Hiding, Locking, and Dimming Layers

Every control on this page acts on a whole layer at once. That is the point of layers: one click quiets an entire slice of the diagram instead of chasing individual elements.

Hiding a layer

Click the eye on a layer's row to hide it. Hidden layers are gone in every sense that matters:

• Their elements disappear from the canvas, for you and for everyone else in the diagram, including view-only visitors and embeds. Visibility is saved with the tab.
• They can't be clicked, marquee-selected, caught by select-all, or reached with keyboard traversal. If some were selected when you hid the layer, they drop out of the selection.
• They stay out of PNG, SVG, PDF, and Mermaid exports and out of shared thumbnails. When at least one layer is hidden, the image export options screen offers a Hidden layers toggle for the times you want them included anyway.

Click the eye again to bring everything back. Nothing is lost by hiding; it's a curtain, not a delete.

Locking a layer

The Lock toggle lives in the layer's menu (right-click the row or click its ellipsis, then Content). A locked layer's elements stay visible but are inert: they can't be selected, moved, edited, erased, or deleted, and marquees and select-all pass over them. It is per-element locking applied to the whole band, ideal for a background grid or an approved section nobody should nudge.

A locked layer shows a small padlock on its row so you can see the state at a glance.

Layer opacity

The same menu holds an Opacity slider that dims the entire layer, from solid to invisible. It multiplies with each element's own opacity, so a 50% element on a 50% layer renders at 25%. Layer opacity carries into image exports, shared thumbnails, and the panel's row previews, and a whole slider drag is a single undo step.

Use it to ghost a reference layer behind the work, or to fade a proposal you're comparing against.

Hide Others

Hide Others (in the layer menu) makes the clicked layer the only visible one, in a single step. It's the fastest way to isolate one slice for a screenshot or a focused edit; show the other layers again with their eye toggles.

Preview on hover

Rest the pointer on a layer's row for a moment and the canvas temporarily shows only that layer, even if it's hidden. Move across rows and the preview follows instantly; move away and the full diagram returns. Nothing is written or synced, and exports never see it.

If you'd rather not have the preview, switch Preview layer on hover off in the panel's gear menu.