Quick Style Panel

Select one or more shapes or arrows and a small quick style panel appears on the right. In the Floating layout it sits right beneath the Palette, as the next panel in its stack; in the Toolbar and Minimal layouts it sits on the right edge, halfway down. It holds the handful of style choices people make most often, so restyling is one click rather than a trip through the right-click menu. The right-click menu is still the home of every setting; the panel only repeats the favourites.

What's in it

From top to bottom:

• Stroke: seven colours for the outline or line. The first is the theme's own default.
• Background: seven colours for a shape's fill.
• Stroke width: thin, medium or thick.
• Stroke style: solid, dashed or dotted for shapes. For arrows it is solid, dashed or flowing, a dashed line that marches along its direction, so an animated connector is a single click.
• Text alignment: left, centre or right.
• Icon alignment, when a shape carries an icon: before, above or after its label.
• Clear styles, at the bottom.

A section only shows when something in the selection can use it, so an arrow on its own shows stroke, width and style, and a shape with an icon gains icon alignment.

Colours that follow the theme

The seven colours come from the diagram's theme. A multi-colour theme offers its own six branch colours; any other theme offers red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet in its own tone, so a muted theme gets muted colours. Backgrounds always keep the label readable.

Switch the theme later and colours picked here move with it: a shape you made green stays green, in the new theme's green.

Your own colours

Right-click any of the six theme colours in a row (or focus it and press Shift+F10 or the context-menu key) to open a small colour picker. The colour you pick is saved into that swatch, replacing the theme's colour there, and a small dot in its corner marks it as yours. Screen readers and the tooltip name it too, for example "Custom orange, in place of Green".

Picking a colour only changes the swatch; click it afterwards to use it. Clear override in the same popover brings the theme's colour back. Your swatches belong to you and to the theme you made them in: they follow you to other diagrams and devices, and switching to another theme shows that theme's own colours (and any you changed there). The first swatch, the theme default, always stays the theme's. For colours a whole diagram should share, make a custom theme.

Styling many at once

Select several shapes and arrows, even of different kinds, and a choice applies to every one that supports it. A highlighted option means every selected element shares it; when they differ, nothing is highlighted. Each choice is one undo step.

The next shape remembers

When you change a shape's colours, width, style or alignment, from this panel or from the right-click menu, the next shape of the same kind you draw arrives the same way. Make a circle green and the next circle is green; the next square is not. Arrows remember their own style, separately from shapes.

This only applies to shapes and arrows you draw yourself, from the palette, a tool or a quick-connect plus. Pasted, duplicated and templated elements keep their own looks. The memory belongs to the diagram and stays in this browser.

Clear styles

Clear styles returns the selection to the theme's defaults and forgets the remembered style for those kinds, so the next shape is plain again. Use it when a style was meant as a one-off.

Good to know

• The panel is there on desktop layouts only. On a phone the long-press menu has the same options.
• Under the palette it follows along when you collapse or move the Palette, and on a short screen it scrolls rather than leaving. It never covers the Palette or other panels, and hides while a right-click menu is open.
• Every option has a name for screen readers and a tooltip; each row is a group you move through with the arrow keys.