a vertical column.
• Docking — drag the toolbar near any screen edge and it snaps flush against it (and switches orientation to match: horizontal at top/bottom, vertical at left/right).
• AH button (auto-hide) — only enabled once docked; when on, the toolbar slides to a thin sliver at the edge a moment after the pointer leaves it, and slides back out when you hover near that edge again.
• Position, orientation, dock edge, and auto-hide are all remembered the next time you enter Drawing mode.

Basic controls

• Left mouse button — draw a freehand stroke.
• Right mouse button — erase drawings under the pointer (or, mid-polygon, close it instead). Pressing Enter, or clicking back on the polygon's first corner, also closes it.
• Mouse wheel — change line thickness.
• Ctrl + mouse wheel — cycle through drawing colours.
• Ctrl+Z — undo the last stroke (also available as the Ctrl+Alt+U global shortcut, which works outside Drawing mode too).
• Ctrl+Alt+C — clear every drawing.
• Esc — exit Drawing mode.

Shape tools

Hold one of these keys while dragging to draw that shape instead of a freehand line. Every key is configurable in Settings > Drawing mode, and PointCue will not let two tools share the same key.

Markers

Numbered markers are great for "step 1, step 2, step 3" style walkthroughs. Three settings control their appearance:

• Marker colours — optionally cycle each new marker through the 5 Global Theme colours instead of the current drawing colour.
• Marker style — Filled circle, Outlined circle, Square, or Pin (the bulb sits above the clicked point instead of covering it).
• Marker labels — Numbers, uppercase or lowercase letters (A, B, C… then AA, AB…), or Roman numerals.

8. Whiteboard / blackboard backgrounds

While in Drawing mode, press B (configurable) to cycle the canvas background through three states:

1. Desktop — the normal, transparent view showing your live screen underneath (the default).
2. Background colour 1 — a solid colour fill (default white — a "whiteboard").
3. Background colour 2 — a second solid colour fill (default black — a "blackboard"), then back to Desktop.

Both colours are fully configurable via a colour picker or by picking a colour straight off your screen. The same drawing tools, shapes, and markers work identically on top of any background. The background always resets back to Desktop the next time you turn Drawing mode off, so you never accidentally leave a solid colour covering your screen.

9. Screenshots

Ctrl+Alt+J (or the tray menu's "Save screenshot") saves a screenshot — including any drawings currently on screen — and works whether or not Drawing mode is active.

• Capture mode — Full screen, a specific monitor, or drag-to-select a custom area (dragging works just like the Windows Snipping Tool).
• File naming — a configurable name prefix and automatic sequential numbering, e.g. PointCue_Screenshot_001.png, _002.png, and so on — never overwriting an existing file.
• Destination folder — choose any folder; defaults to a "PointCue Screenshots" folder inside Pictures.
• Confirmation sound — a built-in synthesized sound (Shutter, Chime, Pop, or None) plays after saving — not a Windows system sound. Use the Test button in Settings to preview it.

All of this is configured under Settings > Capture > Screenshots.

10. Screen recording

Ctrl+Alt+V (or the tray menu's "Screen recording" toggle) starts or stops recording the screen to an MP4 file, encoded with Windows' own H.264/AAC encoder — no extra software required.

• Capture mode — the same Full screen / Specific monitor / drag-to-select Area choices as Screenshots.
• Audio — optionally include microphone audio, system audio (whatever is playing on your PC), or both, mixed together into the recording. Pick a specific microphone, or use the system default.
• File naming and folder — same sequential-numbering scheme as screenshots (PointCue_Recording_001.mp4, and so on), saved by default to a "PointCue Recordings" folder inside Videos.
• Pause / Resume — Ctrl+Alt+Z (or the tray menu's "Pause recording" / "Resume recording" item, enabled only while recording) pauses capture without ending the file. The paused interval is simply never recorded — no frozen frame, nothing to edit out afterwards.
• On-screen indicator — a small "REC 00:00" badge (or "PAUSED 00:00" while paused) appears while recording so you always know its state, but it is specifically excluded from the recording itself, so it never appears in the saved video. Its own opacity is adjustable, and "Move out of the way" jumps it to the opposite corner when the pointer gets close.

All of this is configured under Settings > Capture > Screen recording.

11. Break timer & Webcam

12. Profiles

Profiles let you save different complete settings setups — for example one for teaching, one for demos, and one for screen recordings — and switch between them from the tray menu.

• Save / load / delete named profiles from the Settings window.
• Export writes the selected profile to a .pointcue file, so it can be backed up or shared with someone else.
• Import reads a .pointcue file back in.
• Factory reset restores every setting to its original default.
• Quick-switch hotkeys — Ctrl+Alt+1 through Ctrl+Alt+9, then Ctrl+Alt+0 for a 10th, instantly switch to that numbered profile, counting down the tray menu's Profiles list in order (shown next to each profile's name there; a profile hidden from that menu doesn't take a number). Nothing happens if you don't have that many profiles yet, and each of these shortcuts can be remapped in Hotkeys like any other.
• Hotkeys are shared across every profile — they aren't part of what makes each profile different. Changing a shortcut anywhere updates it for every profile at once, so switching profiles never changes what a shortcut does.

Under Settings > General > Startup, "Run at Windows login" launches PointCue automatically when you sign in. This is a single on/off switch for the whole install (via the standard Windows Run registry entry) rather than something saved per profile.

Ctrl+Alt+I (or the tray menu's "Desktop icons hidden" toggle) instantly hides or reveals the icons on the Windows desktop itself — not any PointCue overlay — useful for tidying your screen right before sharing it. This is independent of every profile and every other setting.

Ctrl+Alt+N (or the tray menu's "Taskbar hidden" toggle) does the same for the entire Windows taskbar — Start button, pinned/running app icons, system tray, and clock — on every monitor. There's no way to hide only the pinned icons while leaving the rest of the bar visible, so this hides the whole thing.

13. Tray menu & pause-all

The tray icon menu lists every tool as a checkable toggle, grouped with dividers - Cursor & pointer, Screen tools, Annotation & input display, Drawing, Workspace decluttering (desktop icons/taskbar/toolbar) - followed by Screenshots/Recording, the Break timer, Quick help, Settings, Hotkeys, Product Page, and Exit. "Product Page" opens PointCue's product page in your default browser. The floating quick-toggle toolbar (below) mirrors the same grouping with its own divider lines.

Left-clicking the tray icon instantly hides every currently-enabled visual pointer aid in one action — Cursor halo, Halo glow, Spotlight, Pointer trail, Click ripples, Scroll ripples, Keystrokes, Mouse strokes, Magnifier, Laser pointer, Webcam, and Custom pointer. Left-click again to bring back exactly the ones that were on before. This deliberately does not affect Drawing mode, the Break timer, or an in-progress screen recording, since those are things you're actively using rather than passive visual aids you'd want to sweep away in one click.

The tray icon itself dims slightly whenever every visual aid above is off, so you can tell PointCue's status at a glance without opening the menu.

Ctrl+Alt+E (or the tray menu's "Toolbar" toggle) opens a small floating panel with the same checkable tools as the tray menu, shown as toggle switches instead of a menu list — a way to flip tools on and off without opening the tray menu each time. Drag its top bar to move it anywhere on screen, click its gear icon to jump straight to Settings (also Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S from anywhere), and click its × to hide it again; both its position and whether it's shown are remembered the next time PointCue starts. Like the pause-all shortcut, it only covers on/off tools — not action items like Screen recording or the Break timer.

14. Tips & troubleshooting