Every element on the canvas starts from the palette. The palette organises its contents into categories so it stays compact however much it holds, and adding an element is usually a single tap.
Picking a Category
The palette is the strip across the top of the canvas. Its categories sit along it by name: rest the pointer on one, or click it, and its elements open in a panel underneath, in named groups, with a line on what each one does. In Diagram mode the categories are:
- Shapes: the common nodes, such as square, circle, diamond, cylinder, parallelogram, hexagon, document and stadium.
- Draw: the words and the pens together, text, sticky notes, pages, annotations and comments, then the pencil, shape pen, highlighter, polygon and arrows.
- Build: the structural elements, such as mind nodes, lanes, frames, timelines and tables.
- Concepts: ideas laid out as one element, such as a pyramid, a funnel, a cycle and the Sankey.
- Icons: a searchable set of single-colour icons, its groups down the side, that you can drop on the canvas or onto a shape.
- Tech: full-colour cloud and infrastructure marks for system-architecture diagrams.
- Media: an uploaded image, or a circular avatar.
Other modes arrange their own set. Illustrate mode adds Components (themed composites such as Banner, Hero and Header), Devices (browser, laptop, phone and other frames for wireframing), Stickers and Data (charts), and its Media adds embeds and a Tab Window that shows another tab live; Facilitate mode adds Stickers, Data, Ask and Session; and Plan mode keeps a category dropdown that leads with its cards and boards. If you have imported a shape library, its shapes appear under Library. A Participant on a shared link gets one category instead, Participate, with sticky notes, text and an image to add to the board.
Dropping or Drawing an Element
Almost every tile arms a combined gesture when you click it.
Click a tile in the palette. It stays pressed to show it is armed, and a banner along the top of the canvas says what comes next (for a shape, "Tap to drop or drag to draw" and the shape's name), with a Cancel button.
Tap an empty spot on the canvas to drop the element at its natural size on that point.
Or, instead of a single tap, drag out a box and release to create the element at that size. Both corners snap to nearby shapes as you drag.
While a tile is armed you can even start the drag on top of another element: the new one is drawn over it rather than selecting it. Press Escape (or Cancel on the banner) to disarm a tile without adding anything. Text lands ready for typing; everything else lands selected, ready to move or restyle. An Image lands as an empty placeholder: press its Select Image button when you are ready to add the picture.
If a boxed element is already selected when you tap a tile, the new one inherits its width and height (a drag sets its own size, and a selected frame or lane never passes its size on), so you can chain together similarly sized nodes quickly. Circles and diamonds are an exception: they are inherently square, so they snap back to a square using the larger inherited dimension.
You can also drag a tile straight from the palette onto the canvas instead of tapping. As you drag, a translucent preview of the element follows your cursor at its real size, so you can see exactly where, and how big, it will land before you let go.
Adding from the Keyboard
Single keys arm the most common elements without opening the palette: R for a rectangle, O for an oval, D for a diamond, C for a cylinder, G for a parallelogram, T for text, N for a sticky note, A for an arrow, F for a frame and 9 for an image. See Keyboard Shortcuts for the full list. With one labelled element selected, a letter key types into its label instead. The keys add nothing for a Participant or a Viewer, and Draw mode has keys of its own. You can also double-click empty canvas to drop a text element and start typing straight away.
Annotations Land in the Middle
An annotation is the one element without the draw gesture. It is a fixed-size marker, so there is no size to choose: it lands at the centre of the visible canvas, already selected, so you can drag it where you want.
Icons can be added to a shape rather than as standalone elements: drag an icon tile onto a shape, or click an icon while a shape is selected, and it attaches beside that shape's label.
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