Canvases

A canvas is a board as large as you need, holding cards and the arrows between them: text, notes of the vault, images, web links, and groups around them. Each canvas is a .canvas file in your vault, in the open JSON Canvas format, so a canvas made in Obsidian opens in Nether, and one made in Nether opens in Obsidian.

Opening and making canvases

Canvases show in the sidebar’s Folders and Pages views beside your notes, marked canvas. Click one to open it in a tab, as a note opens; Ctrl or Cmd and a click, or a middle click, opens it in a new tab. Right-click one, or press Shift+F10 on it, to open it in a new tab or to the right, or to move it to the trash.

To make one, choose File, then New canvas, or New canvas here in a folder’s menu. It starts empty, named “Untitled canvas”.

Adding and changing cards

• Double-click the board, or choose Add text, for a text card, and type; click elsewhere, press Escape, or Ctrl+Enter (Cmd+Enter) to finish. Double-click a text card to write in it again.
• Add a note picks a note of the vault and puts its card on the board, showing the note’s title and its opening; drag a note or a canvas from the sidebar onto the board for the same.
• Add a link puts a web address on the board, its site shown large.
• Add a group draws a group around the cards selected, or an empty one; rename it from its menu.
• Drop images from your computer onto the board: they are kept in the vault’s attachments folder, and shown as cards.
• Click a card to select it, Shift and click to select more, and drag to move them; a group moves with the cards inside it. Drag the square at a selected card’s corner to resize it.
• Drag from one of the dots on a selected card’s sides to another card to draw an arrow between them. Click an arrow to select it.
• Right-click a card or an arrow for its menu: edit a card’s text, connect it to another card, label an arrow, color either, or remove it.
• Delete or Backspace removes what is selected, and the arrows of a card removed. Undo and Redo, or Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z (Cmd on a Mac), go back and forth through your changes.

Nether saves the canvas a moment after each change.

From the keyboard

Every card can be reached with Tab, in reading order. On a card:

Key	What it does
Arrow keys	Move it
Alt and an arrow key	Resize it
Enter	Write in a text card, open a note, or open a link
Delete	Remove it
Shift+F10, or the menu key	Its menu, which also connects it to another card
Escape	Select nothing

After the cards, a list of the canvas’s connections appears as the keyboard reaches it; Enter on one opens the arrow’s menu.

What cards show

Text cards are Markdown: headings, bold, lists, [[links]] to notes and images, as in a note, a line break kept as one. A note’s card shows its title and its first paragraphs, kept current as the note changes.

Moving around

• Drag the background, or drag with the middle button anywhere, to move across the board; scrolling moves it too.
• Hold Ctrl (Cmd on a Mac) and scroll, or pinch on a trackpad, to zoom where the pointer is. Zoom in, Zoom out and Fit to view are above the board; a canvas opens fitted to its tab.
• Click a note’s title on its card, or a link in a card, to open the note in a new tab, the canvas staying open.

Reading a canvas without seeing it

The cards are in reading order, top to bottom and along each row, so the keyboard and screen readers go through them as they are read, each named by its kind and its first words. After the cards, a list of connections says which card leads to which, and the label of each arrow.

Good to know

• A canvas changed by another app, or on another device, shows the change at once.
• If part of a canvas’s file cannot be read, Nether shows the rest and says how many things it left out.
• A canvas syncs as other files of the vault do: changed on two devices at once, both are kept, the second as a copy.
• A canvas whose file has parts Nether cannot read is shown, but not changed, so saving it never loses them; open it in the app that made it.
• If another app changes a canvas while you change it here, the other app’s change is kept and your last change is not; Nether says so.