excalidraw

Excalidraw is an open - source virtual whiteboard tool with a hand - drawn style launched in 2020, developed by Facebook engineer Vojtech Rinik. With its simple interface, intuitive user experience, and powerful collaboration features, it has quickly gained wide popularity among designers, educators, and remote teams. It aims to provide users with a collaborative and secure platform where they can freely express their creativity, and is widely used in software engineering, design innovation, education and training, and other fields.

Core Features

1. Infinite Canvas：It offers an infinitely large canvas, allowing users to draw and expand their works without restrictions, without worrying about lack of space.\n2. Hand - drawn Style：Its unique hand - drawn style gives charts and graphics a kind and natural feeling, which is difficult to achieve with traditional digital tools. The drawn content is more vivid and interesting.\n3. Real - time Collaboration：It supports multi - user real - time collaboration. Team members can share the canvas and interact in real - time. Through a shared link, multiple people can edit on the same canvas simultaneously, stimulating creative communication, which is suitable for brainstorming, remote meetings, and other scenarios.\n4. Abundant Drawing Tools：It provides a variety of tools such as rectangles, circles, diamonds, arrows, lines, free drawing, and erasers. It also supports arrow binding and labeled arrows to meet different drawing needs.\n5. Image and Shape Library Support：Users can import images, and there are multiple shape libraries to choose from, which improves the flexibility of creation and facilitates the quick creation of various charts, prototype designs, mind maps, etc.\n6. Multi - language and Export Functions：It supports multiple languages, and users can select the language according to their needs. At the same time, it supports exporting works in PNG and SVG formats, or directly copying to the clipboard. It can also export drawings as .excalidraw JSON files.\n7. Undo/Redo and Zoom Functions：It supports undo and redo operations, as well as zooming and panning views, making the editing process more fluent and convenient for users to view and modify large charts.\n8. AI - powered：It supports generating charts from text through OpenAI, as well as generating code from wireframes, improving drawing efficiency and intelligent level.\n

Advantages

1. Open - source and Free：It is completely open - source, allowing anyone to use, modify, and expand it freely, reducing the cost of use and being suitable for individuals and teams.\n2. Easy to Operate：The interface is simple, the interaction is detailed, and it is easy to get started. The operation habits are similar to most mapping software. Even users without drawing experience can quickly start using it.\n3. Data Security：It uses end - to - end encryption technology, and the server will not see the content of the drawings, ensuring the security and privacy of user data, which is suitable for drawing sensitive data.\n4. Offline Support：It supports Progressive Web App (PWA) technology, can be used offline, and automatically saves to the browser to avoid data loss.\n5. Highly Customizable：It supports dark mode, and users can customize the interface according to their preferences. They can also set the brush color, thickness, font, font size, etc. of the drawing tools.\n6. Multi - platform Compatibility：It is a web - based application that can be used through modern browsers without additional plugins or installation processes, supporting different operating systems and devices.\n

Application Scenarios

1. Education：Teachers and students can use it to create teaching charts, concept maps, and interactive exercises, enhancing learning effects and communication abilities.\n2. Design：Designers can use it to quickly draft design concepts, draw UI/UX design diagrams, icons, etc., promoting discussion and iteration.\n3. Meetings：In remote meetings, team members can collaborate in real - time to complete projects together, intuitively record ideas, and improve meeting efficiency.\n4. Personal Notes：It can be used as a personal note - taking tool to record ideas and plans, presenting notes in a hand - drawn style to make them more vivid.\n5. Product Design：Product managers can quickly draw product prototype diagrams, user flowcharts, and interface sketches for easy communication with the team.\n6. Technical Drawing：Developers and engineers can draw software architecture diagrams, network topology diagrams, and algorithm flowcharts, etc.\n