Avatar mode is not just for you. On a shared document (a share link or a team document) every person in Avatar mode appears on everyone else's canvas, walking around in real time.
What everyone sees
Each character is drawn in its owner's participant colour, with their name on a small chip above the head, so a room with several people walking about stays readable. Your own character has no chip, because you already know which one you are.
You do not have to be in Avatar mode yourself to see other people's characters. If a colleague is walking you through their canvas, their character appears while you stay in Select and keep taking notes.
Characters are per tab: someone walking around Tab 2 does not appear on Tab 1. When a person leaves Avatar mode, or closes the document, their character disappears immediately rather than being left standing on your canvas.
Presenting to a group
This makes a walkthrough work without screen sharing. Send the share link, ask everyone to press W (or drop a Selection Mode button on the canvas for people on a phone or tablet), and you can each walk to the part you are asking about. A jump with a flag (Space) is a quick way to say "over here" when several characters are on screen at once.
Viewers on a view-only link can walk around too. Walking changes nothing on the canvas, so it needs no edit access.
Privacy
Characters travel the same way cursors do, and they are treated with the same care:
- Where a character stands is never saved. It is not part of the document and it is never restored later: closing the tab is the end of it.
- The look you picked is remembered in your browser only; it is not part of your profile or the document.
- If a session vote is running with Hide cursors on, other people's characters are hidden along with their cursors and laser trails, since a character is a position on the canvas like any other.
A private document with no share link and no team has nobody to broadcast to, so your character is yours alone. Sharing the document is what makes it visible to others.
Pushing each other
While you're in Avatar mode, click somebody else's character and yours walks over and gives them a shove: they slide a short way in the direction you pushed. It only moves their character, on their screen and everyone else's, and someone who has left Avatar mode simply ignores it.
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