Canvas notes

A canvas is a drawing you keep in your Space. Use it to sketch a process, arrange ideas, or place related notes beside a diagram. Glyph uses Excalidraw and saves the drawing as an .excalidraw file.

Create a canvas

1. Open a Space.
2. Open the command palette with Cmd+K.
3. Run New Canvas.
4. Give the new file a name.

Glyph creates Untitled.excalidraw, or the next available name, and opens it for drawing. New Canvas uses the current new-note destination, including your default new-note folder when one is set.

Draw and arrange

Use the canvas toolbar to add shapes, arrows, text, and freehand marks. Select elements to move or resize them. Pan and zoom when the drawing grows beyond the window.

Glyph saves changes as you work. Open the canvas file from the sidebar to return to it later.

Add a note card

1. Open a canvas.
2. Drag a Markdown note from the file tree onto the canvas.
3. Drop it where you want the card.

Glyph adds a card linked to that note. Click the card’s note link to open the Markdown file. The note stays in its original folder; the canvas stores the card and its link.

Use cards to put project briefs, meeting notes, or research beside the parts of a drawing they explain.

Create a canvas with AI

The AI composer also offers /canvas. Choose that command, describe the drawing, and send the request with a model that supports the required tools. See AI agents and editing workflows.

Canvas or Connections?

Use a canvas when you want to draw and arrange elements yourself. Use Connections when you want Glyph to build a graph from the links and tags in your notes.

A canvas saves your drawing in a file. Connections builds its graph from the Space’s notes and index.

Files on disk

Canvas files live beside your Markdown notes. Include .excalidraw files when copying or backing up a Space. A canvas is not a Markdown document, so Markdown-only export and editing commands do not apply to it.