Canvas

The canvas is an infinite whiteboard for freeform thinking. Use it to brainstorm, map ideas spatially, or sketch out a structure before writing it up.

Opening the canvas

There are two ways to use canvases:

• Canvas page — create a new page and choose Canvas as the type. This gives you a full-page infinite whiteboard.
• Canvas embed — type /canvas inside any page to embed a canvas inline. The embed shows a live SVG thumbnail of the canvas content.

Navigation

Action	How
Pan	Click and drag the background
Zoom	Scroll wheel / pinch on trackpad
Reset zoom	⌘0
Fit to content	⌘⇧0

Tools

Three tools sit at the left of the toolbar, with single-key shortcuts:

Tool	Key	What it does
Hand	H	Drag the background to pan
Select	V	Lasso-select, multi-select, group move
Draw	P	Freehand pen and highlighter strokes

Drawing

With the draw tool active, a pen options bar appears: pick a color, one of three stroke widths, or toggle the highlighter (a wide, semi-transparent stroke). Draw anywhere — each stroke becomes a regular canvas item you can select, move, resize, recolor (right-click → Stroke color), duplicate, or delete. Strokes keep a constant line width when resized.

Cards

Canvas supports several node types:

• Text card — a free-text card. Double-click to edit.
• Sticky note — a lighter note-style card for quick clustering.
• Shapes — rectangle, ellipse, diamond, and triangle, for flowcharts and diagrams. All take a fill color, border, and centered label.
• Page card — links to a real page in your workspace. Shows the page title and icon. Click to open the page.
• Frame — a labelled region for grouping parts of the canvas.
• Mind-map card — an auto-arranged idea tree when you want structured branches.

Adding cards

• Double-click the background to add a text card at that position.
• Type / or use the toolbar to add a page card and search for a page.
• Press S and click to drop a sticky note where supported.

Moving and resizing

• Drag a card to reposition it.
• Drag the resize handle on the bottom-right corner to resize.

Arrows

Draw SVG arrows between any two cards to show a relationship. Hover the edge of a card to see the connection points, then drag to another card.

Click an arrow to select it. Press Delete or Backspace to remove it.

Frames and templates

Use frames to group clusters, outline a presentation flow, or mark a working area. Canvas templates can help start common layouts such as brainstorms, retrospectives, project maps, and planning boards.

Presenting

Frames double as slides. Click Present in the toolbar to enter presentation mode: the canvas goes fullscreen, the UI hides, and the view glides between frames in reading order (top-to-bottom, then left-to-right).

Action	How
Next frame	→, Space, or Page Down
Previous frame	← or Page Up
Exit	Esc or the ✕ in the controls bar

Sharing a canvas

Share links (/share/…) and published pages (/p/…) render canvases read-only in the browser — no account needed. Viewers can pan, zoom, and jump between frames; the view opens fitted to the content. Live-query cards show their configuration but not results (those stay inside the workspace), and edit-permission share links fall back to view-only for canvases.

Use cases

• Mind mapping — start with a central idea and branch out.
• Planning — lay out phases, tasks, or milestones spatially.
• Architecture diagrams — boxes and arrows for systems or flows.
• Storyboarding — sequence of scenes or steps.