Whiteboard Tour

Thinking starts here. The whiteboard is Circuitry's fastest surface for getting an idea out of your head — sketch it, handwrite it, diagram it. And because the studio understands what you draw, none of it stays "just ink": handwriting becomes editable text as you write, rough boxes and arrows become structured diagrams, a labelled sketch can become a running workflow in one step, and a rough drawing can come back as a finished, generated image. The why and the wow are covered in The Smart Whiteboard — this page is the guided tour of the controls themselves.

One note before we start: shortcuts on this page show Cmd — on Windows and Linux, use Ctrl instead.

The pen tray

Your implements live in a dock at the bottom centre of the board. It stays tucked away while you work — only the nibs peek above the bottom edge — and rises when you hover over it or swipe it upward. When the tray is raised, each implement shows its name. Every implement remembers its own ink colour, so switching from a red marker back to your blue pen brings your blue back with it.

• — Pen. The everyday freehand pen; stroke width responds to speed and pressure for natural-looking ink.
• — Pencil. A graphite-grey take on the pen — same responsive line, sketchbook feel.
• — Ballpoint. Constant-width ink in classic ballpoint blue, for tidy notes and annotations.
• — Marker. A felt tip with a constant, bolder line — its colour and opacity are remembered separately from your pens.
• — Highlighter. Wide, translucent strokes; overlapping passes build up just like a real highlighter.
• — Shape. Draw roughly and your stroke snaps to the shape you meant. Tap it again while active to open its shelf and force a mode: Auto, Rect, Oval, Circle, or Poly.
• — Write. The handwriting pen. In Auto OCR mode your handwriting converts to editable text as you pause; in Type mode it places a text cursor wherever you click. Tap it again to open the shelf and switch between the two (on iPad the default is Auto OCR; elsewhere it's Type).
• — Eraser. Removes whole strokes with a touch — no scrubbing required.
• — Arrow. Drag a straight connector with an arrowhead. Tap it again to open the end-cap shelf: None, Arrow, Triangle, Stealth, Circle, Square, Diamond, or Bar.
• — Select. Circle the ink you want with a lasso. Tap it again to switch the selection style: Lasso, Rect, or Brush.

On a pure whiteboard the canvas is the drawing surface, so there's nothing to exit. Once your sketch has become a workflow with nodes on the board, a small button appears at the tray's corner to hop back to node editing.

The property capsule

A floating capsule at the top centre shows exactly the properties that matter for the implement in your hand — nothing more.

• / — Whiteboard / blackboard toggle. Flips the board between light and dark — background, palette, and every stroke you've already drawn recolour to stay legible.
• Undo — Undo the last drawing change ⌘Z.
• Redo — Redo what you just undid ⌘⇧Z.
• — Select mode. Switch the canvas from inking to selecting and moving what's already there.
• — Hand. Pan the board by dragging H — or just hold ⌘ for a temporary pan without leaving your current tool.
• Colour — a round swatch in your current ink colour. Click it for a dozen curated colours plus a Custom picker for anything else.
• Size — a slider with a live nib preview, for quick thickness tweaks as you draw.
• Opacity — appears for the marker and highlighter; slide from a wash to full strength.
• — Font. Appears with the Write pen and text: choose the typeface your handwriting is recognised into, with your recent fonts on top and a More fonts… row for the full catalog. A – / + stepper sets text size when you're typing.
• — Snap. Appears while you're editing a shape's vertices or drawing in a fixed shape mode; toggles vertex snapping.
• — Paste. Appears when there's a drawing on your clipboard and nothing selected, so pasting is always one click away.

The left rail

A slim toolbar on the left edge keeps the object-level tools within reach while your pens live in the tray. Minimised, it carries just the essentials:

• — Pointer. One button for all three pointer modes — object, vertex (), and HTML () — for moving objects, reshaping paths, and interacting with live elements.
• — Text. Drop a text object anywhere on the board.
• — Fill. Flood a shape with colour; tap again to choose no fill, solid fill (with a colour-and-opacity panel), or gradient fill.
• — Clear all. Wipe the board and start fresh.
• — More tools. Expands the rail into the full toolbar; press again for a two-column grid layout, and once more to fold back down.

More tools

Expand the rail and the rest of the kit appears. Several buttons hold a small family of tools — the corner triangle marks them; tap again (or long-press) to pick:

• — Drawing tool. Holds Pen , Marker , Highlighter , and Smooth — the same inks as the tray, plus Smooth, which redraws a wobbly stroke as a clean curve.
• — Shapes. Auto-Recognise snaps your stroke to the shape you meant; or force Rectangle , Circle , or straight-segment Polygon, each with a from-centre variant.
• — Eraser. Removes whole strokes with a touch.
• — Icons. Stamp symbols and saved clips onto the board.
• — Select. Rectangle , Lasso , or Brush selection.
• — Replicator / Spiral / Gear. Three creative tools in one slot: repeat a selection in patterns, draw a spiral (an ideal path for text-on-path effects), or generate gear shapes. The button shows whichever you used last; long-press to switch.
• — AI Generate. Drag out an area, describe what you want, and it generates an image or HTML from your brief right into that spot. (Converting an existing selection into an image is the separate Sketch to AI button on the selection toolbar.)
• — Pan. Drag the board around; handy on touch screens.
• — Ruler. A straight edge for your pens: strokes drawn along it stay perfectly straight — great for perspective drawing and clean construction lines.
• Paper — lines, grid, squared, or blank, in a colour you choose.
• Size and Colour — compact duplicates of the capsule's controls.
• / — Undo / Redo.
• — Lock drawings. Freeze the ink so stray touches can't move it; tap again to unlock.

Zoom and view

• Zoom in / Zoom out — a floating column at the bottom left.
• — Fit view. Frames everything on the board — and it's ink-aware, so your drawings count, not just nodes.
• — Full screen ⌘⇧⏎ — hides the app chrome so the board fills your display; the same shortcut brings everything back.

Keyboard

A nice touch: with a single text object selected, ⌫ doesn't delete it — it drops you into editing the text, exactly where a typo fix wants to be.

Works with the rest of the studio

The whiteboard is one surface of one studio — what you draw here flows everywhere else:

• The Smart Whiteboard — the full story: think, plan, direct, and create on one canvas
• Sketch to Diagram — how blocks, connectors, and node conversion work in depth
• Workflows — where your converted sketch runs
• Nodes — every block your diagram can become
• Designer — when a sketch turns into vector and UI work
• Sharing & Live Collaboration — put the board in front of your team
• The Agentic IDE — hand the result to a coding agent