An online whiteboard is the fastest way to get an idea out of your head and in front of other people. You don’t need a meeting room or a marker, just a canvas you can fill with boxes, arrows and scribbles, then share.
This guide walks through the basics: starting a board, adding things to it, and getting a clean copy out at the end.
Start with a blank canvas
Open the online whiteboard and you get an empty, infinite canvas. There is no page edge to bump into, so don’t worry about running out of space; you can always pan further out or zoom back to fit everything in view.
Pick a tool from the toolbar: a rectangle, an ellipse, an arrow, a line, text, or the freehand pencil. Click and drag on the canvas to draw it.
Add and connect your ideas
Most boards are just shapes with words in them, joined by arrows. Double-click a shape to type a label. Draw an arrow from one shape to another and it stays attached, so when you drag a box to tidy up the layout, the arrow follows.
A few habits make a board easier to read:
- Keep labels short: a few words, not a sentence.
- Use colour to group related things, not just for decoration.
- Leave space between clusters so the structure is obvious at a glance.
Move, zoom and tidy up
Drag to move a shape. Select several at once to move them as a group. Scroll or pinch to zoom, and hold space (or use the hand tool) to pan around. If the board gets messy, that’s normal. Push things apart, drop in a heading, and the shape of the idea usually appears on its own.
Export or come back later
When the board says what you need it to say, open the menu and export to PNG for a flat image you can drop into a chat or a doc, or SVG for a crisp file that scales to any size. You can also copy a selection straight to your clipboard.
Your board is kept in this browser too, so you can close the tab and pick it up later on the same device. Nothing is uploaded, and nothing is shared unless you export it and send it yourself.