An editor mode is how you work on a tab right now. There are five: Diagram, Draw, Facilitate, Illustrate and Plan. A mode decides which tools are in front of you; it never changes what is on the tab. Switch from Diagram to Draw and every shape stays exactly where it was, and the strokes you draw in Draw mode are still there when you switch back.
Three words describe how documents and tabs differ, and they mean different things:
- Mode is how a tab is worked on. It belongs to the tab, so everyone on the tab is in the same mode.
- Kind is what a tab is. Almost every tab is a general tab that works in every mode; the Event Storming board is the one tab with its own kind, its own notation and no modes.
- Template is what a document was made from. A Kanban board or a retrospective is a general tab made from a template, never a kind of tab of its own. See Templates.
The Five Modes
- Diagram: shapes, arrows, the palette and snapping. The palette offers Shapes, Draw, Build, Concepts, Icons, Tech and Media, and shapes snap into line with alignment guides. This is where every new document starts unless its template says otherwise.
- Draw: pens, the eraser and shape recognition, for sketching by hand. The palette strip gives way to Draw's own tools: Select, three markers, Text, the Path tool, the Eraser (whole strokes or just part of one) and your pinned shapes, in a dock across the top. See Draw Mode.
- Illustrate: pages, for building a finished visual or writing an article. The tab is laid out as sheets in a row, each with a settings cog and a + after the last to add another, and the palette trades pens, tech icons and Collaborate for Components, Devices and Data charts. Export from Illustrate saves the pages. See Illustrate Mode.
- Plan: boards of items, for running work through columns of cards. The palette holds Cards, Boards, Widgets, Metrics, Visualisations, Sheet, Content and Tools, and opens on Cards (or Boards, until the tab has a board). The bottom-right corner gains Trash, New Card, Cards and Card Types, while the Layers and Quick Style panels step aside. See Plan Mode.
- Facilitate: running a session with your team, such as a retro, a town hall or a workshop. The palette adds Stickers, Data, Ask and Session (timers, votes, polls, reveals, quizzes and the rest of the session kit), and the bottom-right corner gains the Timer, Vote and Poll buttons. See Facilitate Mode.
Every mode is on for everyone, with nothing to turn on in Settings.
The Mode Switch
The mode switch shows the mode you are in. Press it to open the mode menu: the five modes down the left, the current one ticked, and beside them a preview of the mode under your pointer, with a picture, a line on what it is for and its main tools. Choosing a mode in the list (a click, or Enter on the highlighted one) switches at once and closes the menu; Escape or a click elsewhere closes it without switching. On a narrow screen the preview is left out and each mode shows its line under its name.
- It sits beside the menu button in the card at the top left, as an icon, just left of the palette strip.
- It stays put in every mode, so it is always where you left it, even in Draw mode.
Shift+D moves to the next mode from anywhere on the canvas (with one element selected it types a capital D into its label instead, so press Escape first): Diagram, then Draw, Facilitate, Illustrate and back to Diagram.
Plan works in tabs of its own. A tab can't switch into Plan from another mode, or out of Plan into another: Plan carries a small new-tab mark in the mode switch, and picking it offers a New Plan Tab instead (and the same the other way round on a Plan tab). Shift+D skips Plan. The one exception is an empty tab: with nothing on it, it switches into or out of Plan like any other mode, so a tab started in the wrong mode is never stuck. The preview shows ⇧D on the mode it leads to, and screen readers announce the mode you land in ("Draw mode"). Shift+D is listed under Settings › Keyboard, and it stops working with every other shortcut when you turn shortcuts off.
One Mode for Everyone
- The mode belongs to the tab. Everyone on a tab works in the same mode at once, so what you see always matches what your collaborators see.
- Switching switches everyone. When you switch a tab's mode, everyone on it follows straight away, and a message tells them who switched ("Ada switched this tab to Draw."). Anything they were typing is kept.
- Undo switches back. Switching is one step in your undo history: Undo puts the tab back in the mode it was in, exactly as it was, for everyone, and Redo switches again.
- The tab pill shows the tab's mode. Each tab in the tab bar starts with the icon of its mode, the same icon the switch uses.
- A tab opens in its mode, for everyone, Diagram unless something set it otherwise.
- The tab menu has it too: open the tab menu (the ⋯ on the tab, or right-click the tab) and open its Mode section at the bottom, then choose Diagram, Draw, Facilitate, Illustrate or Plan. Choosing one switches the tab exactly as the switch does. Plan works in tabs of its own, so choosing Plan from another mode (or another mode from a Plan tab) offers to open a new tab in it instead.
- New documents open in the mode you choose in the New Document wizard, and new tabs open in the mode of the tab you were on, on that mode's own start (an Illustrate tab's + makes an Illustrate tab on Start Illustrating, a Plan tab's makes a Plan tab on Start Planning), unless the template you pick opens somewhere else: Blank Whiteboard opens in Draw, Blank Illustration in Illustrate, Blank Plan in Plan, and Blank Session and the session templates (the retrospectives, Town Hall Q&A, Lean Coffee, Crazy Eights and Meeting Agenda, plus the boards with a dot vote: Affinity map, Prioritization matrix and Risk matrix) in Facilitate.
- In the Explorer, the Opens in filter finds documents by the mode they were created to open in. See Filters.
On a Phone
A phone has no mode switch: the top row belongs to the palette's strip, and Shift+D needs a keyboard. To change mode, open the tab menu (the ⋯ on the tab), open its Mode section and choose a mode. That switches the tab for everyone, as the switch does. On a phone every mode starts on the Hand tool, so a drag moves the canvas.
Who Can Switch
- Editors of a general tab get the switch, Shift+D and the tab menu's Mode.
- People who can only view a tab follow its mode, with no switch, and Shift+D does nothing.
- On a locked tab nobody can switch: the tab stays in its mode until it is unlocked.
- Event Storming boards have no modes: they keep their own tools and notation, show no switch and have no Mode.
What Switching Keeps
Switching is instant, with no reload, and nothing on the tab moves.
- Everything on the tab stays, in the same place and the same colours, for everyone. A board from Plan mode is an element like any other in Diagram mode, and a pen stroke is a stroke in every mode.
- Your selection and your view stay: the canvas does not move, and a text edit or a drag in progress is finished first.
- Your tool is put down. A pen or an armed shape never carries into the next mode. Each mode starts on Select, except Plan, which starts on Hand because its cards take the pointer.
- The palette shows the new mode's categories, and Plan's opens on Cards, so it never shows a category the new mode leaves out.
- What a mode makes keeps its style. A shape drawn in Draw mode keeps its Ink outline and no fill in Diagram mode, and a text box made in Draw mode keeps hugging its words.
- Draw mode's background is yours. Plain, Dots or Grid shows only to you in Draw mode; Diagram mode shows the tab's own background, which is also what every export uses.
Leaving Illustrate
Diagram, Draw, Plan and Facilitate modes do not show pages, so when you can edit a tab that has something on it, switching out of Illustrate (with the switch, Shift+D or the tab menu's Mode) asks first:
- A tab with content but no articles shows a small card beside the switch: Switch to Diagram? (or Draw, or Plan). What you change in the other mode may not fit back onto your pages when you return. Press Switch to go, or Cancel (or Escape) to stay.
- A tab with articles asks Turn Articles Into Pages?: Turn Into Pages, Keep as Articles or Cancel. See Writing Articles.
An empty tab switches straight away.
Leaving Plan never asks: boards and cards stay on the tab as they are, and their cards work again when you come back to Plan.
Templates and Modes
An empty tab opens on its mode's start (Start Diagramming, Start Facilitating, Start Illustrating, Start Planning), where that mode's templates are, and the mode switch at the top of the start's list changes the tab's mode before you begin. Every template opens in one mode, and its card in Quick Start shows that mode's icon before its name. To see only one mode's templates, use the Show templates for menu beside the search box and choose Diagram, Draw, Illustrate or Plan; Everything shows them all again. The Popular shelf leads with one blank per mode: Blank Diagram, Blank Whiteboard, Blank Illustration and Blank Plan. See Finding Templates for a Mode.
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