Boards on a phone

A board is a big canvas with a lot of chrome floating over it, and a phone is a small screen with one thumb on it. Rather than shrink everything, the board rearranges: the tools come down to where your thumb is, the panels become sheets, and the things that only make sense with a mouse step aside.

Everything on this page happens automatically below 768px wide — a phone in either orientation, and a narrow split-screen window on a tablet.

Where everything moved

On a computer	On a phone
Tool dock across the top	Tool dock across the bottom, under your thumb
Minimap and zoom column, bottom-right	Collapsed to a single chevron — tap to expand
Inspector, Comments, Frames, Highlights, People in a right-hand column	Bottom sheets — swipe down or tap outside to dismiss
Live collaborators listed by name	Overlapping avatars in the top-right corner
Drawing shelf open by default	Closed by default — tap the pencil to bring it up

Zoom to fit appears in the tool dock on a phone. It is the quickest way back when you have lost the board, and it saves expanding the zoom controls.

One bar at a time

Select something and the tool dock slides away, replaced by the toolbar for whatever you selected. Tap an empty part of the canvas to deselect, and the tools come back. There is only room for one bar down there, so the board gives it to whichever one you need right now.

Touch gestures

1. Pan — drag with one finger anywhere on empty canvas.

2. Zoom — pinch with two fingers. Double-tap also zooms in.

3. Select — tap a node. Tap empty canvas to deselect everything.

4. Move — drag a node. A short press-and-drag moves it; a quick tap just selects it.

5. Open the menu — press and hold for about half a second, on a node or on empty canvas. This is the touch equivalent of a right-click, and it is where duplicate, delete, group, lock, paste and select-a-region live.

Selecting a group of nodes

Dragging a box around several nodes would fight with panning, so on touch it is opt-in: press and hold on empty canvas, choose Select region, then drag. The box-select disarms itself once you let go.

Adding a comment

On a computer, the comment button opens the panel and arms the pin tool together. On a phone the panel is a sheet covering the canvas, so you would be aiming at something you cannot see. It takes two steps instead:

1. Tap the comment icon to open the comments sheet.

2. Tap Place a comment on the board. The sheet closes and the pin tool is armed.

3. Tap wherever on the canvas the comment belongs.

Adding nodes

The library drawer works the same as on a computer, except that dragging a tile onto the canvas is fiddly with a finger — so every tile also has a + button. Tap it and the node is added to the board, with the drawer closing itself so you can see where it landed.

What still wants a bigger screen

Connecting two nodes with an edge means dragging from one node’s handle to another’s, and those handles are small. It works with a stylus; with a fingertip it is a fight. If you are wiring up a lot of relationships, that part is genuinely easier on a tablet or a computer.