How to watermark your screenshots

Updated October 30, 2026

A good screenshot watermark is small, faint and out of the way: your @handle or logo in a corner or centered at the bottom, at about 60% opacity, sized so it’s readable but never the first thing you see. On a Mac you can add text with Preview’s Markup tools, or set a watermark once in a screenshot app and have it on every image you export.

Why watermark a screenshot

Screenshots of apps get reposted. Someone shares your launch image in a newsletter, a roundup thread or a Slack channel, and the link to your post doesn’t come with it. A watermark keeps your name on the image wherever it goes.

It isn’t protection. Anyone can crop a corner. Think of it as a signature: it helps the people who want to find you, and it makes your posts recognizable in a feed.

Handle or logo?

Your handle, like @yourname, tells people where to find you. It suits personal accounts, indie developers and anyone who builds in public.
Your logo or app icon is more recognizable at a glance and works across platforms where your handle differs. It suits a product account.
A short URL, like yourapp.com, works when you want people to land on your website rather than a profile.

Pick one. A logo, a handle and a URL together is a footer, not a watermark.

Where to put it

The two places that work best:

A bottom corner. The usual choice. It’s where people expect a credit and it stays clear of the content. Bottom trailing (the right side, in English) is the most common.
Centered at the bottom. Looks deliberate on symmetrical layouts, like one phone in the middle of the canvas.

Top corners work too, but check them against each platform’s interface: Instagram Stories, for example, draws your profile and the close button across the top.

Keep a margin. A watermark touching the edge looks like a mistake and is the first thing a platform crop cuts off. A gap of 3 to 4% of the image’s shorter side is enough.

How big and how faint

A watermark should be readable when someone looks for it and invisible when they don’t.

Size: about 3% of the image’s shorter side for text, 5% for a logo. On a 1080-pixel-wide image, that’s text around 30 pixels tall.
Opacity: 50 to 70% for text. A logo can be fully opaque if it’s small.
Color: white on dark backgrounds, black on light ones. Avoid your brand color for text: it pulls attention away from the screenshot.

Check it at the size people will see it: on your phone, in the feed, not zoomed in on your Mac.

Light and dark backgrounds

A watermark that’s perfect on a white background disappears on a busy wallpaper. If your images use different backgrounds, either keep the watermark on a calm part of the image (a solid area, not over the device) or switch between a light and a dark version. A logo with its own small background shape, like an app icon, reads on anything.

Watermark a screenshot with Preview

Preview, the image viewer that comes with every Mac, can add text to an image. According to Apple’s Preview guide:

Open the screenshot in Preview.
Click the Show Markup Toolbar button if the Markup tools aren’t showing.
Click the Text tool and type your handle.
Use the Text Style tool to set the font, style and color.
Drag the text box into place, then save.

Two things to know. Apple notes that once you save an image file, its annotations can’t be edited, moved or deleted, so work on a copy, or convert to PDF first if you want to change it later. And Preview’s text style covers font, style and color, but not opacity, so a Preview watermark is fully opaque. Use a gray rather than pure black or white to keep it subtle.

Preview is fine for one image. For every screenshot you post, it’s a lot of repeated clicks.

Watermark every screenshot automatically in FeatureFrame

FeatureFrame frames your screenshots in 3D device frames for social media, and the watermark is part of the canvas. Set it once and it’s on every image you copy or export:

Text or image. Type your handle, or use your logo or app icon.
Six positions: top or bottom, each leading, center or trailing.
Size and opacity sliders, so you can keep it subtle.

Because the watermark sits on the canvas rather than on the screenshot, it stays in the same place whether you export 4:5 for Instagram, 16:9 for X or 1.91:1 for a link preview.

A custom watermark, or no watermark at all, is part of FeatureFrame Pro. In the free version, exports carry a small FeatureFrame badge instead.

Mistakes to avoid

Over the screenshot. A mark on top of the interface makes it harder to read, which defeats the point of posting it.
Too big. If the watermark is the first thing people notice, it looks like an ad.
Different every time. Moving it between corners or switching between handle and logo loses the recognition a consistent mark builds.
Lost in compression. Thin, light text turns to mush after a platform recompresses the image. Use a medium or semibold weight.

A quick checklist

One mark: handle, logo or URL.
Bottom corner or bottom center, with a margin.
About 3% of the shorter side for text, 50 to 70% opacity.
White on dark, black on light, never over the screenshot itself.
Checked on your phone, in the feed, before posting.

Watermarks are one part of a clean image. For the rest, see how to make screenshots look good and image sizes for sharing app screenshots.