Keyboard Shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts let you switch tools and run common actions without reaching for the palette. The canvas tools all sit on single keys, so you can move between selecting, panning, and pointing in a single tap, and a built-in shortcuts dialog lists everything in one place.

The shortcuts dialog

A Shortcuts button lives in the row of controls at the bottom-right of the editor, beside Search. Opening it brings up a reference card of every binding the editor knows, grouped by purpose, so you never have to memorise the full set. The button is hidden on a phone, where the bottom bar is tight and there is no keyboard to reference.

The most useful canvas-tool keys are:

• V to Select (the default on desktop), with S kept working as a legacy alias.
• H for the Hand (pan) tool, the default on touch viewports.
• P for Freehand, to sketch a stroke that is kept as you drew it.
• F to draw a Frame, the section backdrop that carries what you draw inside it.
• K for the Laser pointer, for drawing attention while you present.
• E for the Eraser, to delete elements by pressing or dragging over them.
• Z to toggle Zen mode on and off, with Escape to exit it.

Two more switch mode rather than tool, and have articles of their own: I for Isometric mode and W for Avatar mode.

The shortcuts dialog stays available in every role, so view-only visitors can see the same reference.

Keys that place an element

The rest of the letters drop something on the canvas at your pointer, so a diagram can be built without visiting the palette at all:

• R a square, O a circle, D a diamond, C a cylinder, G a parallelogram.
• A an arrow, T a text label, N a sticky note.

The number row

Every tool also sits on a digit, along the top of the keyboard:

The digits are deliberately laid out to mirror Excalidraw's tool row, so if you have that muscle memory it carries straight over — which matters most right after an Excalidraw import, when you are working on a diagram you drew somewhere else. The one slot that differs is 6, which Excalidraw gives to its line tool and livediagram gives to the Shape Pen.

9 needs somewhere to put the file, so it is absent on a self-hosted deploy running without the api worker.

Hold Shift for the power moves

Shift is the editor's power modifier. While you hold it, a small hint bar at the top of the canvas names what Shift is doing right then, so none of these stay hidden:

• Shift-click elements to build a multi-selection; Shift-click again to remove one.
• Shift-click table cells to select several cells and style or clear them together.
• Shift while resizing an element (or drawing one to size) locks its proportions.
• Shift while move-dragging a selection drops a duplicate: the originals stay put, a translucent ghost follows your cursor, and the copy lands where you release, connected arrows included, all in one undo step.
• Shift while placing a quick-connect arrow chains the next arrow from the same source, so a hub fans out in one flow.
• Shift-drag a selected arrow's head splits a branch off its line, one trunk pointing at several targets. See Arrows.
• Shift + arrow keys nudge the selection in big (10px) steps.

Turning shortcuts off

Single-key shortcuts are handy, but they are not for everyone. You can switch them off entirely with the toggle at the bottom of the shortcuts dialog itself: open it from the Shortcuts button in the editor footer and flip the switch.

When shortcuts are turned off, the editor stops responding to the single-key bindings, so a stray key press never changes your tool unexpectedly. This choice is saved in your browser and, unlike most preferences, deliberately stays per device rather than following you across sign-in: that way you can keep shortcuts on where you have a full keyboard and off on a device where you don't.

The editor is also careful about context: even with shortcuts on, typing into a text label or an input never triggers a tool key. A z typed into a label is just a z, never a jump into Zen mode.