The screen, explained
When a project is open, here is what you are looking at.
The canvas
The big area in the middle is your drawing. You can move and zoom it any time:
- Pinch with two fingers to zoom in and out. The zoom happens around the point between your fingers, so whatever you are pinching stays where it is.
- Drag with two fingers to pan around.
- Twist with two fingers to rotate the canvas, the way you would turn a sheet of paper to draw a comfortable curve. It takes a deliberate twist to start, so zooming does not tilt your drawing by accident.
- When the canvas is tilted, a level button appears next to Undo and Redo, showing the angle. Tap it to spin the canvas straight again without losing your zoom or position.
- Tap the Fit button (the magnifier in the tool dock) to snap the whole canvas back into view.
Zooming and panning never change your drawing, they just change your view.
The tool dock (left edge)
A vertical strip of tools:
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Brush | Draw. See Brushes. |
| Eraser | Rub out. |
| Fill | Flood an area with color. See Fill. |
| Smudge | Smear existing color. See Smudge & Blur. |
| Blur | Soften existing color. |
| Select | Lasso or box-select, then move/scale/rotate. See Selection. |
| Shapes | Straight lines, rectangles, ellipses. See Shapes. |
| Text | Add words. See Text. |
| Eyedropper | Pick a color from your drawing. |
The dock holds the tools only. The color well, the size dot (drag it up or down to change the current tool's size), the Symmetry and Ruler shortcuts (for drawing tools), and Fit sit together in a small cluster in the bottom-left corner of the canvas (opposite the Layers badge), so they stay in easy reach without crowding the dock.
Opening a tool's settings
- Tap a tool to select it.
- Touch and hold a tool (or tap it again once it is selected) to open its settings panel, where you choose brushes, sizes, and options.
The frames strip (bottom)
Your animation, frame by frame. Add, duplicate, reorder, and delete frames here, and scrub through them. Press Play to watch it loop. See Frames and Playback.
Layers
Open the Layers panel to stack drawings on top of each other, for example a still background under a moving character. See Layers.
The top bar
- Projects (top left, the arrow) returns to your projects.
- Undo / Redo, and Paste (when something is on the clipboard).
- Import a photo (reference) or video (rotoscope). See Import.
- Audio opens the sound timeline.
- Grid shows a reference grid.
- Time-lapse (the film strip) records how you draw. See Time-lapse.
- Export / Share to save out a video, GIF, or images, and share them to any app (YouTube, Messages, Photos). See Export.
- ? starts the guided tour, which points out what each button does.
On a narrow screen (a small iPad, or Split View), the top bar tucks Import + Audio into a Media menu and Grid + Time-lapse into a View menu so everything still fits. Playback (play, skip) lives with the frames at the bottom.
Visual vs compact tools
By default, brushes, shapes, and selection modes appear as picture cards so they are easy to recognize. If you prefer a tighter list, turn off Show tool previews in Settings.