How to highlight part of a screenshot and dim the rest

To make one part of a screenshot stand out, darken everything around it, which is called a spotlight. On a Mac, Markup has one built in: open the screenshot in Markup (click the thumbnail after taking it, or open it in Preview), choose Shapes → Highlight, and drag the bright rectangle over the part that matters; the rest of the image dims. Windows has no dimming tool: Snipping Tool’s highlighter paints a translucent stroke over something, which marks it but doesn’t quiet the rest. In hypershot, press S for the Spotlight tool and drag: everything outside your shape dims, and you can add as many spotlights as you need.

The built-in way

On a Mac:

1. Take the screenshot and click the thumbnail in the corner, or open the file in Preview and show the Markup toolbar.
2. Click Shapes and choose Highlight, at the bottom of the menu.
3. Drag the highlight over the area you want to keep bright, and resize it with the blue handles.

It’s a real spotlight, and it’s underused. Its limits: it’s a rectangle only, and in Preview, once you save the image, the annotations are flattened and can’t be adjusted later. The Loupe in the same menu is the other built-in way to pull focus, magnifying one area instead of dimming the others.

On Windows, Snipping Tool’s editor has a Highlighter pen: drag it across text or a button and it gets a translucent color wash. That’s the right tool for marking a line of text. For dimming the rest of the image, there’s no built-in option; the workaround is PowerPoint, where you cover the image with a semi-transparent dark rectangle, draw a shape over the part you want visible, and use Merge Shapes → Subtract to cut the hole. It works, and it takes a few minutes per image.

With hypershot

The Spotlight tool:

1. Capture the screen: ⌘⇧2 on macOS or Ctrl+Shift+3 on Windows for part of it, ⌘⇧W on macOS or Ctrl+Shift+W on Windows for one window.
2. In the editor, press S.
3. Drag over the part you want people to look at. Everything outside it dims.
4. Drag again to add another spotlight. They share the same dimmed overlay, so three spotlights give you three bright areas on one dark background.

From the tool options:

• Shape: Circle (a softer focus) or Rectangle (precise edges for a button or a panel).
• Overlay color: the color of the dimmed area. Black is the classic look, dark gray is gentler, and a semi-transparent color lets more of the context show through. It’s one setting for the whole document, so every spotlight on the image matches.

Spotlights stay editable like every other annotation: move one, resize it, delete it. The capture is saved as a .hypercapture file, so you can reopen it and change the focus later.

When to highlight instead

Dimming says “look here, ignore the rest.” Sometimes you want the opposite, where the context matters and one line needs marking. That’s the Highlighter (H). It finds the lines of text in the screenshot and snaps the brush to their height, so a quick drag along a sentence comes out as a straight, even band instead of a wobbly one. Hold Alt to draw freehand, or Shift to constrain it to 45° angles.

A rough guide:

• One area in a busy UI → Spotlight.
• One sentence in a page of text → Highlighter.
• Several separate things, in order → numbered steps with the Counter (C).
• Something small → Spotlight around it plus an arrow (A) pointing in.

Tips

• Leave some margin. A spotlight that hugs a button too tightly looks like it’s clipping it. A few pixels of breathing room reads better.
• Don’t dim too dark. If the reader needs to recognize where on the screen they are, a semi-transparent overlay keeps the surroundings legible.
• Spotlight first, then annotate. Arrows and text sit on top of the dimmed area, so labels stay readable.
• Hiding is a different job. A spotlight is meant to dim, not to hide. For anything private, use the Redact tool (X). See how to blur or hide sensitive info.

For the whole annotation toolbox, see how to annotate a screenshot.