Obsidian Canvas - Visualize your ideas
Visualize your ideas.
Infinite space to research, brainstorm, diagram, and lay out your ideas. Canvas comes free with Obsidian.
A playground for thought
Canvas allows you to organize notes visually ā an infinite space to research, brainstorm, diagram and lay out your ideas.
Embed your notes alongside images, PDFs, videos, audio, and even fully interactive web pages.
A new way to think
Effortlessly add existing notes and media from your vault, and edit them within a Canvas view.
Canvas views can be embedded in notes, and even nested within another Canvas.
Extensible and interoperable
Like everything else in Obsidian, Canvas is extensible and designed to be durable. Our API makes it easy to create plugins that add new capabilities to Canvas. Your Canvas files are stored locally using the open JSON Canvas file format that we designed to work with other tools. Apps, scripts, and plugins can easily enhance Canvas by adding or modifying cards and connections.
Flexible and intuitive
Canvas is packed with functionality. This collection of tips will help you discover how you can use Canvas to its fullest.
Create a canvas (3 tips)
- From ribbon
- Create in folder
- From command palette
Card types (6 tips)
- Text card
- Markdown file embed
- Image & video
- PDF file
- Webpage
- Nested canvas
Create cards (10 tips)
- Click toolbar to create text card
- Click toolbar to create note card
- Double click to create
- Drag from toolbar to create
- Right click to create
- Connect and create
- Paste text to create
- Create website by pasting URL
- Create YouTube embed
- Bulk create cards from folder
Modify cards (7 tips)
- Swap file for card
- Convert text card to file
- Narrow down to headings
- Change URL of webpage card
- Smart auto-resize cards
- Manually resize cards
- Delete card
Connections (7 tips)
- Connect two cards
- Add label to connection
- Remove label from connection
- Add color to connection
- Connect to a group
- Update connection target
- Delete connection
Pan and scroll (4 tips)
- Scroll up and down
- Hold Shift to scroll left and right
- Hold Space and drag to pan
- Hold middle or right click to pan
Zoom (6 tips)
- Hold Ctrl or Cmd and scroll
- Hold Space and scroll
- Zoom to fit all cards
- Zoom to fit all cards with hotkey
- Zoom to selection
- Zoom to selection with hotkey
Select cards (5 tips)
- Select a single card
- Drag to select multiple cards
- Add or remove one card from selection
- Add or remove multiple cards from selection
- Select all cards in the canvas
Arrange cards (10 tips)
- Move cards
- Duplicate cards
- Move card along an axis
- Snap card to grid
- Snap card to align with other cards
- Move card without aligning
- Align selected cards on one end
- Align selected cards on both ends
- Bulk arrange selected cards
- Spread selected cards evenly
Group cards (6 tips)
- Right click to create group
- Create group of a certain size
- Create group around cards
- Rename a group
- Select a group
- Nest groups
Colors (6 tips)
- Add color to card
- Add color to group
- Add color to connection
- Pick a custom color
- Remove color
Export (2 tips)
- Export what you see to image
- Export entire canvas to image
Community demos
Explore how members of the Obsidian community are using Canvas for their personal life and at work.