The canvas is effectively infinite, so nothing on it is ever cramped. Panning moves your view across the surface, and zooming changes how much of it you see at once. There are several ways to do each, so you can use whichever suits your device.
Panning
Panning slides the canvas under your view without moving any elements.
- Hand tool. Pick the Hand tool from the palette's canvas tool menu (shortcut
H), then drag on the canvas to scroll around. It is the tool a phone starts on. - Two fingers on a trackpad, or the scroll wheel. Scrolling over the canvas pans it, in any direction.
- Middle-click drag. Hold the middle mouse button and drag to pan from any tool, even over elements, so you do not have to switch away from Select to move around. If you would rather keep the middle button for your browser, turn off Middle-Mouse Pan in Settings under Editor.
- Hold Space. Holding Space and dragging pans while keeping your current tool, which is handy mid-edit.
- Touch. Drag with the Hand tool, or pinch with two fingers to zoom.
When you pan, background patterns track the pan offset and tile seamlessly, so the texture stays continuous however far you travel.
Zooming
The view zooms from 10% up to 500%, around your pointer when you use a gesture.
- Zoom controls. The bar in the bottom-right corner has Zoom out and Zoom in buttons (10% at a time) either side of the current percentage. Hover the percentage for a menu of fixed levels from 25% to 150%, or click it to fit everything on the tab to the screen. On a phone the step buttons give way to a Fit button, and you pinch to zoom.
- Gestures. Pinch on a trackpad or touch screen, or hold
Cmd/Ctrlwhile you scroll. - Keyboard.
Cmd/Ctrl++zooms in,Cmd/Ctrl+-zooms out,Cmd/Ctrl+0resets to 100%, and Shift +1zooms to fit.
Zooming in lets you place and label small elements precisely; zooming out gives you the whole canvas at a glance, which is useful before presenting or when tidying up a large layout. On a big board, the minimap shows where you are and lets you jump around.
Presenter Aids
When you are walking others through the canvas, a couple of canvas tools help direct attention without changing the layout. Both live in the canvas tool menu.
- Laser (shortcut
K) emits a glowing trail that follows your pointer and fades after about a second (its trail length is a setting), shown live to others in your colour. With a mouse, a click-drag still pans. - Spotlight dims the whole canvas except a soft circle around your cursor, a local view aid that draws the eye to one area. Left-click grows the light, right-click shrinks it. It is desktop-only.
Spotlight never changes the canvas: while it is active the canvas ignores clicks, so nothing can be selected or moved by accident. You can still pan with a middle-click drag, Space, or a trackpad.
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