Notepad Tour

The quiet surface. Every studio needs a place where thinking happens before it has a shape — meeting notes, half-formed plans, a sketch in the margin next to a typed list. The notepad is that place in Circuitry: typed notes and handwritten pages living together on one sheet of paper, with the full pen tray one keypress away. No canvas to arrange, no nodes to wire — just paper that keeps up with you, inside the same studio as your whiteboards, workflows, and code.

The whole editor pivots on a single key: press ⇥ to flip between typing and drawing. Type an agenda, ⇥, circle the item that matters and sketch the idea it triggered, ⇥, keep typing. The paper itself is one continuous sheet — it simply grows as your note does, so there are no page breaks to manage.

(Shortcuts below show Cmd — use Ctrl on Windows/Linux.)

A tour of the controls

The notepad keeps its chrome out of the way until you ask for it.

The corner icons (top-right)

Two small icons fade in when you move the pointer over the note (or touch it):

• Pencil mode — flips between pencil (ink) mode and text mode; glows blue while you're inking. ⇥ does the same thing.
• Settings — slides the header toolbar down over the top of the note. Tap or click anywhere on the paper to dismiss it again.

The header toolbar (slide-down)

Open it with the icon. From left to right:

• Note title — double-click the name to rename it inline; ⏎ saves, Esc cancels.
• Paper colour — opens a grid of paper-colour swatches, plus a rainbow Custom colour swatch that opens a full colour picker.
• Paper style — one button cycles the paper background through its four styles, and its icon shows the current one: lined, grid, squared, blank.
• Undo / Redo — step your ink history back and forward (shown while in pencil mode). ⌘Z / ⌘⇧Z.
• Pencil / Text — a two-segment mode switch; the active mode is filled blue. Same flip as ⇥.
• Save — saves the note (⌘S); the button tints amber while there are unsaved changes.

The pen tray (pencil mode)

Enter pencil mode and a tray of drawing implements docks at the bottom edge — the same pens you'll find on the whiteboard, so nothing you learn here is notepad-only. The tray stays tucked with just the nibs peeking up; hover over it (or swipe up on touch) and it rises, with each implement's name fading in. Every implement remembers its own ink colour, so switching pens brings its colour back with it.

• Pointer — select and move what you've drawn: Object picks up whole objects, Vertex reshapes a shape point by point (tap again to switch). Right-click a point in Vertex mode to make it a sharp corner or a smooth curve, or right-click a handle to retract that side.
• Pen — freehand fountain pen whose line width responds to speed and pressure.
• Path — a technical drafting pen for exact outlines. Click to place a corner point, or press and drag as you place it to bend the line running into it (⇧ locks the curve to neat angles). The next line stays straight unless you drag again. Click the first point to close the shape, or double-click (or Esc) to finish it open.
• Pencil — a graphite-grey pencil preset for softer, sketchier lines.
• Ballpoint — constant-width ballpoint in classic ink blue.
• Marker — constant-width felt tip for bolder strokes.
• Highlighter — wide translucent strokes; overlapping passes build up like a real highlighter.
• Shape — freehand strokes snap to recognised shapes. Tap it again while active to choose a mode: Auto, Rect, Oval, Circle, or Poly.
• Write — the handwriting pen. Tap it again to pick a mode: Auto OCR converts your handwriting into editable text as you pause, while Type places a text cursor where you click. Your choice is remembered in Settings.
• Eraser — removes whole strokes with a touch (no brush size to fiddle with).
• Arrow — drag a straight line with an arrowhead. Tap again to choose the end cap: none, arrow, triangle, stealth, circle, square, diamond, or bar.
• Select — select ink to move or edit. Tap again to switch between Lasso, Rect, and Brush selection.

The small button at the tray's top-left corner exits pencil mode and drops you back into text mode — ⇧D does the same from the keyboard.

Every implement also answers to one letter, all under your left hand so you can change pens without letting go of the mouse or the Pencil (hover an implement to see its key):

Press the key of the implement already in your hand and its shelf pops up with the next mode already chosen; keep pressing to walk the modes, and the shelf tucks itself away a moment after you stop.

A slim tool rail also waits at the left edge, retracted while you write and draw — hover over (or tap) its edge and it slides out with more tools beyond the tray: text, fill, paper styles, and the rest.

The property capsule (pencil mode)

While you're inking, a slim capsule floats at the top of the note with the properties of the current implement (it steps aside while the header toolbar is open):

• Colour swatch — a round swatch in your current ink colour; click it for a palette of twelve curated colours plus a Custom picker.
• Size slider — stroke thickness, with a live nib preview that grows and shrinks as you drag.
• Opacity slider — for the marker and highlighter, from a whisper to full strength.
• Font picker — with the Write pen active, choose the font your handwriting is recognised into (or that typed text uses): recent fonts, a curated preset list with live previews, and a More fonts… row that opens the full catalog.
• – / + size stepper — in Type mode, steps the text size up and down.
• Undo / Redo — the same ink history, kept in reach while you draw.
• Select / Pan — switch between working on the page and moving it around.
• Snap — appears while you're editing a stroke's vertices or drawing a fixed shape; toggles vertex snapping, green when on.

When you select something

In pencil mode, switch to Select in the header toolbar, click a stroke — or gather up several — and a row of round buttons appears above the page. Same actions as the right-click menu, sized for a finger or a Pencil:

• Copy, Copy as Image, Paste (only when the clipboard holds something), Duplicate, Clip+ to save it to your clip library, Lock, and Delete.
• Z-Order for stacking, and a bold G to group or ungroup two or more objects.
• Combine (Boolean) — the boolean / pathfinder operations on two or more objects: Unite, Subtract Front, Subtract Back, Intersect, Exclude Overlap, Divide. Unlike Group, these replace your objects with one new editable shape (holes and all). See Combining shapes.
• Edit → Convert Text to Paths turns a text object into editable letter shapes (Create Outlines), counters kept as real holes — for when you want to reshape the letters themselves. See Turning text into shapes.
• Mask (Clip) — clip one object to the shape of another: put an oval over a picture, mark the oval with Use as Mask, select both, and press Mask. Nothing is cut away — Release Mask gives both pieces back untouched. See Masking one shape with another.
• OCR to turn handwriting into editable text, Sketch to AI for a finished image from a sketch, and 2vec to trace a picture into vectors.
• More opens the full right-click menu just below the row.

The complete catalogue is in The Selection Toolbar.

Exact sizes and positions

When a number beats a drag, Edit → Transform… opens a small floating panel with X, Y, W, H and a rotation field for whatever is selected. Type a value and the object changes as you type — the panel never dims or covers the page, and it drags by its title bar if it's in the way. The link button between W and H keeps the proportions, and the rotation field turns the selection by that many degrees around its own centre.

Keyboard

Taking artwork off the page

Select some ink and use File → Export Selection as SVG… to download it as a scalable vector file, cropped to just what you picked. Handwriting and sketches keep their drawn outline, so a diagram from your notes drops into a document or a slide at any size without going fuzzy.

Works with the rest of the studio

The notepad is one surface of one studio — the same ink, pens, and paper habits carry everywhere:

• The Smart Whiteboard — when a note outgrows paper and wants to become a diagram, a design, or a running workflow.
• Apple Pencil & High-Resolution Ink — how Circuitry captures pressure and detail from a stylus.
• iPad Gestures — the touch and pencil gestures that make the notepad feel like paper on a tablet.