Text and Fonts

Label any element on the canvas and choose its typeface from eleven curated fonts, set per element or as a default for the whole tab.

Text is what turns a box into a step and an arrow into a relationship. Almost every element in livediagram can carry a label, and you can shape how that text reads by choosing its typeface from a curated set of eleven fonts, ranging from crisp sans-serifs to relaxed handwriting faces. Fonts can be set on a single element or as a default for an entire tab.

Editing Labels

Shapes, text elements, sticky notes, table cells, and arrows can all carry text, so you can annotate a diagram wherever you need to. There are a few ways in:

  • Double-click an element to edit its label. Double-click an arrow to edit its caption, or a table cell to edit that cell.
  • With one element selected, press Space to start editing its label, or just start typing: the first character replaces the existing label.
  • Double-click empty canvas to drop a new text element right there and start typing in it.
  • Press T (or pick Text from the palette) to add a text element, then tap or drag on the canvas to place it.

Labels can run over several lines: Enter starts a new line. In an arrow caption Enter finishes the edit instead, and Shift+Enter starts a new line; a mind map node is the same, since there Enter adds the next node. Click outside the element to finish, or press Escape to cancel the edit. While you edit, a small toolbar above the element formats the words you select (bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, headings and lists, alignment and colour); see Formatting Label Text. Edits go through the normal history, so undo and redo cover label changes like any other edit.

Choosing a Typeface

livediagram ships eleven Google Fonts, picked to give a diagram a distinct voice: Inter, Poppins, Nunito, Oswald, Space Grotesk, Lora, Abril Fatface, Roboto Slab, Roboto Mono, Caveat, and Permanent Marker. Together they span crisp, friendly, formal, and hand-drawn looks. See Choosing Fonts for where to set them and how the levels interact.

Step oneStyleText›FontInterPoppinsNunitoOswaldLoraCaveatSize
Right-click a labelled element, open Text, and pick a typeface from the Font tiles.

Per Element or Per Tab

Fonts work at two levels. You can set a font on a single element so one label stands out (from its right-click menu, under Text), or set a default for the whole tab so every label shares the same typeface unless it overrides it (from the Text panel of the Tab Style dialog). The tab default also covers a default text size for new elements, keeping a fresh canvas tidy. Choosing Fonts explains how an element falls back to the tab's font when it has none of its own.

Text Size

An element's text size lives beside its font, in the right-click menu's Text section. Drag the Text Size slider to any size from 6 to 48 pixels, with marks at 6, 12, 24, 36 and 48 to guide you, or press the Scale icon to the right of it to fit the text to the element instead. The text changes as you drag and settles when you let go, so one drag is one undo. The arrow keys move it a pixel at a time. The same slider sets an arrow's caption, a table cell, a chart's key and the tab's size for new text. New elements take the tab's default size, which starts at Small on a fresh canvas.

Text Colour

A text element's colour is in its right-click menu under Style, then Colours, and one click away in the Quick Style Panel while it is selected. Reset to Theme puts the theme's text colour back. To colour only some of the words, select them while editing and use the colour swatch on the editing toolbar.

Switching the theme only recolours your diagram, it never changes your fonts, so the typefaces you pick stay put when you restyle.

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