Panel Layout

The toolbar, panels and fixed controls that frame the canvas, and how to arrange them.

Everything around the canvas is a toolbar, a panel or a fixed control. The canvas itself fills the screen, and the rest sits on top of it at the edges rather than taking fixed slots in a rigid layout, so what is on the canvas always has room to breathe. The layout is much the same on a computer, a tablet and a phone.

The canvas fills the screen: the menu button top-left, the palette strip across the top, a tool panel docked top-right, the Map bottom-left, the corner buttons bottom-right, and the bottom bar with the tabs and quick controls.

What sits where

  • Top-left: the menu button, which opens the Explorer (your designs and folders) under it, with the tab's name beside it on a computer.
  • Top centre: the palette strip, for picking a selection mode and adding things to the canvas.
  • Top-right: the tool panels, when they are in use, below the strip when it reaches that far.
  • Bottom-left: the Map, on a computer or tablet.
  • Bottom-right: a fixed cluster of buttons: Undo and Redo, the page navigator (on a computer, while the tab has two pages or more), Contents (unless it is docked as a sidebar down the left) and Slides (on a computer, once a page is a slide), Collaborate (while the tab has a comment or an action), the Theme & canvas button, and the zoom controls. Their panels open as popovers over their buttons, and close when you press the button again. On a phone the whole cluster shares one row.
  • Along the bottom: the tab bar, with the quick controls (Search, Settings, appearance) at its right-hand end.
  • Next to a selection: the toolbar, and the Quick Style panel for a shape or arrow.

The tool panels (Laser, Spotlight, Format and Slide Deck) appear while their selection mode is in use.

Put panels in the corner you want

With a mouse or trackpad, the corner panels can be dragged by their header to any corner of the screen: the Map and the tool panels. On a touch screen, tapping a panel's header collapses or expands it instead. Snap guides appear in the four corners while you drag, and the nearest one highlights to show where the panel will land; drop it away from every corner and it stays right where you left it. Panels sharing a corner stack neatly and reflow when one of them is hidden.

Your arrangement is remembered on this device, so a reload restores it. Once a panel has moved from its default spot, a Reset position button in its header sends it back. Each panel can also be collapsed from its header to a slim banner.

The palette strip, the menu button, the bottom-right buttons and the bottom bar stay where they are.

On a phone

On a phone the menu button sits in a card of its own at the left of the strip, and the strip's tiles swipe sideways. Tap a panel's header to collapse or expand it. See Toolbar Layout.

Panel Opacity fades every panel so the canvas shows through, and UI Scale under Appearance makes them bigger or smaller (on a computer).

Want even less on screen? Zen mode (Z) hides every panel and leaves just the canvas and the zoom controls.

Was this article helpful?