Tools and shapes

Everything on a board starts from the toolbar. It is grouped: Select and Hand sit first, then five groups — Shapes, Connectors, Text, Draw and Images — each opening a flyout with its variants and quick colors, followed by Table, Eraser, the Laser pointer and a Frame button. This page covers the tools, the shape and stencil libraries, ink and scribble recognition, both text types, styles and fills, and inserting via templates, Mermaid or AI.

Click a group to open its flyout right below the bar, pick a variant, then draw on the canvas. After you create an object the tool returns to Select; turn on the lock button (Keep tool active) to draw several in a row. Each flyout also shows the board's quick colors — clicking one sets the stroke color for the next objects without closing the flyout.

Select: Click, move, resize and rotate objects. Drag over empty space to select several at once.
Hand (pan): Drag the canvas to shift the view without moving any object.
Shapes: Rectangle, Ellipse and Diamond plus Triangle, Parallelogram, Trapezoid, Pentagon, Hexagon and Star. Hold Shift while dragging for perfect proportions.
Connectors: Arrow, Line, Curved connector, Elbow connector, Adjustable connector and Double arrow.
Text: Two tools: Text (plain) and Rich text (formatted per character). See below.
Draw: Four brushes: Fine pen, Pen, Thick brush and Highlighter.
Images: Upload image, Image from URL, and Icons & emojis.
Table: A native table of rows and columns (see below).
Eraser: Drag over objects to delete them.
Laser pointer: A fading trail for pointing things out without drawing — also available while presenting.
Frame (slide): Inserts a frame — a region that becomes a slide in the presentation.

Tool shortcuts

SelectV

Hand (pan)H

Rectangle / Ellipse / DiamondR / O / D

Line / ArrowL / A

Draw (freehand)P

TextT

TableB

ImageI

EraserE

Laser pointerQ

Full shortcut list?

Double-click inside a shape to type a label centered within it. Fonts include sans, serif, monospace and several handwriting families.

Shape library and stencils

The Shapes button in the header opens a side panel with the full library. New boards show the Basic, Arrows and 3D categories; open Visible categories to enable many more per board: Slide layouts, Notes (sticky notes, cards, banners, quotes), Diagrams (SWOT, Kanban, timeline, mind map, Venn, org chart, fishbone, Gantt…), BPMN, UML / ER, Wireframe, Cloud, Charts, Workshop, Architecture, Infographics and Badges.

Stencils are composites: they are inserted as a ready-made group with editable labels.
Select any objects and use Save as stencil to add them to My stencils, reusable on every board.
Export library / Import library moves your saved stencils between accounts as a file.

Ink and scribble recognition

The Draw group offers four brushes. The ink engine varies the stroke width with the speed of your hand, so strokes look like real pen work; the Highlighter draws a wide translucent band with constant width.

1Draw a rough rectangle, ellipse, diamond, triangle or line by hand.
2A small suggestion chip appears over the stroke for a few seconds.
3Click it and the scribble is replaced by the clean shape, keeping your stroke style, position and layer.
4You can also right-click a freehand stroke and choose Snap to shape.

Two kinds of text

Text: Plain text with one style for the whole block — font, size, color, bold/italic, alignment. Fast and light; ideal for labels.
Rich text: Formatted per character: bold, italic, underline and strikethrough per span, plus font, size and color per span, alignment per paragraph, and bullet or numbered lists. While editing, a floating format bar appears above the text.

Sticky notes

Insert sticky notes from the Notes stencil category (several colors). Their text reflows but does not scale when you resize.
With a sticky selected, press Tab to chain a new one to the right, or Enter to chain one below — brainstorm without touching the mouse.
Select several stickies and use Pack into grid to snap them into a tidy grid.

Styles and fills

Select one or more objects to open the properties panel. Changes apply to everything selected, and the last options become the default for the next objects.

Stroke: Outline color — quick board colors, a full palette grid, custom values and an eyedropper to pick a color from the screen.
Stroke width / style: Thickness, and solid, dashed or dotted lines.
Fill: Unified: None, Solid, Gradient (linear or radial, multiple color stops), Texture (hachure or cross-hatch for the sketched look) or Image (a picture clipped to the shape).
Roughness: How hand-drawn the outline looks — zero for clean lines.
Corners: Corner rounding on rectangles.
Shadow: Optional drop shadow with color, blur, offset and opacity.
Opacity: Transparency of the whole object.

Reuse a look with Copy styles (Ctrl + Alt + C) and Paste styles (Ctrl + Alt + V), or the Format painter button. The Board colors section of the canvas panel customizes the 8 quick colors — pick a preset palette or edit each swatch.

Connect shapes

Connectors bind to shapes, so diagrams stay coherent as you rearrange them. New connectors are curved by default and remember the last configuration you used (routing and arrowheads).

1Pick a connector (or press A) and drag from the edge of the first shape.
2Drop the tip on the second shape: the end snaps and stays bound to both.
3Move either shape — the connector follows and redraws itself.
4With a connector selected, set the start/end heads (arrow, triangle, dot, bar… including entity-relationship cardinality) and the routing: Straight, Elbow, Curved or Adjustable (drag its control points).

Hover a selected shape and use the "Connect a shape" handles to pull a bound connector straight into a new neighbor.

Tables

The Table tool inserts a native grid of text cells. Add or remove rows and columns from the panel, color the lines, the cell text and the cell background, and give the first/last row or column their own accent color. Drag the green grid lines on the canvas to resize a column or row.

Insert more: images, templates, Mermaid and AI

Images: Upload a file, paste, drag-drop, insert from a URL, or pick from Icons & emojis. Images support non-destructive Crop and a color/gradient overlay.
Insert template: Ready-made boards (org chart, mind map, Kanban, SWOT, customer journey, timeline…) inserted in one click.
Mermaid: Paste a Mermaid text diagram: flowcharts become editable objects; other types are inserted as an image.
AI generate: Describe what you want. Objects mode draws a diagram (automatic, flowchart, mind map, org chart, timeline, Venn, network, infographic or a stencil component); Slides mode outlines and generates a whole slide deck.

Once objects are on the board, see "Arrange the board" to align, group and auto-lay them out, and "Present and share" to turn frames into slides.