Canvas Basics

The canvas is the surface where you build diagrams. It fills most of the editor, with floating panels on top for adding elements and navigating your library. This article covers moving around it so the rest of livediagram feels natural.

Moving around

You will pan and zoom constantly. There are a few ways to do each:

• Pan by holding the Space bar and dragging, by middle-click dragging from any tool, or by switching to the Hand tool (shortcut H) and dragging on empty canvas. On a trackpad, a two-finger drag pans too.
• Zoom with the zoom buttons in the bottom-right of the canvas, or pinch-zoom on a trackpad or touch screen. The pattern background tiles endlessly as you move, so you never run out of canvas.

The Hand tool is the default on touch devices; on desktop the default is the Select tool.

Select versus Hand

The Palette's first row holds the canvas tools. The two you will use most:

• Select (shortcut V) is for working with elements: click to select, shift-click to add to the selection, and drag on empty canvas to draw a marquee that selects everything inside it.
• Hand (shortcut H) is for moving the view: drag on empty canvas to scroll around without touching any elements.

Middle-click panning works from any tool, so you rarely need to leave Select just to move the view a little.

The floating panels

A few panels float over the canvas, and each can be dragged by its header and collapsed to a banner:

• Palette (top-right by default) adds shapes, arrows, icons, and tools. See Shapes and arrows.
• Explorer (top-left by default) is your library of diagrams and folders. See Explorer.
• Right-click menus carry per-element formatting and tab settings like themes and canvas background.

On a phone, the panels open from a compact dock in the top-right instead of sitting at the corners, so the canvas stays readable.

Light and dark

The editor has its own light/dark UI toggle on the right edge of the tab bar (a sun/moon icon). This recolours the editor chrome around your canvas. It is separate from a diagram's theme, which recolours the canvas content itself.