The palette is the strip across the top of the canvas. It holds the canvas tools and every category of thing you can add to a board, so it is your main launchpad while you build.
The two dropdowns
The menu button and the tab's name sit just left of the strip. The strip itself starts with the selection mode, then the categories:
- On the left, the selection mode (what your pointer does), shown as a grid in three groups. Edit: Select (
V), Hand (H), Avatar, Eraser (E) and the Format painter. Present: Laser (K), Spotlight and Slide Deck. Preview: Isometric (I) and Zen (Z). Spotlight and Slide Deck are desktop only, and most of these stay greyed out until the canvas has something on it. See Selection Modes. - Then the categories, by name. Rest the pointer on one, or click it, and its elements open in a panel underneath, in named groups; click one to add it or drag it onto the canvas. They are Shapes, Write (text, sticky notes, tables and checklists), Draw (the pens and arrows) and Layout (lanes, frames, timelines, cards and badges), then Ask and Session, the interactive elements for workshops, then Icons, Stickers, Media and Data, plus My shapes once you have imported a shape library.
Search (the magnifier, or S) finds any element by name, the technology brand icons included. See where each one lives.
Adding elements
Pick a tile and it arms a tap-or-drag gesture: click the canvas to drop the element at its natural size, or drag on the canvas to size it as you place it. You can also drag a tile straight onto the canvas. An annotation is the exception: it drops at the centre of the visible canvas, ready to move.
If a boxed element is already selected when you click to drop another, the new one inherits its width and height, so you can chain similarly-sized nodes quickly. (A circle or diamond takes a square the size of the larger side, and a selected frame or lane never passes its size on.)
A tile with a keyboard shortcut shows its key in the corner on the strip; in the More and Search grids, hold ⌘ (Ctrl on Windows and Linux) to show them. See Keyboard Shortcuts.
More about the strip
The strip stays pinned to the top of the canvas on every device; on a phone its categories swipe sideways. It steps aside in Zen mode and on a view-only link. See Toolbar Layout for the categories, Search and the order of the tiles, and Panel Layout for where everything else sits.
Looking for commands rather than elements? ⌘K opens search with its actions; see the Command Palette.
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