Canvas basics

A canvas is an infinite whiteboard: a free-floating scene of shapes, text, and connectors instead of a top-to-bottom document. Reach for one when the relationships between things matter more than their order — a system diagram, a brainstorm, a flow.

1. Create a canvas

   Click New in the sidebar and choose Canvas, or add one from any folder’s create menu. It opens empty, ready to draw on.

2. Draw with the toolbar

   The toolbar along the bottom holds every tool: Rectangle (R), Ellipse (O), Diamond (D), Triangle (Y), plus sticky notes, text, connectors, a pen and highlighter, and frames. Pick a tool and drag on the canvas to place a shape.

3. Connect and annotate

   Draw a connector between two shapes and it binds to them — move a shape and the arrow follows. Double-click any shape to type a label, drop a sticky note for a loose thought, or use text for a free caption.

4. Style what you place

   Select anything to open the style panel: fill, stroke, colour, width, dash, font, and opacity. Freshly-drawn shapes already carry polished defaults, so styling is optional.

Groups and frames

Select several elements and group them to move, resize, and style them as one unit; ungroup to break them apart again. A frame is a titled container: drop shapes inside and it owns them, so dragging the frame carries its whole contents. Frames are how you carve a big board into named regions — and they double as slides for presentation mode.

Getting around

• Pan by dragging any empty part of the canvas, or scroll with a plain mouse wheel.
• Zoom with ⌘-scroll (or Ctrl-scroll), anchored where your pointer is.
• ⇧1 fits the whole scene to the screen; ⇧2 zooms to your current selection.
• ⌘F searches text, notes, and frame titles and flies you to each match.
• The minimap in the corner shows where you are in the larger board and lets you jump by dragging.

Canvas or page?

Use a page when the content is meant to be read in order — notes, docs, specs. Use a canvas when layout carries meaning: things sit in space, point at each other, and you want to see the whole picture at once. Both are items in the same workspace, so link between them freely.

To let AI build or rearrange a scene for you, and to start from a template, see Canvas AI and templates.