The Spotlight mode dims the canvas except a soft circle of light that follows your cursor, so a viewer's attention lands on one spot at a time. Choose it from the tool picker at the start of the palette strip. It has no keyboard shortcut.
How it works
As you move the cursor, the circle of light moves with it while everything outside stays dimmed. Left-click grows the circle and right-click shrinks it, so you can match the beam to a single shape or open it up over a whole cluster. This is useful when you are talking through the canvas and want to focus the room on one area before moving on to the next.
The canvas cannot be edited while the light is on: clicks size the light rather than selecting anything, and picking Spotlight clears whatever you had selected. You can still pan by dragging with the middle mouse button, holding Space and dragging, scrolling with two fingers on a trackpad, or with the zoom controls. Pick Select (or press V) to go back to editing.
Setting up the light
While the mode is active a Spotlight panel sits at the top right, over a live preview of the shroud:
- Size: Small, Medium or Large. Clicking the canvas still grows and shrinks the light freely; the row reads Custom once you have nudged it off a preset.
- Dim: how dark everything outside the light goes: Soft, Normal, Dark, or Blackout, which is the one to reach for on a projector.
- Edge: Soft for a feathered rim that reads as lighting, or Crisp for a defined pool of light.
- Shape: a Circle, or Wide: a broad ellipse for lighting a swimlane or a table row without dragging the rows around it into the dark.
Dim, Edge and Shape are remembered on this device; the light always opens at Medium size. The shroud is yours alone: everyone else keeps seeing the whole canvas, so on a call, share your screen for others to see the light.
The spotlight inside a presentation
While you are running a slide deck, press S to light the spotlight over the slide and S again to put it out. It and the laser are the only two tools a presentation lets you reach, because neither can change what is on the slide.
With the spotlight lit, a click sizes the beam instead of advancing the slide, so use the keys (arrows, Space, Page Up and Page Down) or the presenter's buttons to move the deck while you are lighting something up.
Availability
- Desktop only. Spotlight relies on a hovering pointer and on left and right clicks, so it is not offered on a phone-sized screen. If the window shrinks to phone width while it is on, you are put back on Select.
- Not on an empty canvas. Add an element and it becomes available.
- Participants pick it from their palette like an Editor.
- View-only visitors can use it too: with no palette, they type "Spotlight" into the search panel.
Spotlight works well alongside the Laser Pointer when presenting: dim the rest of the canvas, then point out the detail you want to discuss.
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