Tabs

A document is not a single canvas. It is a collection of tabs, each with its own canvas, elements, layout, theme, and background. A new document usually starts with one tab, and you add more whenever a piece of work deserves its own space. The tab bar sits along the bottom of the editor, and the active tab fills the canvas area above it.

What a tab is

Each tab is a self-contained canvas inside the document. A tab carries its own elements, its own theme and background pattern, and an optional lock, all independent of the other tabs around it. Common ways people split work across tabs:

• An Overview tab with the high-level picture, and detail tabs behind it.
• One tab per system, team, or phase of a project.
• A scratch tab for ideas you are not ready to file yet.

Each tab also has its own mode (Diagram, Draw, Illustrate or Plan), the same for everyone on it. The small icon at the start of a tab's name shows it.

Adding a tab

Press the + button at the end of the tab bar, or run Create New Tab from the command palette (Cmd / Ctrl + K). The new tab:

• is named Tab 2, Tab 3 and so on, after the number of tabs in the document;
• takes the theme, background and font of the tab you were on, so it matches the work around it;
• opens in Diagram mode;
• opens the Quick Start picker, so you can start it from a template. Close the picker to keep it blank.

Duplicate in the tab menu makes a copy instead: it is named after the original with "copy" on the end, sits right after it, and is a separate tab with its own elements from then on.

Naming and reordering tabs

Tabs start with default names like Tab 1 and Tab 2, and you can rename any of them:

• Double-click the active tab's name to edit it inline. Enter or clicking away saves, Escape cancels, and an empty name keeps the old one.
• Rename in the tab menu (and Rename Tab in the command palette) opens the same editor.
• Auto-rename on first edit: while a tab still has its default name, editing the label of its first element renames the tab to match. This only happens once, so later edits leave a renamed tab alone.

Tab names are capped at 60 characters. Runs of spaces and line breaks collapse to one, and anything longer is cut at the last whole word with an ellipsis, so a paragraph typed into a sticky can't turn into an unreadable tab.

Drag a tab left or right to reorder it. A blue bar shows where it will land: drop on the left half of a tab to land before it, the right half to land after it. Reordering only moves the tab in the list, it never touches the content on any tab.

Drag a tab up off the bar to the right edge of the screen instead, and it opens beside the tab you're on: see Side by Side Tabs.

The tab menu

Click the ⋯ button on the active tab, or right-click any tab (which switches to it first), to open its menu. Right-clicking an empty spot on the canvas opens the same menu. On a phone it opens as a sheet from the bottom of the screen.

Along the top sits a row of quick actions: Rename, Duplicate, Paste (greyed out until you have copied something), Side by Side, Lock Tab and Delete. Below them, everything else is a full-width row, in groups split by a line:

• Add to Folder and Add to Document.
• Import, Export, and Clear, which removes every element from the tab after a confirmation (undo brings them back).
• The modes, Diagram, Draw, Illustrate and Plan, each with a line on what it is for and a dot on the tab's current one. The mode is the tab's, for everyone; choosing one switches the tab.

To tidy a tab's layout, search for Auto Layout or Auto-align in the command palette. See Cleaning Up a Tab.

The session tools (timer, vote and poll) are not in this menu: they have their own buttons in the bottom bar.

Deleting a tab

Choose Delete in the tab menu and confirm. The confirmation warns that the tab's content can't be recovered, so export or duplicate anything you might want back. A few things to know:

• A document always keeps at least one tab, so Delete is greyed out on the last one.
• A locked tab can't be deleted until you unlock it.
• Links on other tabs that pointed at the deleted tab are removed with it.
• If the tab is also in another document, it is only removed from this one.

View-only access

On a view-only share link you can still click between tabs, but the + button, the tab menu, renaming and drag-to-reorder are all hidden.

More with tabs

Each tab also carries its own menu of actions, covered in their own guides:

• Tab Folders group related tabs under one named chip so a long tab bar stays readable.
• Side by Side Tabs puts two tabs on screen at once, each live, with the toolbars following you between them.
• Linking Across Tabs turns any element into a jump point to another tab.
• Add a Tab to Another Document shares a tab into a different document: it is the same tab in both places, not a copy, so edits appear everywhere it lives.
• Importing and Exporting move a tab's contents in and out as a file.
• Locking a Tab makes a whole canvas read-only.
• Cleaning Up a Tab tidies a tab's layout in one click.