When a whole canvas is finished, locking the tab protects everything on it at once, rather than locking elements one by one. A locked tab becomes read-only: you can still look at it and switch to it, but nothing on it changes until you unlock it.
Locking and unlocking a tab
Open the tab's menu (the ⋯ button on the active tab, or right-click the tab) and press the padlock button, Lock Tab, in the row of quick actions along the top. The same button reads Unlock Tab afterwards (and shows as pressed), so it toggles the tab back to editable. A locked tab shows a small padlock before its name in the bar, so you can tell at a glance which boards are frozen.
The lock is part of the document, so it applies to everyone who opens it, not just you. Anyone with edit access can unlock it again.
What a locked tab protects
While a tab is locked, its whole canvas is read-only:
- Elements can't be moved, resized, restyled, or edited, and nothing new can be added or pasted onto the tab.
- The eraser skips everything on the tab.
- The Undo and Redo buttons are greyed out on the tab.
- In the tab menu, Import and Clear are greyed out (an import started from the command palette is refused), the layout tidiers have no effect, and the tab itself can't be deleted until you unlock it.
Locking clears your current selection. You can still look around, pan and zoom, follow links, and rename, duplicate, or export the tab from the same menu. Duplicating gives you an editable copy if you want to keep building from a locked original.
When to use it
- Freeze a signed-off or presented canvas so a later edit can't disturb it.
- Protect a reference or template tab you copy from but never change.
- Hand a document to collaborators with the finished tabs locked, leaving only the working tabs open.
To protect just a few elements rather than a whole canvas, lock them individually instead. See locking elements. To stop someone editing anything at all, share a view-only link instead.
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