Markup Tool: Support for persistent tool presets (color, stroke, fill settings)
I use Markup heavily for work — up to 20 images per day, always with the same settings: red arrow or rectangle, no fill, specific stroke width.
The problem has two parts:
Part 1 – Markup resets everything:
Every time Markup is opened, all settings reset: tool, color, fill, stroke width. This means 3–4 manual steps per image, adding up to 80 unnecessary interactions per day.
Part 2 – The default red is unusable:
The red in Apple’s color palette is muted and too pale for clear, high-contrast annotations. I have to open the color wheel every single time to manually select a proper, vivid red. The copy/duplicate workaround only helps within one image — as soon as a new photo or screenshot is opened, everything starts over from scratch. Markup has no memory between different images.
Switching to a third-party annotation app is not a solution — the entire advantage of Markup is its native integration directly within the Photos app, without switching apps. And Markup cannot be configured in depth through Shortcuts either — color, fill, and stroke width are not controllable there.
The attached images:
Image 1
shows the entry point in the Photos app.
Image 2
shows Markup open with the current color palette. The blue-outlined fields do not indicate colors to be replaced — they mark the position where personally configured tool presets should appear: not individual colors, but fully pre-configured tools with color, stroke width, and fill setting already saved, ready to use with a single tap.
My suggestion:
Tool presets — configure once, saved permanently, available directly in the Markup toolbar. No need to re-configure color, fill, or stroke width for every new image.
iOS already remembers last-used settings in many areas: camera mode, emojis, colors in Notes, Pages, and Keynote. Markup behaves as if it’s being opened for the first time, every time. This inconsistency costs me measurable time every single day.
