Ember Etch — mle256841

Leave a mark made of heat. Ember Etch turns a passing gesture into a temporary charcoal stroke with glowing fissures, small flames and optional smoke wisps.

Enable the effect from the popup, then hold Alt (Option on Mac) while dragging on the page. You can also choose Draw in the on-page controls and drag without holding a key. Exit draw returns ordinary dragging and clicking. Outside an explicit drawing gesture, the effect leaves normal page interaction alone.

Warm marks darken as their heat fades. Fan the embers briefly relights strokes that are still present. Adjust stroke width and ember lifetime in the popup. A bounded pool holds up to 180 stroke samples; when it fills, the oldest samples are replaced. This is a temporary visual sketch, not a saved annotation, image export or document edit.

Pause to inspect a stroke, clear every mark in one action, or turn off the complete effect. Escape removes the overlay; Alt+Shift+P pauses or resumes while the page has keyboard focus. Marks are viewport-based and clear when you scroll or resize, so they cannot drift onto unrelated page content. Reloading or navigating also starts clean.

Adaptive, Eco and Detailed rendering use a single canvas, bounded work buffers and a capped drawing resolution. Flame density is limited separately from the number of charcoal samples. The renderer stops after the final marks fade and when the tab is hidden. Reduced motion starts paused until explicit Resume. Canvas rendering and image decoding are required. The quality modes specify rendering targets, not a promise that every device or page will reach the same frame rate.

Only preferences are saved locally. Drawn paths and active heat remain in memory and are never saved, uploaded or shared. No accounts, remote code, analytics, advertisements or external resources. Page text is not read and no screenshot is captured. Protected pages may block activation. Ember Etch is a decorative drawing overlay, not a permanent change to the website.