The canvas
The canvas is where a map is actually read and edited. This page walks through the tools for it — from layout through search to the small things that add up.
Layout and orientation
- The project name sits on its own line right below the toolbar. Click it to rename, Enter confirms. It used to be squeezed between the toolbar icons, where a longer name got cut off mid-word — now it fits whole.
- Layout — portrait or landscape, matching the screen you read the map on. Switching the direction only redraws the map — it never touches saved data.
- Arrange tidies the nodes back into a tree in one of three styles — covered in detail on Arranging. Next to it, Readability switches the text size in nodes (three levels) and the frame button zooms out to the whole map.
- Search is the magnifier in the left rail (below the stash and the timer) — one click opens the field, another closes it; the minimap keeps orientation on large maps.
- Lock disables dragging so a tap on a phone does not move nodes around.
- Undo reverts the last change.
What the lines tell you without a click
The line between two goals takes its colour from the goal it points to:
| The line leads to a goal that is | It looks like |
|---|---|
| done | green and still — the work is finished |
| past its deadline | red and moving faster |
| anything else | unchanged, as before |
A done goal with a missed deadline still counts as done — green wins. The colours are part of the skin, so they suit every theme: in Ruby, where lines are red anyway, "past the deadline" shows up as flame orange. If you have animations switched off system-wide, you get the colours without the motion.
The small things that add up
- Collapse / expand a branch — the wheel under a node hides its subtree; handy in a meeting.
- Detach from the parent — a node moves elsewhere without deleting anything.
- Multi-select — Shift-drag to select several goals ("N goals selected"). Besides deleting, you can edit them all at once: status, owner, deadline, icon and colour. Every field has its own switch, so only what you switch on is changed — "set the owner" never wipes a deadline. A switched-on field left empty clears the value instead (that is how you strip an owner or a deadline in bulk). Undo reverts it. A deadline somebody else set is skipped — and the dialog tells you up front.
- Sticky notes hold free text on the canvas without being part of the goal tree.
- A task is a goal with an assignee or a deadline — see Goal settings.
- The saving state is visible in the bar: Saving… / Saved. What happens when someone else changes the map in the meantime is handled on Collaboration and conflicts — nothing is silently overwritten.
- Finishing the last goal is celebrated — "All done 🎉" — with an offer to move the project to the archive.
Next
- Arranging — three layout styles on one button
- Readability — three text sizes in nodes
- Collaboration and conflicts — two people editing at once
- The map and goals — the overview of the whole map