Select is the ordinary pointer: the tool for picking elements, moving them, resizing them and editing their text. It is where you spend most of your time on a desktop, and every other tool hands you back here when you are done. Choose it from the tool picker at the start of the palette strip, or press V.
The tool picker
The palette strip starts with the tool picker, showing the tool you are holding, then the palette's categories. Open the tool picker and the tools are laid out as tiles in three bands:
- Edit: Select, Hand, Eraser and Format, the tools that work on the canvas.
- Present: Laser, Spotlight, Avatar and Slide Deck, the tools you use in front of an audience.
- Preview: Isometric, and Zen, which hides the editor's chrome rather than changing tool.
The current tool is tinted, and a tool with a keyboard shortcut shows its letter in the tile's corner. Every tool after Hand, apart from Zen, needs something on the canvas to act on, so those tiles are greyed out on an empty tab. On a phone, Spotlight and Slide Deck are left out of the picker.
You can also switch tool from the search panel: type the tool's name, such as "Hand Tool" or "Spotlight".
What you can do
In Select mode the pointer interacts directly with your elements:
- Click an element to select it. Click an empty patch of canvas, or press
Esc, to clear the selection. - Shift-click to add elements to the selection, or take them out again.
- Drag a marquee from empty canvas to select many elements at once. Only elements that sit entirely inside the box are picked up. See Multi-select.
- Drag an element to move it, or press the arrow keys to nudge the selection by 1 pixel (10 with
Shift). - Drag its handles to resize.
- Double-click an element to edit its label. With one element selected you can also just start typing: the first key opens the label and replaces what was there.
You can still pan while holding Select: drag with the middle mouse button (unless it is turned off in Settings), hold Space and drag, or scroll with two fingers on a trackpad. See Pan and Zoom.
When Select is not the starting tool
Select is the starting tool on a desktop. A few places start you somewhere else, because a drag there should move the view rather than an element:
- On a phone, the editor opens on Hand, so a one-finger drag pans the canvas.
- In Plan mode, you start on Hand too, because a board's cards take clicks themselves. See Plan Mode.
- An embedded diagram always opens on Hand.
In Draw mode the palette holds Draw's own tools instead of the tool picker. V still picks Draw's Select tool and H still picks Hand.
Returning here
Select is your home base. Choosing a different tool changes what a click or drag does, so coming back to Select restores normal selection and editing. Esc takes you straight back from Format, Avatar and Isometric (Avatar and Isometric return to Hand on a phone).
View-only visitors have no palette, but they can still press V to select an element and read it. They cannot move or edit it.
Press V to jump straight back to Select without opening the tool picker. If a single element is
selected, press Esc first: with one element selected, a letter key types into its label instead.
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