Description
Recording a tutorial or walking through code, you want to circle the important line, but a mouse draws wobbly shapes and a pen tablet is one more purchase. Qalam puts something you already own to work: a Samsung Galaxy phone with an S Pen becomes a pressure-sensitive pen tablet for your Mac.
There are two modes. In cursor mode the pen hovers to move the cursor, the tip clicks and drags, and the side button right-clicks. In ink mode you write, highlight and point with a fading laser right on the screen, and QuickTime, OBS and other recorders capture the ink as part of the picture. Only pen data goes to the Mac, with no screen mirroring or video, around 240 samples a second and a few milliseconds over Wi-Fi, and if Wi-Fi drops it falls back to the USB cable within a second. You pair once by comparing a 6-digit code on both screens, everything after is sealed with AES-256-GCM, and there is no account and no analytics. Open source under Apache-2.0.
Cursor mode:Hover to move the Mac cursor, tap to click and drag, side button to right-click, with double-click and a small tap slop for precision.
Ink mode:A pressure pen, a highlighter, a fading laser, an eraser, 6 colours and 3 sizes, plus undo and clear.
Writes over everything:A click-through overlay on every screen, full-screen apps included, with your real mouse still working.
Several monitors:One screen at a time or all as one surface, switched from the phone, the menu or a hotkey.
Wi-Fi first, USB fallback:The phone finds the Mac over Bonjour and switches to USB and back on its own.
Palm rejection:Only the S Pen counts, so fingers and palms never draw.
Menu-bar app:No Dock icon, global hotkeys and open at login.
There are two modes. In cursor mode the pen hovers to move the cursor, the tip clicks and drags, and the side button right-clicks. In ink mode you write, highlight and point with a fading laser right on the screen, and QuickTime, OBS and other recorders capture the ink as part of the picture. Only pen data goes to the Mac, with no screen mirroring or video, around 240 samples a second and a few milliseconds over Wi-Fi, and if Wi-Fi drops it falls back to the USB cable within a second. You pair once by comparing a 6-digit code on both screens, everything after is sealed with AES-256-GCM, and there is no account and no analytics. Open source under Apache-2.0.
Features
Cursor mode:Hover to move the Mac cursor, tap to click and drag, side button to right-click, with double-click and a small tap slop for precision.
Ink mode:A pressure pen, a highlighter, a fading laser, an eraser, 6 colours and 3 sizes, plus undo and clear.
Writes over everything:A click-through overlay on every screen, full-screen apps included, with your real mouse still working.
Several monitors:One screen at a time or all as one surface, switched from the phone, the menu or a hotkey.
Wi-Fi first, USB fallback:The phone finds the Mac over Bonjour and switches to USB and back on its own.
Palm rejection:Only the S Pen counts, so fingers and palms never draw.
Menu-bar app:No Dock icon, global hotkeys and open at login.
