Excalidraw

Virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams

DrawingCanvasReact
excalidraw/excalidrawexcalidraw.com@excalidraw/excalidraw

README

Excalidraw logo: Sketch handrawn like diagrams. Virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams.
Collaborative and end-to-end encrypted.

Follow Excalidraw on Twitter

Ask questions or hang out on our discord.gg/UexuTaE.


Try it now


Go to excalidraw.com to start sketching.

Read the latest news and updates on our blog. A good start is to see all the updates of One Year of Excalidraw.

Supporting Excalidraw


If you like the project, you can become a sponsor at Open Collective.


Last but not least, we're thankful to these companies for offering their services for free:
Vercel Sentry Crowdin

Who's integrating Excalidraw


Google Cloud • Meta • CodeSandbox • Obsidian Excalidraw • Replit • Slite • Notion • HackerRank •

Documentation


Shortcuts


You can almost do anything with shortcuts. Click on the help icon on the bottom right corner to see them all.

Curved lines and arrows


Choose line or arrow and click click click instead of drag.

Charts


You can easily create charts by copy pasting data from Excel or just plain comma separated text.

Translating


To translate Excalidraw into other languages, please visit our Crowdin page. To add a new language, open an issue so we can get things set up on our end first.

Translations will be available on the app if they exceed a certain threshold of completion (currently 85%).

Create a collaboration session manually


In order to create a session manually, you just need to generate a link of this form:

  1. ```
  2. https://excalidraw.com/#room=[0-9a-f]{20},[a-zA-Z0-9_-]{22}
  3. ```

Example


  1. ```
  2. https://excalidraw.com/#room=91bd46ae3aa84dff9d20,pfLqgEoY1c2ioq8LmGwsFA
  3. ```

The first set of digits is the room. This is visible from the server that’s going to dispatch messages to everyone that knows this number.

The second set of digits is the encryption key. The Excalidraw server doesn’t know about it. This is what all the participants use to encrypt/decrypt the messages.

Note: Please ensure that the encryption key is 22 characters long.


Shape libraries


Find a growing list of libraries containing assets for your drawings at libraries.excalidraw.com.

Embedding Excalidraw in your App?


Try out [@excalidraw/excalidraw](https://www.npmjs.com/package/@excalidraw/excalidraw). This package allows you to easily embed Excalidraw as a React component into your apps.

Development


Code Sandbox


- Go to https://codesandbox.io/p/github/excalidraw/excalidraw
  - You may need to sign in with GitHub and reload the page
- You can start coding instantly, and even send PRs from there!

Local Installation


These instructions will get you a copy of the project up and running on your local machine for development and testing purposes.

Requirements


- Node.js
- Yarn (v1 or v2.4.2+)
- Git

Clone the repo


  1. ``` sh
  2. git clone https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw.git
  3. ```

Install the dependencies


  1. ``` sh
  2. yarn
  3. ```

Start the server


  1. ``` sh
  2. yarn start
  3. ```

Now you can open http://localhost:3000 and start coding in your favorite code editor.

Collaboration


For collaboration, you will need to set up collab server in local.

Commands


Install the dependencies

  1. ```
  2. yarn
  3. ```

Run the project

  1. ```
  2. yarn start
  3. ```

Reformat all files with Prettier

  1. ```
  2. yarn fix
  3. ```

Run tests

  1. ```
  2. yarn test
  3. ```

Update test snapshots

  1. ```
  2. yarn test:update
  3. ```

Test for formatting with Prettier

  1. ```
  2. yarn test:code
  3. ```

Docker Compose


You can use docker-compose to work on Excalidraw locally if you don't want to setup a Node.js env.

  1. ```sh
  2. docker-compose up --build -d
  3. ```

Self-hosting


We publish a Docker image with the Excalidraw client at excalidraw/excalidraw. You can use it to self-host your own client under your own domain, on Kubernetes, AWS ECS, etc.

  1. ```sh
  2. docker build -t excalidraw/excalidraw .
  3. docker run --rm -dit --name excalidraw -p 5000:80 excalidraw/excalidraw:latest
  4. ```

The Docker image is free of analytics and other tracking libraries.

At the moment, self-hosting your own instance doesn't support sharing or collaboration features.

We are working towards providing a full-fledged solution for self-hosting your own Excalidraw.

Contributing


Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

Notable used tools


- Create React App
- Rough.js
- TypeScript
- Vercel

And the main source of inspiration for starting the project is the awesome Zwibbler app.