Get started with tldraw
Sketch screens and flows on an infinite whiteboard, and save the canvas as a file before the browser clears it.
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What tldraw is
tldraw is a whiteboard in the browser. You draw boxes, arrows and text on a surface that never ends, zoom out when the idea grows, and move things around freely. It is free to use and requires no account to get started.
The tool is built to be fast rather than to be beautiful. That shows in what it suits: sketching how the site should look before anyone builds it, mapping out how an order goes from form to delivery, or holding a meeting where everyone draws at the same time instead of talking over each other. It is no replacement for a design program and works worst when the sketch is going to become a finished product.
Installation on Windows and Linux Mint
There is no program to install on either of them. Go to tldraw.com in your browser and start drawing. Windows, Linux Mint, Mac, Chromebook and tablet behave the same way, and a pen or a touchscreen makes it more fun but is not needed.
If you still want the icon in the menu, it is possible: in Chrome and Edge there is an option under the three-dot menu called install or create shortcut, and then tldraw opens in its own window without an address bar. It is still the same site, just framed more nicely.
When it is the right tool and when it is not
tldraw is at its best when something needs to become clear quickly. Four of you are sitting there disagreeing about how the order should be handled: draw it up, and within thirty seconds the disagreement turns out to be two people talking about different steps.
It is worse as a final product. If the sketch is going to become a real design, you move on to Penpot, and if it is going to become an image in the business plan, you redraw it in a tool with straight lines, for example draw.io. Think of the canvas as the notepad, not as the report.
Three things to do first
- Draw a sketch of a single screen. Take the home page of your site: a box for the image at the top, a line of text below, three boxes for the products. It takes five minutes and makes the discussion about the look concrete.
- Test the arrows properly. If you drag an arrow from one box to another, it attaches to the boxes, and if you then move a box, the arrow follows. That is the feature that makes tldraw useful for flows and not just for doodling.
- Export the canvas to an image when you are done. Select everything, right-click and choose export. PNG is enough for the presentation, SVG if the image will be scaled up without becoming blurry.
The most common trap
Believing that the canvas is saved for you. If you open tldraw.com without logging in, the work only lives in the browser's own memory on that particular computer. If someone clears the browser data, switches computers, or draws in a private window that is then closed, the sketch is gone. There is no recycle bin to look in. If you log in with an account instead, the files are saved in the cloud and follow you between computers, but then they sit with tldraw and not just locally.
So save the file yourself. In the menu there is an option to save the canvas as a file with the extension .tldr, and you put that file in the company folder along with the rest of the material. If you are going to continue tomorrow, you open the file again, and if someone else needs to see what you have done, you send the file or an exported image. Make it a habit from the first time, because the day you forget is the day the sketch is worth something.