Style, text and images
Colours, fonts, Arabic text, themes, images, cropping and pen pressure.
On this page
Style
Beyond the swatches, Stroke and Fill take any colour: use the picker, or type #RRGGBB (or #AARRGGBB for transparency). The last eight colours you used are offered as swatches on this device. Rectangles and diamonds have Sharp or Round edges. Rectangles, ellipses and diamonds are filled Solid, Hatched or Cross-hatched; the hatching is drawn in the fill colour, the same way every time.
Style also sets opacity (0 to 100 percent) and the stroke style (solid, dashed or dotted). Arrows choose an arrowhead for each end: none, arrow, triangle, dot, bar, outlined triangle, outlined dot, diamond, outlined diamond or crow's foot (for entity diagrams). A dashed arrow keeps solid arrowheads. Choose the arrow tool first to set the arrowheads for new arrows.
Copy style (Ctrl+Alt+C) takes the style of the first selected object; Paste style (Ctrl+Alt+V) gives it to the selected objects in one undo step, each taking what it can show.
Labels and text
Rectangles, ellipses and diamonds can hold a label. Double-click the shape, use the Text tool inside it, or choose Edit label, then type; the label wraps inside the shape and the shape grows taller when it must. Leave it empty to remove the label. The Text tool opens an editor: Done or Ctrl+Enter commits, Escape cancels, and double-clicking text edits it. Text and labels align left, centre or right.
Fonts and Arabic
| Font | Covers |
|---|---|
| Hand-drawn (Kalam) | Latin and Devanagari |
| Arabic (Noto Naskh Arabic) | Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Latin |
| Clean (Noto Sans) | Latin, Greek and Cyrillic |
| Code (Noto Sans Mono) | Monospaced Latin, Greek and Cyrillic |
Arabic text is shaped and ordered right to left, with numbers and Latin words kept left to right inside it. When you type characters the chosen font does not have, the text uses the other bundled font and says so; a font that lacks any character of a text is refused rather than drawing gaps. Flowchart steps and connector labels follow the same rule: an Arabic label is drawn in Noto Naskh Arabic and a Latin one in Kalam. A connector draws all its labels in one font. Choosing Clean with nothing selected also turns sloppiness off for new objects.
The interface can be switched between English and Arabic with the language button; it changes labels and layout direction, but never translates the text in your drawing.
Theme and canvas background
Theme at the top chooses a light or dark interface, or follows your system. In the dark theme the canvas shows your drawing with light and dark swapped, as Excalidraw does, while pictures keep their colours; exports and saved files always keep the true colours.
The canvas background belongs to the drawing: pick Paper, White, Grey, Sand, Mint, Sky or a custom colour in Export image. It shows behind every page and is the paper of image and PDF exports. Undo reverses a change.
Images
Add a PNG, JPEG, WebP or GIF (its first frame) with the image button in the tools, by dropping the file on the canvas, or by pasting it after copying a screenshot or a picture. The image appears at its natural size, or smaller to fit 60% of the view. Images larger than 4096 pixels a side or 4 MiB are made smaller and saved again, and the status says so; saving again also removes hidden details such as a photo's location. A drawing holds up to 25 MiB of images, and identical images are stored once. SVG pictures are not accepted.
Images move, group, lock, rotate, fade (Opacity) and export like other objects; stroke, fill and sketch styles do not apply to them. Resizing keeps proportions unless you hold Shift, and flipping mirrors the picture. Images travel with copy and paste, the library and saved files.
Cropping
Select one image and choose Crop image in Style, or double-click it. The whole picture shows faintly with eight handles round the part shown; drag a handle to move those edges. Nothing is cut away: Show all of the picture (or undo) brings the rest back. Enter, Escape, Done cropping or a click elsewhere finishes, and the crop is one undo step. Exports, frames, copying and the library keep the crop.
Pen pressure
A pen stroke keeps the pressure of each point, so it is thinner where you pressed lightly and wider where you pressed hard. A stroke drawn with a mouse or a finger varies with speed instead: slower is wider, faster is thinner. Pen width in Style switches a stroke between Follows pressure and Even; the pressures are kept either way. Dashed and dotted strokes are always even. A pen stroke has a 4,096-sample limit.