You can work on the canvas without a mouse. This page covers the keyboard-navigation and screen-reader baseline: reaching the canvas, moving through its elements, and hearing what's selected. For the everyday shortcuts (tools, panning, zen mode), see Keyboard Essentials.
Reaching the canvas
The canvas is a focus stop in the normal Tab order, labelled "Canvas". Tab to it from the page and you'll see a focus ring (only when navigating by keyboard, so mouse users see nothing new). The Palette strip, the Explorer behind the menu button and the panels such as the Map stay reachable by the keyboard too.
Walking the elements
Once focus is on the canvas:
Tabselects the next element,Shift+Tabthe previous, in the order they're stacked on the canvas. The canvas scrolls each selected shape into view as you go (arrows are selected without scrolling).- There's no wrap and no trap: pressing
Tabpast the last element (orShift+Tabbefore the first) moves focus out of the canvas to the next thing on the page, so you can always keyboard your way onward. - The selection ring is the focus indicator: there's one highlighted element, not two competing outlines.
- Elements locked by someone else are skipped, the same as when you click, and so are elements on a hidden or locked layer.
- On a selected mind map node,
Tabadds a child node instead, andEntera sibling.
This works even in read-only views, since it's just navigation. It is part of the editor's keyboard shortcuts, so it pauses while a dialog is open or a slide deck is presenting, and it is off if you have switched Keyboard Shortcuts off in Settings.
Hearing what's selected
Every element carries a name, so a screen reader can describe it, for example Square "Login", Sticky note, or Arrow "yes". A polite live region announces changes as they happen:
- Selection:
Selected 'Login'for a labelled element (orSelected a Squarewhen it has no label; arrows, tables and images are always named by their type, such asSelected an Arrow), a short summary when several are selected (Selected 2 Squares & an Arrow), orSelection cleared. - Editing: deleting an element (
Deleted 'Login'), Undo and Redo (Undid the last change,Redid the last change) are announced too. - Mode: switching editor mode with
Shift+Dannounces the new one, for exampleDraw mode.
These announcements are separate from the on-screen notifications, so you'll hear them even if you've turned notifications off.
Editing from the keyboard
With an element selected by keyboard, the usual keyboard verbs apply: arrow keys nudge it, Delete / Backspace removes it, Space edits its label, and ⌘/Ctrl+Z undoes. The editing verbs are disabled in read-only views and while you're typing in a field. ⌘/Ctrl+K opens search, which reaches documents, tabs, elements and commands from the keyboard. See Keyboard Essentials and the full keyboard shortcuts reference.
Reducing motion
If animation is uncomfortable, turn on Reduce Motion in Settings, under Accessibility. It turns off the editor's decorative animations and transitions so panels and popovers appear instantly instead of sliding or popping. Your device's own reduce-motion preference is always respected as well, and the setting follows you to your other devices.
Larger controls
If the panels and buttons are too small to read or hit comfortably, UI Scale in Settings, under Appearance, makes the panels, the toolbar and the bottom-right buttons smaller or bigger (80% to 120%) without zooming the canvas. Under it, Panel Scale, Toolbar Scale and Corner Buttons Scale set each one on its own, and the toolbar goes up to 140%. Desktop only.
This is a baseline, honest but not exhaustive: keyboard-only users can reach, traverse, and edit the canvas. If something you rely on is hard to reach with the keyboard, tell us: it helps us prioritise what to improve next.
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