Four ways to make a mark, down the left rail. The Pen is pressure-aware — lean in with a stylus for a heavier line. The Pencil is softer and grainier. The Highlighter lays down translucent colour you can draw over, with its own opacity. The Eraser lifts strokes cleanly away.
Find itThe tool rail — PenPencilHighlighterEraser. Colour, size and (for the highlighter) opacity live in the style bar.
Use itPick a tool and draw. Press harder with a stylus for a thicker line; your resting palm is ignored. Set highlighter opacity from 10–60%, and the eraser as fine or as broad as you like.
Performance settingsIf Slate feels slow on a particular device, Tools → Options → Performance tunes it. (The same panel’s Drawing tab holds the pen options.) Pick one of three presets: Best quality (how Slate always ran — the default), Balanced (lighter drawing that looks the same), or Battery saver (smoothest on older laptops and cheap tablets). Advanced lets you set each part yourself: drawing resolution, ink detail, a simpler pencil, animations, undo steps, live collaboration updates and the frosted-glass panels. The panel may suggest a preset if the device reports little memory or a low battery.
Pen responsivenessTwo switches at the top of Options → Performance make the pen feel quicker, and neither makes anything look worse. Draw ahead of the pen is on by default where your browser can do it. Low-latency ink is off until you try it, and starts working the next time you open Slate.
Explained simplyDraw ahead of the pen: Slate always draws a tiny bit behind your pen, like a shadow running to keep up. This makes Slate guess where your pen is going next and draw there early, so the line keeps up with you. If it guesses wrong, the real line fixes it straight away — the guess is never saved. Low-latency ink: normally your ink waits for the screen’s next refresh before it appears, like waiting for the next bus. This lets it jump on right away. On a few computers it can make the screen flicker, which is why it is off until you try it. Drawing resolution: how many tiny dots make up the picture — more dots are sharper but more work. Ink detail: how many little points make up each line. Undo steps: how many times you can go back; each one is a saved copy of the board. Frosted glass: the blurry see-through look behind menus, which is hard work for slower computers. Best quality, Balanced, Battery saver: three ready-made mixes of all the settings — Best quality makes everything as sharp and smooth as it can be, Battery saver does a little less work so an older device keeps up and the battery lasts longer. Pencil: textured makes it grainy like real graphite; simple is a plain line, which is faster. Animations: things sliding and bouncing into place; reduced makes them just appear. Live collab updates: how often your moves are sent to people watching — economy sends fewer, which helps on slow internet. None of these change your boards, only how they are drawn on the device you are using.
Which browsersDraw-ahead works in Chrome and Edge. Safari and iPad do not offer it yet, so there the switch is greyed out rather than doing nothing. Low-latency ink works in Chrome and Edge on most computers. The panel tells you exactly what is working on the device you are using.
What changes, and what does notThese settings only change how boards are drawn on this device. Your work is never altered, and a board looks the same when opened elsewhere. Drawing resolution is the biggest lever: canvas work grows with the square of it, so 1× draws nine times fewer pixels than 3×. Lowering undo steps frees the memory straight away. Settings are remembered on each device separately.
ContainersSelect anything — box or lasso — and press Shrink in the selection toolbar. Those objects move into a container of their own and leave a small marker behind, freeing the space for more writing. Double-tap the marker to open the container full screen; it is a real board, so every tool works inside it exactly as normal. Back to board returns you. Name a container with the label button so the marker says what is inside, and give it a colour with the palette button so several containers are easy to tell apart — each new one already starts in a different colour. One board can hold as many as you like. Drag a marker's corner handle to make it bigger or smaller.
Containers in a replayA replay shows the lesson as it happened, not just the board as it ends up. The marks that went into a container are written in their true place in the sequence, then draw together into the marker at the moment you shrank them — so nothing a class saw is missing from the replay. This works for ordinary replays and for recorded narration: shrink during a recording and the take shows it happening. Containers open once a recording is finished, since a recording follows one board.
Recovered containersTwo earlier builds saved a container's contents but not the marker that points to it. Open a file from then and any such container comes back automatically as a marker called Recovered, top left of the board, with everything inside intact. Rename, recolour or move it like any other.
Selecting over locked workLocked items act as part of the background. A box or lasso drag can start right on top of them and picks up only the unlocked work — so writing laid over a locked worksheet can be gathered up and moved as a group. Once a group is selected, press anywhere inside its dashed outline to move it, even in the gaps between letters. A plain tap on a locked item still selects it, so it can be unlocked.
Paste textCopy text from anywhere — a web page, a document, an email — and paste it straight onto the board (Ctrl/⌘+V). It lands as a text object in the middle of what you can see, in your current colour and font, wrapped to a comfortable width; no need to make a text box first. Things you copied inside Slate still paste as themselves.
Paste as pictureThe other way to paste. Right-click an empty part of the board (or long-press on a tablet) and the menu offers Paste here and Paste as picture. Where the ordinary paste gives you something editable — text you can retype, Slate marks you can pull apart — this gives you one picture of the same content, and only that.
Which one to useUse the ordinary paste when you will keep working on the content: correcting the words, recolouring the marks, moving one piece of it. Use Paste as picture when the content is finished and you want it to stay exactly as it looks — a formatted table from a web page that would lose its layout as plain text, a worked example you want to place as one thing rather than a dozen strokes, a screenshot of a spreadsheet, or a set of your own marks you would rather not nudge out of alignment by accident. It is also the answer when a paste arrives looking wrong: a picture of it always looks right.
What it can turn into a pictureA picture on the clipboard (placed as it is, at its own size). Formatted content copied from a page or a document — headings, colours, tables — rendered by the browser itself. Plain text, drawn in your current colour and font, wrapped as a paste would wrap it. And your own Slate marks, if you copied them here first, flattened into one picture. Empty, transparent edges are trimmed off automatically, so a diagram on a big clear canvas arrives its own size instead of surrounded by nothing.
It is one object, not manyThe result is a single Slate picture — exactly the same kind of object as any image you add or drop in. It moves, resizes, rotates, crops, duplicates and deletes like one, and the image lab opens on it for cleaning up or adjusting. What it is not is separate editable pieces: the words in it are no longer text you can retype, and marks in it are no longer strokes you can recolour. If you want those back, paste the ordinary way instead — the original is still on your clipboard.
When it cannotTurning formatted content into a picture uses the browser's own renderer, and two things are beyond it: pictures inside that content which live on another website do not load, and some browsers will not draw formatted content onto a canvas at all. Where either happens Slate quietly falls back to drawing the text instead, so you still get a picture. Reading the clipboard from a menu also needs the browser's permission — where it is refused (Firefox, and older Safari) Slate says so and suggests copying inside Slate or using ⌘V. Nothing is ever pasted silently wrong: if there is nothing it can use, it tells you.
Box or LassoWith Select & move in hand, the style bar offers two ways to select: Box drags a rectangle, Lasso draws a freehand loop around exactly what you want. A lasso picks up anything whose centre falls inside the loop, so it will not sweep up things it only brushes past.
Containers and printingA container prints as just its marker — the point of shrinking is to clear the page as well as the screen. If you want the contents too, tick Print containers as extra pages in Export; each one is added as its own page after the boards. Containers are not deck pages: they never appear in the board strip and never change your board count.
AmbienceUnder Presentation → Options → Ambience, the area around the board can become a Night sky, Water, Sparks or Waves — the board itself stays exactly as it is, lit in the middle of a darkened room. It is drawn outside the board, so it sets the room and does not appear in a film of the board. The scene takes its colours from whatever theme you are using, so it blends with a chalkboard as readily as a light paper skin. Whatever you pick stays picked for next time.
When the room stirsBy default ambience appears in shows only. Tools → Options → Room offers three others: Off for never, On the board to have it running while you work as well, and When idle — which leaves the board still while you are using it and lets the room stir only after about a minute and a half with nothing touched, settling again the instant you draw, type or move the mouse. Idle is the gentle one: a board left up between lessons comes alive rather than sitting dead. On the board it is drawn at a lower frame rate than in a show, and it stops altogether when you switch tabs, when your device asks for reduced motion, or when the board is filling the screen with no room left around it — and in that last case the note under the choices says so, rather than leaving you wondering why nothing happened. The choice is yours, not the file’s — it follows you between slates rather than travelling inside one.
Playing a board in the showA board does not have to arrive finished. Under Presentation → Options → Playback choose Whole — the board is simply there, as it always was — or Beats, where the board arrives empty and each tap of the right arrow, or of Play, reveals the next beat. Set the speed before the lesson, and turn beat captions on if you want each beat titled on screen. In Beats the arrow keys step through the board first and then carry on to the next one, so you never change hands. Draw on the board at any point and the rest of it appears at once, ready to annotate — the board stays live throughout. Containers play the same way.
Presenter modeTap Presentation in the top bar, then Show, to run your deck full screen. The top bar steps aside, and the presenter bar takes the free space at the top so its menus open downwards. The tool rail stays and the pen and pencil controls dock just under the board rather than on its edge, because annotating while you teach is the point. Move with the arrows on the bar or the left and right arrow keys. On the bar: Play replays the board you are on, and Curtain, Spot, Laser and Calc turn each one on and off with a single tap and light up while they are on; Options opens the full Presentation menu for their settings, where curtain, spotlight and laser now sit together under Pointer options. Set those before the show and the taps are all you need during it. Tap a container marker once to open it, whatever tool you are holding — a Back to board button then appears on the bar, so the way out is always on screen; Esc and the arrow keys do the same thing. A container plays like any other board. Finish or Esc ends the show, and turns the laser and any curtain or spotlight off as it goes.
Keep or put backIf you drew on the boards during a show, Slate asks at the end whether to keep the annotations or put the boards back exactly as they were. The whole deck is copied when the show starts, so putting it back is complete. Presenter mode is not offered during a live session — everyone in the room already sees your board. Full screen is part of presenter mode, so it is not offered either; the things a live session needs — the curtain, the spotlight, the laser, eyes-up and the timer — all reach the class on their own.
Alignment, nudging and selectingA text box can be left, centred, right or justified from the text style bar. Arrow keys nudge whatever is selected by a pixel, or ten with Shift, for lining things up exactly. Shift+click adds to a selection, Ctrl/⌘+A selects everything on the board (locked work excepted), and Ctrl/⌘+X cuts — so you can cut on one board and paste on another.
Set a text columnSelect a text object and you will see a short bar on its right edge, unlike the square corner handles. The corners scale the letters; that bar sets the column — the width the words wrap to and the width they align inside. Drag it out and a long caption folds into a tidy block; centre the text and it centres within that column rather than jumping anywhere. Leave it alone and there is no column: the text is only as wide as its longest line, so centring simply balances the lines against each other and the block stays where you put it. A long line still never runs off the board, column or no column.
Six ways to eraseWith the eraser in hand, the style bar offers six modes. Rub is the original: it takes out exactly what you pass over. Colour erases one colour only: pick the colour from the swatches, from ▾ More colours, or with the dropper by tapping a mark of that colour on the board — then rub over the board, and only marks in that colour go. Red corrections come out while blue workings stay. Pen, pencil, highlighter and brush marks are rubbed out where you pass; shapes, lines and text in that colour go whole when touched; pictures are never affected. Stroke removes any whole mark the eraser touches, in one piece — handy for a wrong word without rubbing at it. Box, Circle and Lasso clear an area: drag a rectangle, drag an oval, or draw a loop. The three area erasers work just like rubbing — a line running through the area loses the part inside and keeps both ends, and pictures and notes are rubbed out where the area covers them. A red outline shows the area before you let go. Locked items and container markers are never erased, and Undo brings back anything removed.
Eraser presetsLike the pen, the eraser can keep up to five saved sizes. Pick the eraser, set a size, and press + in the style bar; each preset shows as a ring the size of the mark it leaves. Choosing one only changes the eraser — never the colour your pen goes back to.
Straighten lines automaticallyTurn it on in Tools → Options → Drawing. When you lift the pen, a stroke that is nearly straight snaps to a perfectly straight line — and if its angle is close to level, upright or a true diagonal it snaps exactly to that, turning about its middle, so a line meant to be level really is level rather than merely straight. Anything clearly at its own angle, and short marks like ticks and letters, are left exactly as you drew them. Choose how nearly straight a line must be, and which of pen, pencil and highlighter it applies to. Undo brings back the hand-drawn line.
Dot pointerIn the same panel: instead of a picture of the tool sitting beside the tip, show a dot the size of the mark, right where it will land, in the colour you are drawing with. It makes it easy to see exactly where a stroke will start and how thick it will be. Applies to pen, pencil and highlighter.
Presets at a glanceSaved pen and pencil presets show as a dot of their own colour and thickness, and highlighter presets as a small rectangle the shape of the highlighter tip — the way PowerPoint shows its pens.
Highlight shapesThe highlighter can lay down a shape instead of a free stroke. The shape button in the style bar opens a picker with Free, Rect, Square, Ellipse and Circle — each one tap, no cycling through to reach the one you want. Square and Circle hold equal sides on their own, so you do not have to remember to hold Shift.
StylusWorks with Apple Pencil, Wacom and your finger — pressure and palm-rejection are automatic.
02Colour & size
Colour, size & presets
The style bar is mission control for whatever tool you're holding. Tap a swatch or open the custom picker for any colour, and dial the thickness with the stepper or slider. Found a combination you love? Save it — Slate keeps up to five presets each for the pen, pencil, highlighter, text and fill.
Find itThe style bar — the colour swatches and the ＋ custom-colour chip; the −／＋ size stepper; and the Save button at the end.
Use itTap a swatch or pick a custom colour; nudge the size. ▾ More colours beside the swatches opens the palettes, five in view at a time with the rest a scroll away: Classic plus twelve built in — Vivid, Soft, Ocean, Sunset, Earth, Forest, Berry, Citrus, Neon, Royal, Candy and Desert — each with a dark-board and a light-board version, and no colour repeated anywhere. Tap any colour to use it, or tap a palette’s name to make it your six. + Create new palette… makes your own from six colours (it starts from the six on your bar); yours are listed first under Custom, kept on this device, and the × deletes one. The dropper takes a colour from the board, to the pixel: while it is on, the pointer is an eyedropper everywhere, and a magnifier beside its tip shows the pixels underneath with the exact one it will take outlined and its colour code written out. Tap to take it; Esc cancels. With the colour eraser, tapping a mark takes that mark’s own colour, so the erase always matches. Tap Save to store the current tool as a preset, tap a preset to apply it, and the small × to remove one.
03Precision
Shapes
When freehand won't do, drop a clean shape — nineteen of them, from plain lines to lightning bolts.
Find itThe Shapes tool in the rail; the shape name in the style bar opens the full picker.
Use itPick a shape, then drag on the board to draw it. Set its colour and line thickness in the style bar like any other tool.
Edit pointsDouble-click a shape (or select it and press Edit points on its toolbar, or right-click → Edit points) and its outline shows its points: a square is a corner, a circle a smooth curve. Drag a point to reshape — a rectangle into a kite, a triangle into any triangle you need. Drag a small + between two points to add one there; on a line or an arrow, that bends it. Double-tap a point (or Make curve / Make corner) to switch it between a corner and a smooth curve. With a point selected, the arrow keys nudge it (Shift for 10px) and Delete removes it. Done, Esc, Enter or a click elsewhere finishes. Each change is one step of Undo, the colour, fill and thickness are kept, and a live class sees the shape change as you drag. Just looking changes nothing: a shape you open and close without moving a point stays exactly what it was.
04Type
Text
Drop typed text anywhere for labels, headings and worked answers — in a chalky hand, a marker, or a clean sans, whichever suits the board.
Find itThe Text tool. Font, size and BIU appear in the style bar.
Use itTap to place a box and type. Choose a font (Chalk, Marker, Clean), set the size (14–160 pt), bold/italic/underline, and a colour from the swatches.
Style part of the textWhile typing, select some words (drag across them, or Shift+arrow keys) and press B, I, U, S (strikethrough), the highlighter button (five marker colours, every colour on the board, or Any colour…), or a colour — only those words change, and the box stays open so you can carry on. Ctrl+B, Ctrl+I and Ctrl+U do the same. With nothing selected, the buttons change the whole text, as they always have. The buttons light up to show the style of what is selected. Words typed straight after a bold word stay bold. Pasted words come in plain. Ctrl+Z while typing takes back the last style or word; after you finish, the board’s Undo takes back the whole edit. Styled text saves in your .slate file and reaches a live class; an older version of Slate opens it as plain text in the text’s own style.
Other languagesThe font list is grouped — Slate, Latin, Indic, Asian and Other scripts. Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Odia, Sinhala, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Arabic, Urdu, Hebrew, Cyrillic, Greek and Vietnamese are all there, each previewed in its own script. Slate carries no font files of its own — it asks your device for the best face it has, and falls back gracefully if a board is opened somewhere that lacks it.
🏷New
Rubber stamps
Numbering a worksheet by hand is the slowest part of a lesson: type Q1, move, type Q2, move, type Q3. A rubber stamp does the counting for you. Make one once, and it sits on the board frame ready to use — click the board and it stamps Q1, click again and it stamps Q2, for as long as you keep clicking.
Find itTools → Rubber stamp. Make a stamp and it appears cut into the frame of the board, like stamps set into a wooden tray — on a phone, where the frame is too thin to hold them, they sit just above the tool rail instead.
Make oneChoose what it counts like, and the preview shows the stamp itself alongside the run of values your next few clicks will produce. Q1, Q2, Q3 for questions. A1, A2, A3 for answers. 1, 2, 3 for plain numbering, A, B, C for lettering, Step 1, Step 2 for a method. Or pick My own and set the text before and after the number yourself — Task 1:, (1), Ex 1a. Always the same never counts at all, which is what you want for a tick, a cross or a star.
Where it starts, and by how muchStart at begins the run wherever you like — picking up at Q7 on the second board of a worksheet. Going up by counts in twos or fives, or in steps of −1 to count down. Leading zeros gives you 001, 002, 003 for a numbered list that stays in line. Then dress it: a circle, a rounded box, a square or nothing at all behind the text, the shape and text colours, the font, the size, bold and italic. Give it a short name — that is what you will recognise on the frame.
Click, click, clickTap a stamp to pick it up. Every other stamp sits down in the frame; the one in your hand lifts proud of it and takes a ring, so a glance tells you which one is loaded. Now every click or tap on the board places one. The tile always shows what the next click will stamp — so you can see you are about to lay down Q4 before you lay it down. Tap the same tile again, press Esc, or simply reach for another tool to put it down.
Move it where you want itThe tray has a small grip at its left end — the only part of it that is not a stamp, so dragging never costs you a click you meant. Drag it anywhere along the frame, and drag it towards the bottom of the board to move it onto the bottom edge instead. Let go near the left, the middle or the right and it snaps to it. The creator lists the six places by name as well, and the arrow keys move it for anyone who would rather not drag: left and right along the frame, up and down between the two edges, Home and End to the corners. Where you put it is remembered on your device and is not saved into the lesson, so moving your tray never moves anyone else's.
The side rings turn the pageThe left and right edges of the frame carry four more engraved buttons, cut the same way. On the right: › for the next board and + to add one after this one. On the left: + to add one before this one and ‹ for the previous board — so “before” is on the left and “after” is on the right, and the direction is in the position rather than in an icon. At the first and last board the arrows go grey rather than vanish, so they stay where your hand expects them.
Six at a timeA tray holds six stamps — enough for questions, answers, a tick, a cross, a star and a step counter — and they are cut to the depth of the frame, so they take no room off the board however thick or thin the frame is. Change the frame to oak, charcoal or a photograph of your own and the tray re-reads it and adjusts its own contrast to suit, so the stamps stay readable on all of them. When it is full it says 6/6 and the creator will not add a seventh: nothing you made is ever quietly replaced. Delete one you have finished with and the slot is yours again. The + at the end of the tray opens the creator, and every stamp you have is listed inside it: tap one to change it, ◀▶ to move it along the frame, ↺ to start its count again and ✕ to delete it. Deleting asks first, and the stamps you have already placed stay on the board.
What lands on the boardA stamp is not a special kind of object — it is ordinary Slate text, with an ordinary shape behind it if you chose one, grouped so the pair moves as one. Select it, drag it, recolour it, resize it, delete it, replay it, export it. Once it is down it is simply part of the board, and the stamp that made it has moved on.
UndoUndo takes stamps off the board one at a time, as it does with any other mark. It does not wind the counter back, though — undo Q8 and the next click still gives you Q9, because the counter is a property of the stamp rather than of the board. The tile shows you which value is next, and ↺ beside the stamp in the creator starts its count again. A right-click on a stamp (a long press on a tablet) offers the same thing straight from the frame, along with changing it and deleting it.
In a live sessionThe tray is part of the lesson, so everyone in a live session sees the same stamps with the same look, and a participant who joins halfway through gets the tray as it stands. Make one, delete one or move one along and it reaches the class straight away. The presenter looks after the tray and does the stamping — as with every other object Slate places for you, rather than draws — so the counter has one owner and a class never ends up with two Q4s. The whole tray saves into the .slate file — counters included — so a worksheet reopened tomorrow carries on at Q12 rather than starting again. Stamps you make are also remembered for new boards, so your ticks and crosses are waiting the next time you start from scratch.
05Filling & painting
Fill & paint — bucket, brush & stroke
The Fill tool does more than flood an area — it's a small paint studio. Pick a type: Bucket floods an enclosed region, Brush paints freehand, and Stroke lays a clean constant-width line. Whichever you choose, it paints with the same Solid, Gradient or Image source.
RoundMarkerCalligraphySprayOil
Edge matchThe bucket decides how close a colour has to be to count as the same area. Low suits flat line art; a photo blends over many colours at its edges, so raise it if a fill leaves a rough fringe. The softening of the edge follows the setting, so a wider match feathers more.
Find itThe Fill tool in the rail; the Fill style button opens the type, brush and paint options.
Use itChoose Bucket, Brush or Stroke. For a brush, pick a type — Round, Marker, Calligraphy, Spray or Oil — and a size. Set the paint to Solid, Gradient (end colour) or Image (tile/stretch). Bucket taps to fill; brush and stroke draw on the board.
Filling a shapeA solid bucket tap inside a shape that nothing else crosses sets the shape’s own fill. Tap again with another colour and it simply changes, so Delete removes the whole shape in one go, and the fill moves and resizes with it. Inside a hand-drawn loop, or a shape with a line drawn across it, the bucket floods the area you tapped as before; those fills belong to the loop around them: tapping one selects the loop, and moving or deleting the loop takes its fills with it.
Vector & lightBrush strokes are saved as vectors (not flattened images), so they stay crisp, replay in the player, and keep your .slate files small.
06Inserting
The Insert panel
A degree sign, a fraction, an arrow, an emoji — a photo of the real thing, or a whole diagram built from a few lines of code. Insert is the one place everything arrives from, so you're never hunting a keyboard mid-lesson.
Sequence diagramDiagram from codeLesson headerChart from dataEquationEmojiMathArrowsShapesImage (paste / upload)
Find itThe Insert button in the top bar.
GlyphsSwitch tabs and tap a glyph to drop it, then drag to position.
PicturesAdd image sits at the foot of the Insert list, below a rule, with its Paste, Upload and Screenshot buttons right there. Big pictures are shrunk to a size a board can actually show, which keeps a lesson with several images quick even across a deck of boards — then drag the handles to resize, rotate or crop. Sticky note sits beside it, with Note and Callout.
Finding thingsThe makers in Insert are listed alphabetically; Add image and Sticky note sit apart at the foot, since they drop something straight on the board rather than opening a maker.
Give the board a second voice — a reminder in the corner, a definition beside a diagram, a speech bubble pointing right at the thing that matters. Notes come as a plain Note, a bordered Card, or a Callout whose tail you can aim anywhere.
Find itThe Insert button → Note or Callout. The note bar appears whenever a note is selected.
Thirteen shapesA note's own bar has the full set: Note, Card, Callout, Badge, Pill, Banner, Ribbon, Flag, Marker, Glass, Folder, Bookmark and Tape. Glass and tape are see-through and sit flat on the board; the rest lift off it.
Use itType, then drag a corner to resize. Set colour, bold/italic, alignment and text size; pick a shape from the note bar's Shape button; and drag a callout's tail to point.
Part II
Arrange & dress the board
08Editing
Select, arrange & tidy up
Nothing you draw is set in stone. Switch to Select to pick anything up — a stroke, a shape, a note, an image — then move it, resize it, or spin it. When something's selected, a small action bar floats beside it with everything you need.
Bring to frontSend to backLock / unlockDuplicateDelete
Find itThe Select tool in the rail; the action bar appears above any selection; UndoRedo in the top bar.
Use itTap to select, or drag a box around several. Move, or pull a handle to resize/rotate. Duplicate drops an offset copy you can drag away (or ⌘/Ctrl+D); ⌘/Ctrl+C then ⌘/Ctrl+V copies and pastes, even onto another board. Bring to front / send to back sets the stacking order; Lock pins an object so it can't be moved, resized or deleted (a lock badge shows, tap again to unlock); the red trash removes it — on any device.
Several at onceSelect more than one thing and a single box is drawn round the lot, with the same handles a single object gets: drag inside it to move everything together, pull a corner to size it all as one, and use the handle above it to turn it. Everything keeps its position, size and rotation relative to everything else, so an arrangement you have built stays an arrangement.
Group & ungroupGroup (⌘/Ctrl+G, or right-click → Arrange) holds a set together: from then on a tap takes the whole group, and it moves, sizes and turns as one. Ungroup (⇧⌘/Shift+Ctrl+G) makes them separate objects again, exactly as they were — nothing about them is merged or flattened. A group is purely an editing convenience: it is not a container, it changes nothing about how the board plays or prints, and it costs one small field per object in the file. Groups are flat — grouping a selection that already holds a group simply re-tags all of it — and a container is never taken into one, because a container is a page. Once a group is selected, a press inside it drags the whole group, so to work on one member either shift-tap it out of the selection or ungroup.
Line them upWith two or more selected, right-click for Align left, centre, right, top, middle and bottom — measured across the whole selection, so things come to the outermost edge or to the shared middle. With three or more, Space out across and Space out down even the gaps between them; the outermost two stay exactly where they are so the set does not drift. Neither changes any object’s size.
FlipFlip across and Flip down mirror what is selected about its own centre, so nothing moves. Pen and pencil marks, shapes, lines, arrows and plain pictures all flip; an arrow’s heads swap ends with it. Words are never mirrored — text, notes, containers and generated pictures like charts, tables and diagrams are made of words, so they are left alone and Slate tells you how many it skipped. A snapshot object is left alone for the same reason — it is a picture of a board, so it carries whatever was written on that board.
Match sizeMatch width, Match height or Match size makes the others the size of the last one you added to the selection — so tap the one that is already right last. It applies to things with a width and a height of their own: pictures, notes and containers. A pen stroke has no separate width and height to set, so it is left as it is.
Good to knowA dragged object now stops at the board's edge instead of sliding off, and locked items hold their place even inside a group.
09The surface
Surface & template
Set the board to suit the lesson. Teach on a crisp Whiteboard, a classic Blackboard, a Green board, or any custom colour — then lay a template underneath for structure.
NoneGridLinesGraphCoordinateStaff
Find itThe Board button. Its sections — Surface, Template, Frame, Texture and Size — are tabs, so you see one at a time rather than one long list. Start on Surface and Template.
Use itChoose a surface (or a custom colour), then switch on a template — ruled lines, a grid, graph paper, a coordinate plane or a music staff.
10The frame
Frame, textures & watermark
Frame the board in wood or a flat tone, drop in your own surface or frame texture, and add a tasteful watermark when you're sharing an image.
WalnutOakMahoganyCharcoalWhiteGoldCustom
Find itThe Board button → the Frame and Texture tabs, which hold the frame, both textures and the watermark toggle.
Use itPick a frame (or a custom colour). Paste or upload a board/frame texture and set it to Tile or Stretch. Flip on the “Created with…” watermark for shared exports.
11Dimensions
Resize & fit to content
Make the board as wide or tall as the lesson needs — or let Slate snap it neatly around whatever you've already drawn.
Find itThe Board button → Board size, and the Fit board to content button.
Use itDrag Width and Height (40–100%), or tap Fit board to content to reshape the board around your work.
12Character
Board furniture
The small touches that make a board feel like a classroom. Add the pieces you want, drag them wherever you like — they're happy to rest on the frame — and remove the ones you don't.
Pen trayDusterMagnetChalkRulerSpongeClock
Find itThe Decor button in the top bar.
Use itAdd a piece, drag it anywhere (the frame included), and tap the red × to remove it. Each board keeps its own arrangement.
World clockAdd as many as you like, each set to its own city — handy for a class with pen friends abroad, or a team spread across time zones. Search by city and pick by recognising the time beside it. Analogue or digital face, and daylight saving is handled for you. Drag any accessory to move it, or pull its corner grip to resize.
Good to knowFurniture shows in the editor, the replay and saved images — but stays out of exported animations (GIF, APNG and animated WebP alike), to keep them about your drawing.
13More room
A deck of boards
One board is rarely a whole lesson. Slate holds a whole deck — think slides, not layers — each board with its own surface, frame and furniture, all travelling together in a single file. Add as many as the lesson needs, and print the lot in one go from Export.
Find itThe board strip, beside the Slate mark at the top.
Find itThe Boards button in the top bar, beside Board & frame. A small number on it tells you how many boards the deck holds.
Use itTap it to drop down the list. Tap any board to open it, ↑ ↓ to reorder, × to delete, and Add a board at the foot of the list. The panel stays open while you rearrange, so you can sort a deck in one go.
How manyAs many as you like — there's no cap. The list scrolls, so a long deck is as easy to manage as a short one.
Name themThe ✎ button next to a board lets you call it something useful — Starter, Worked example, Homework. The name is saved in the .slate file and shows in the boards list and the print range picker. It is for you: it never appears on a printed page.
The whole deck travelsEvery board goes into the one .slate file, and the player can run the deck end to end. You can also print the lot in one pass — see Export an image.
14Comfort
Light & dark
Work in whichever mode is easier on your eyes and your room. The colour swatches adapt automatically so your ink always reads well against the surface.
Find itThe Theme button in the top bar.
Use itTap to switch between light and dark. Slate remembers your choice for next time.
SkinsThe Theme button opens light and dark plus fifteen glossy default skins — Aqua, Graphite, Amber, Orchid, Jade, Midnight, Rose, Steel, Ink, Citrus, Cocoa, Sky, Plum and Sand, or plain Studio. A skin dresses the panels and the backdrop only: it never touches the board, so what you export or share looks the same whichever one you are using.
Make your ownOpen Customise under the skins to set the panel colour and how see-through it is, the backdrop, the gloss, the blur and the edge. You can also paste or upload a picture for the backdrop and choose whether it fills, fits or tiles. Save as mine keeps it on this device; Clear puts the skin back as it was. Picking a default skin clears your own first, so the two never pile up.
Part III
Bring it to life
15A closer look
The magnifier
Some details deserve a closer look. The Magnify tool is a glass loupe that floats over the board and blows up whatever's beneath it — handwriting, a fine diagram, a tiny correction — kept razor-sharp. It's view-only: nothing you do with it changes the board.
Find itThe Magnify tool in the rail; its shape, size and zoom controls sit in the style bar.
Use itIt follows your pointer. Switch the glass between rounded-rectangle and circle, set its size, and set the zoom (on a desktop, scroll to zoom).
ShortcutPress M for the magnifier.
16Encouragement
Reactions
A well-timed burst of celebration goes a long way. Slate has twenty-nine, tuned for teaching — each moves its own way, each is recorded into your replay, and in a live class your students can react too.
Find itThe React button in the top bar — and, during a show, React on the presenter bar.
Use itTap a reaction to place it at this point in the lesson. It plays back in the player and saves with your file (and stays out of exported animations). In a live class it plays on every screen.
Each its own way🎉 fires from both bottom corners, 👏 runs along the bottom like a Mexican wave, ⭐ and ✨ twinkle across the board, 🚀 flies across with a trail, 🔔 shakes and rings out, 💡 lights up in the middle, 🎯 closes in with rings, 🎈 and ❤️ drift up swaying, ❓ and 🤔 pop and bob, 🔥 licks up from the bottom edge, 💯 and 🥇 slam down like a rubber stamp, ⚡ and 🤯 flash and jolt, 🦄 trots across leaving sparkles, and 🎂 arrives with balloons and confetti. With reduced motion turned on (in your computer’s settings or Slate’s Performance options), each is one calm picture instead.
Drop it on a spotTurn on 📍 Drop it on a spot at the top of the menu, tap a reaction, then tap the board: a 💡 or ❓ lands right on the line it is about, with a ripple, on every screen — and the replay lands it there too. Esc cancels.
Class reactions
In a live session students get a small reaction tray at the bottom of their screen: 👍 👏 💡 ❤️ 😮 ❓, and ＋ opens a second row — 🔥 💯 😂 🤯 💪 🥳 ⭐ 🚀. The tray keeps itself above the drawing tools and the tool rail, so on an iPad it never sits on top of a menu. Each reaction shows as a bubble with the student’s initial, rising from one side of the board, so you can see who is reacting without it becoming a wall of emoji.
Find itCollab → Class reactions in the presenter panel.
Who sees themEveryone sees (the default) shows each reaction to the whole class; Only me shows them to you alone, with a live tally — the students are told; Off hides the tray. Your device decides, so the setting holds whatever a student’s page does.
CombosThe same reaction from several students within a few seconds builds a counter (“👏 ×9”) at the top of the board, and at 5, 10, 20 and 40 one big burst plays for everyone — thirty students clapping is one moment, not three hundred particles. Each student can react once every second and a half.
Mute and tallyThe panel lists who reacted most recently; 🔈 beside a name mutes that student’s reactions (tap again to allow them). The line above it counts this lesson’s reactions.
Students drop them tooA student you have let draw (✏️) also gets 📍 in their tray: pick a reaction, tap the board, and it lands on that spot for everyone — “I’m stuck here” becomes a ❓ on the exact line. A student with a writing box can’t.
Hype meterChoose a goal (10–100) and press 🔥 Hype meter: a bar across the top of every screen fills with each class reaction. When it is full it celebrates for everyone, then goes away.
Feel check🙂 Feel check gives every student 30 seconds to tap 😀 Confident, 🙂 Getting there or 😕 Not yet (they can change their mind). You see the split live in a card at the bottom right; only you see who chose what. Show the class shares the overall result.
Shout-out⭐ Shout-out: pick a student and the words (Great explanation, Brilliant question, Super effort… or your own) and a card with their name appears on every screen, with twinkling stars.
In the lesson afterwardsYour reactions and shout-outs go into the replay as before. A burst of class reactions is kept as one small marker down the right of the board (“👏 12”) that plays its burst and count again in the replay. The recap’s last card tells you what the class reacted to, and the biggest moment.
🎙New
Record narration
Talk through a problem while you draw it. Start a show, tap Record on the presenter bar and narrate as you work — your voice and your ink are captured on one clock, so the replay plays them back perfectly in step. A long explanation? Pause whenever the room goes quiet or you need to think — the pause is a hard hold (drawing freezes, the silence is cut from the lesson), then Resume to carry on. Finish when you're done.
Find itPresentation → Narrate the lesson. Slate asks for the microphone first, then goes full screen and starts recording — that order matters, because a permission prompt drops full screen and would otherwise end the show before it began. Record on the presenter bar does the same once you are already presenting.
Use itA narration belongs to the whole lesson, not to one board. Talk, draw, turn the page, come back to a board you were on earlier, Hold when you need a moment and carry on — the microphone runs through all of it and the take is one continuous piece. Slate remembers which board you were on at every moment, so the replay follows you. Hold and Finish the narration sit in the Presentation menu as well as on the bar, with a line under them saying how long the take is and how much of the deck it has covered. Recording again over an existing narration asks first, and a lesson narration replaces any older single-board takes. Fix a mistake mid-explanation and it replays in order — the wrong mark, the erase, the correction — all in time with what you're saying.
Erase and try againFluffed the last minute? Erase offers two scopes: back to the last pause, which drops just that stretch — even where it ran across a page turn — and lets you carry on, or the whole board, which clears the take and starts the lesson again. Both keep recording — you do not have to stop and set up afresh.
Saved with the fileThe narration embeds in the .slate, so it travels with the lesson — share the file and the voice comes too. Recorded boards play with sound in the player, where you can Export video — a real-time recording of the replay with your narration, ready to upload to YouTube. Beats act as chapters.
17The big idea
Press play
Here's what makes Slate, Slate. Open the player and your board redraws itself — every stroke in the order you made it, as if you were writing it live. It plays in beats, the natural steps of your explanation, and you're in full control of the tempo.
Find itThe Export / Share button → Launch player.
Use itPress play and watch it redraw. Step through beats, give each one a caption, change the speed, or scrub the timeline to land anywhere.
Just one part of itA whole board is not always what you want to show at once. Tools → Region lets you drag a rectangle around one worked example, one column of a table, one step of a proof — and replay only the marks inside it, in the order you drew them, while the rest of the board stays exactly as it is. A region follows the beats, exactly as the player does, so a detached diagram replays in its own order rather than the order its parts happen to sit in — a flowchart draws a box, then the arrow leaving it, then the next box, inside a region just as it does in a full replay. Arming it puts the Select pointer in your hand so the first drag makes a rectangle rather than a mark, and hands your tool back when you leave. Pull a corner to resize the rectangle or drag its middle to slide it; a mark counts as inside if any part of it is, and it always plays whole rather than cut off at the edge. Play, Pause and Stop do what they say; space is play/pause and Esc leaves. Nothing about it changes the board — when it finishes, or the moment you stop, every mark is back where it was, and the file is not touched. Clearing the board takes the region with it.
Speed, and darkening the restSpeed is a slider from 0.25× — a crawl, for a class copying it down — to 8× for a quick recap, and it can be moved while the replay runs. Darken the rest of the board holds everything outside the rectangle back behind a veil while it plays, so thirty pairs of eyes land on the one thing being built; its own slider sets how dark, from a light shade to nearly black. The veil covers the board only, never the surround, and the region itself stays at full brightness.
During a showIt is on the show bar too, beside the spotlight — so “let me show you how this one was built” needs no leaving the lesson. Everything works the same; only saving is left out, because a file is a board-mode job.
Four ways, one at a timeA region is used one way at a time, and the card shows only that way’s controls. ▶ Play replays the marks inside the rectangle. ☼ Cover blurs it so you can rub it clear by hand. ⊞ Split makes equal parts shown one at a time. ✂ Cut lets you draw cuts of any shape and number the parts. Choosing one clears what the last one left — so a Split never lands on top of freehand cuts, and a region you keep comes back as the one thing you made rather than all four mixed together. Switch freely: the rectangle stays where it is.
Cover it, then show itDrag a region round the work, then press ☼ Cover. What is behind it goes blurred — the class can see something is coming without being able to read it — and the region’s outline stays visible so you know where it is. Now rub over the cover with your finger, the pencil or the mouse and that part comes clear, sharply, and stays clear. Nothing is cropped, split or copied: it is the same work underneath the whole time. Show all takes the cover off.
Cutting it into partsFor a worked solution or a list, Split into 2, 3 or 4 equal parts — one tap, no dragging — and ↔ switches between splitting across and splitting down. For parts that are not equal, press ✂ Cut: the region is covered so you can see the whole area, a guide line follows your pointer, and each tap lays a cut where that line is. The pieces between the cuts are the parts, so they can never overlap, never fall outside the region, and always cover the whole of it. Drag a cut to move it, tap one to take it away, and Undo takes back the last cut — while you are cutting it leaves the board alone. The parts are numbered on the board in the order they will show; Next shows the next one, Prev puts the last one back, and every part you have shown stays showing. Cutting across and down at the same time gives you a grid, shown row by row. You can still rub the cover by hand at any point, so a planned sequence and a free reveal are the same thing.
Cuts of any shape, and your own numbersA grid is the wrong shape for most of what gets taught — a diagram, a map, a worked example with a picture in the corner. So a cut can be a line you draw, and a part is whatever your lines enclose. ╱ Straight drags a straight cut, and you only need to drag across the middle: both ends reach the edge on their own. ✎ Freehand draws a cut any shape at all — round one lung, one country, one corner of the working — and finishing near where you started cuts out an island in the middle. While you draw, the end of the line is marked: green means it will join up and close a part, orange means it stops in mid‑air and will not. Ends near an edge or another cut snap onto them, and an end left just short is extended to reach. Tap a cut to take it away, and the presets above still work — a hand‑drawn cut across a Split 3 simply makes six parts.
You give the parts their numbersSlate does not decide the order — it cannot know whether the heart comes before the lungs. Press # Number and tap the parts in the order you want them — one tap gives a part its number, no keyboard needed. Tap a numbered part again to take its number off. When the order is not simply “next”, a long press (or a right-click) opens a box to type a number, and typing one already in use swaps the two parts. Play, Next and Prev then walk the parts in your order, not in reading order. Tap a numbered part to take its number off; a part with no number simply is not in the lesson yet, and the parts still waiting are the ones with no number on them. The card tells you how many parts there are, how many are numbered, and whether any cut has a loose end. Nothing is painted over your work while you cut — each part is simply outlined, so a photograph or a diagram stays exactly as it is. And the moment you start showing the lesson — Play, Next, a full-screen show, or a live class watching — every cut line and number disappears: they are your working-out, not part of the lesson, so the class sees only the picture coming out from under the cover. A part shows as its own shape when the cover lifts — a crescent reveals as a crescent, not as the rectangle around it. Clear numbers keeps the cuts; Clear cuts starts again; and Undo takes back your last number, then your last cut, before it ever touches the board. Keep saves the way you were using the region along with its cuts and numbers, so recalling gives back exactly what you made and nothing else, and everything reaches a live class as you do it.
Keep a region for next time★ Keep saves the whole region — its area, every step inside it, and the speed and darkening — under a name you give it, like “Worked solution” or “Question reveal”. Kept regions are listed in the card: tap a name to play it, ↺ to bring it back as the region you are working on, ✎ to rename and × to remove. What is kept is the area, never a copy of the work, so a kept region always plays whatever is on that part of the board now — correct the working and the same reveal shows the corrected version. They are saved in the Slate file, so they are there when you open it again tomorrow and can be played as often as you like. A board has no kept regions until you make one, and a file from before this existed simply has none.
Lesson recapAt the end of a lesson, play back what you taught. Tools → Lesson recap (or 🎓 Lesson recap… in the Region card) lists every region you kept, on every board — untick one to leave it out, and ↑ ↓ to change the order; both are saved with the lesson, so next time’s “last time we…” is the same list. Choose Show me or Test yourself, a replay speed (1×, 2× or 4×), and whether to darken the rest of the board. Start recap opens a card listing what you covered; then each step goes to its board, outlines the region with its name at the top (“2 of 6 · Quadratic formula”) and shows it the way it was kept: a Play region replays its working, a Cover region is covered to rub clear (or Show it all), and Split and Cut regions show their parts one at a time. The big button always says what it will do next — Next part, Show it all, Skip to end, Next — and ◀ goes back. Keys: Space or → moves on, ← goes back, Esc ends. Test yourself covers each one first and asks “What do you remember about this?” with a 5, 10 or 20-second countdown (or until you press Reveal), then shows it — recalling before seeing is what makes a recap stick. In a live session everyone follows on their own screen, and 🎲 Who explains? (or Pick a student to explain each one) names a student for the step on screen, never the same one twice; that student is told You — explain this one!. At the end, 🖨️ Recap sheet (PDF) prints every step as a picture with its name and the date, two to a page — students in the session get their own Save my recap sheet, made from their own screen as the recap went by. Nothing on the board changes, and you finish on the board you started on.
Diagnostics, when something goes wrongTools → Diagnostics (students: Help → Diagnostics) records a short trace to send to whoever is fixing Slate. Turn it On just before the problem, do what goes wrong, then open the small diag chip at the bottom left and press Save trace (a file you can attach) or Copy report. Each time it is turned on it starts a fresh log, so the trace holds only that stretch. It records errors and warnings, which buttons and menu items were pressed and which keys (never what is typed into a box), the messages sent and received in a live session, where the pointer went, and a snapshot of the boards, the session and every activity. Turn off (in the chip, or the same menu item) stops it. A trace can include students’ names, so send it to the person fixing Slate rather than posting it.
First time, names and shortcutsThe first time Slate opens it offers four ways in — Start drawing, Host a class, Join a class or Take the tour; it does not ask again. On a tablet or phone, press and hold any button to see its name. With a keyboard, press ? for every shortcut, and Tab reaches the board in a couple of presses (closed menus are skipped). Several messages at once now queue rather than overwrite each other; tap a message to clear it.
Save just that regionIn board mode the panel also offers PNG, APNG and WebP under Save. These give you the region on its own, rendered as a small slate — the board’s own surface and frame behind it, trimmed to the rectangle — so it drops into a worksheet looking like Slate rather than like a ragged screenshot. PNG is the still. APNG and WebP are animations of the region drawing itself, in the same order the region replays in, and they follow the speed slider above them — a slow one for a class copying it down, a fast one for a recap. Handy for a revision sheet, a slide, or sending one worked example to a student who missed it.
18Showmanship
Direct the replay
The beats manager comes with a director's kit. Spotlight dims everything but a moving pool of light. Theatre turns the surround into a starlit stage. Play all runs your whole deck end to end. And you can shape the beats themselves — splitting, merging, trimming or reordering the steps.
Find itThe manager's bar has two halves. Along the top: the board picker, the transport (restart, previous and next beat, play, the scrubber and the speed dial), the look of it — SpotlightTheatrePlay all — and at the far end, set apart, the things you do when you are done: Save .slateExport GIFBack to board. Beneath it, the Beats panel, with the strip on a line of its own and everything you can do to a beat grouped under it. Fold the whole panel away with Beats when you are only showing the lesson.
Use itToggle Spotlight or Theatre for presence; switch on Play all for a continuous show; jump to any board; and delete, merge or split beats, or select a range.
ReorderThe order a diagram was built in is a sensible start, not the only way to explain it — you might want the outcome first, or to walk a flowchart back from where it failed. Tap a beat and use ◀▶ to play it earlier or later, or drag a beat chip onto another to drop it there. A run of neighbouring beats moves together. The board follows the strip, and the new order is saved with the file.
Part IV
Save & share
19A clean image
Export: pictures and film
Everything that leaves Slate leaves from one panel, split in two. Picture gives you a still — PNG, JPG or WebP — or something that plays — GIF, APNG or animated WebP — of this board or of every board in one go. Film gives you a video of the board drawing itself, with any narration, cropped to the board so no wooden surround travels with it.
Find itThe Export / Share button.
Use itPick a still — PNG (lossless), JPG (smaller) or WebP (smaller again) — or one that plays — GIF, APNG or animated WebP — then This board or All boards — all boards writes one file each, named for the board. Choose 1×, 2× or 3× resolution (and JPG quality), then Download, Share, Copy, or Print. A GIF is built from the board’s beats, so set those in the beats manager first — merge the ones that should appear together and they arrive as one frame. The panel tells you how many there are and warns you if there are too many to encode. All boards writes one GIF per board, each with that board’s own beats. Trim has three settings: Off prints on a normal sheet with a margin; Board area makes the sheet the board’s own shape — no page border, no white margin around the board; What’s drawn also crops the empty surface away, so a small diagram arrives its own size instead of as a page of blank board. Trim applies to downloads, sharing and printing alike.
Which stillPNG is lossless and the safe default — every device opens it, and it is what Copy and Share use. JPG is much smaller but cannot hold transparency and softens fine writing slightly. WebP is the middle road: roughly a third of the PNG for the same picture, with transparency intact, and it opens in every current browser, Word, PowerPoint and Google Docs — but some older desktop software and a few school projectors still do not know it, so send a PNG if you are not sure what will open it. All three take the same resolution, Trim and This board / All boards settings, and WebP gets the same Quality dial as JPG.
Which one that playsAll three build the same replay — one frame per beat, in the order you drew them, with a longer pause on the last — and differ only in the file you get. GIF is the one that plays anywhere, including inside a slide deck or an old LMS, but it is limited to 256 colours and cannot be part-transparent, so the corners around the board come out black. APNG keeps full colour and transparency and looks exactly like the board; it is a PNG, so anything that cannot animate it still shows the first frame rather than nothing. Animated WebP is far the smallest — on a three-beat board it came out at 12 KB against 203 KB for the GIF and 664 KB for the APNG — with full colour and transparency, and it plays in every current browser. Choose GIF to paste somewhere old, animated WebP for the web or for messaging, APNG when you want a lossless copy.
Speed, and how smoothAn animation is drawn, not stepped: the replay is sampled about 25 times a second, so a stroke grows across the frames the way it does on screen rather than appearing whole. Animation speed slides from 0.25× to 8× and really changes the file — a faster setting covers the same drawing in fewer frames and a shorter running time, and the pause on the last frame shortens with it.
Beats, and how many framesThe beats still set the order and the captions, so set them in the beats manager first. They no longer set the frames. APNG and animated WebP get up to 240 frames and spend them on smoothness; only the changed part of each frame is stored, which is why a 70-frame APNG is a few hundred kilobytes rather than many megabytes. GIF has 40 — it quantises every frame to 256 colours and encodes in background workers, which is where a tablet struggles — so it spreads those 40 across the whole replay and is the least smooth of the three. A board with more than 40 beats is still refused for GIF; use APNG there. All boards writes one file per board, each with that board’s own beats. Resolution steps aside for these, because an animation is sized by its own frame width rather than by you. Trim stays put whatever format is chosen, because Trim also shapes what you print — so you never have to switch to PNG and back just to set a trim for printing. The panel says which of the two an animation ignores.
Every picture keeps its frameA cropped picture used to arrive as a bare rectangle of surface, because cropping cuts inside the board and the frame is outside the cut. Now the board’s own frame goes back around the crop — its colours, its thickness, its corner radius — so What’s drawn, and a region saved from Region, both come out looking like a small Slate board rather than a screenshot with a ragged edge. Because the frame adds the same thickness on all four sides, a cropped picture is a little larger than the crop itself.
Transparency, honestlyWebP, APNG and animated WebP all carry an alpha channel, and Slate never flattens it. What that gets you in practice is the rounded corners around the board, which stay clear instead of being filled in — where a GIF blacks them and a JPG whitens them. The board itself is not transparent: a still picture is deliberately backed with the frame’s own colour so it cannot arrive as a dark wedge on a light page, and that has not changed.
If a format is missingWriting a WebP needs the browser’s own encoder. Where there is not one — some older iPads and older desktop browsers — the two WebP buttons simply are not shown, and the rest of the panel is exactly as it always was. The APNG and animated WebP writers are fetched the first time you ask for one, not when Slate starts, and then stored for offline use, so they cost nothing until you want them and work with no connection afterwards.
FilmVideo records the whole lesson in real time, at the board’s own size. With a narration it plays the deck exactly as you told it, board by board, with your voice over the top; without one it plays each board’s beats in turn into one file. YouTube is the same film fitted into a 1080p frame, ready to upload. Both are the board area only, and both come out as MP4 where your browser can make one — WebM otherwise. The toast says which you got. A film plays in real time as it records, so a five-minute lesson takes five minutes — tap the progress card or press Esc to stop early.
Print a deckWith more than one board, Print board(s)… offers all boards, just this one, or a range — pick a from and to board by name. Choose all and the whole deck prints as a single document — one board per page, centred and scaled to fit the sheet, in deck order. A single-board deck prints straight away with no question asked.
Save as PDFExport → PDF opens the print window ready to Save as PDF, using the same choice of boards and area as Print. The action register, spot-question gallery and student photos print the same way, inside the page — no pop-up window, so a pop-up blocker never stops them.
Paper & inkWith a Trim on, Slate asks your printer for a sheet the board’s own shape and no margins, so the board fills the paper with nothing wasted — that is what “Board area” means. A printer that cannot make that size substitutes its own paper, and then the board is fitted and centred on it rather than pinned to the top. A board much wider than a sheet leaves white whichever way it is turned — a board three times wider than tall covers under half of A4 at best — so when you print several boards with a Trim on, Slate stacks them on one sheet, as many as bring the sheet closest to ordinary paper, and asks for that shape instead. Two wide boards stacked all but fill a landscape A4, and you get half as many sheets. A board already close to page-shaped keeps one per sheet as before. Slate turns the sheet to match your boards, so a wide board fills the page instead of sitting as a thin strip. Safari takes its orientation from the print dialog rather than from Slate, so on iPad choose Landscape there. Printing a long deck of dark boards uses a great deal of toner — for a handout, a white or light surface is far kinder to the printer. And because the dialog offers Save as PDF, this is also the quickest way to turn a whole deck into one PDF.
20Keeping it
Save, open & carry
Your lesson is a single, portable thing. Save it as a .slate file — the whole deck, every board, beat and reaction — and it reopens in any Slate, on any device, exactly as you left it. Want to share the moment instead of the file? Export the replay as a GIF, an APNG or an animated WebP. And because Slate installs like an app and works offline, it's ready wherever you are.
Find itThe Export / Share button → Replay (.slate): Save .slate, Open & edit a .slate, Launch player.
Use itSave .slate for the editable lesson; Open one to keep working; Launch player to group beats and export the replay as a GIF, APNG or animated WebP. Install Slate to your device and it runs with no connection at all.
EverywhereBuilt for desktop, tablet and phone — iPad & Apple Pencil, Android, and Windows with a Wacom pen.
Part V
At the front of the room
21Classroom tools
Classroom timer
A rich countdown for group work, quizzes and transitions. Pick a preset or tap the time to type your own, then start. The ring winds down as the clock ticks, the last fifteen seconds flash an amber warning, and when time's up the dial pulses and a gentle chime sounds.
Find itTools → Classroom timer opens a floating, draggable timer. It lives in Tools to keep the top bar clear, and during a show there is a Timer button on the presenter bar — so it is to hand whether you are teaching from the board or presenting a deck. Finishing a show puts it away and resets it, the same way the laser and the curtain are turned off on the way out.
Use itChoose 1, 3, 5 or 10 minutes, nudge with the ± buttons, or tap the time to enter any duration (minutes, or mm:ss). Start / Pause and Reset as you go; the speaker button toggles the end chime, and the music note plays gentle 432Hz ambience while the clock runs; drag the header to reposition it anywhere on screen.
Four modesTabs at the top of the card: Countdown, Stopwatch (with laps and splits you can copy), Agenda and Alarm (count down to a time on the clock).
AgendaChain blocks together — Starter 5, Main 25, Plenary 10 — and it moves on by itself with a different chime for "next" than for "finished". Repeat turns it into rounds, so Pomodoro and interval timers are just saved agendas. Templates are built in, and you can save your own.
While it runsGive it a name, adjust with ±1 and ±5 without stopping, and turn on count past zero to see by how much you have overrun. The screen is kept awake while it runs.
QuietlyThe chime can be swapped for a flash, so a silent room still knows. Shortcuts while the timer has focus: Space start, R reset, L lap, N next segment, arrows for ±1 and ±5.
Hold the viewIn a live session, Hold the view freezes what the class can see while you set up what comes next. They keep receiving everything — they simply stop being shown it — so releasing reveals the finished thing at once rather than replaying how you got there. A dashed edge reminds you it is held.
Everyone togetherIn a shared session the timer travels with the room, and anyone joining late lands on exactly the right second. Students see it as a small clock in the corner (they can expand it) without your controls, and the Collab panel always opens above it. Closing the timer (✕, Tools → Timer, or the presenter bar) stops it and closes it for the class, so nothing chimes later; use − (minimise) to keep one running out of the way. A student who closes their copy hears no chime for that run.
Heads-upThe timer floats above your board for everyone to see — it doesn't draw on the board, so it never affects your lesson, replay or exports.
50Classroom tools
Cover & focus
Hide part of the board until you want it seen, or draw every eye to one spot. Both are saved with the board, so a curtain left over question two is still there when you open the file again — and in replay.
Find itThe Presentation button in the top bar holds all three — curtain, spotlight and laser — along with Show, which starts a full-screen show. While you are presenting, the bar carries a one-tap switch for each — Curtain, Spot, Laser, Calc — and Options opens that very same menu for the settings behind them. When the show ends, the laser and any curtain or spotlight are turned off for you.
CoverCurtain hangs from whichever edge you choose — down, up, across or back — and you drag its bright edge to reveal a line at a time. Patch covers one part; drag it, or pull its corner to resize. All over hides the lot. Dim sets how dark the cover is, from a light veil you can still see shapes through to properly opaque; it sits with the cover options, and the spotlight has the same slider for its own darkness.
FocusSpotlight dims everything but a soft pool of light — choose Circle or Rectangle; a rectangle suits a line of working or a row of a table. Reveal is a hard-edged window you slide over the part you want seen and resize by its corner. Size, Dim and Edge set how big, how dark and how soft the rim is.
Following lightSwitch on Follow the pointer and the spotlight goes where you point instead of being dragged — Follow speed sets how quickly it catches up. Tap the board to lock the light where it is, so you can put the pen down and talk; tap again to let it follow on. Breathe gently gives it a slow pulse, which keeps a still light from disappearing into the background. You can say whether it answers to the mouse, a pen or a finger, which matters on a board where a palm rests on the glass.
Laser pointerPoint at the work without marking it. Nine styles: Classic dot and Large dot, a soft Halo, an Arrow or a Cursor that sit clear of what you are pointing at, a fine Crosshair for an exact spot, a comet Trail, a Pulse that breathes so a still hand still reads from the back of the room, and a Ripple that sends rings out from where you press. Set the colour, size, opacity, glow, trail length, pulse speed and how long the point fades for; turn Rings when you press on or off; and choose which of mouse, pen and touch it answers to. While the laser is on the pen does not draw, so nothing it does is ever saved, printed or replayed.
CalculatorOne panel with five modes. Standard for four-function work; Scientific for trig, inverse and hyperbolic functions, reciprocal trig (sec, csc, cot), logs (ln, log, log2), powers, roots, factorials, floor, ceil, abs and mod, with a DEG / RAD / GRAD switch; Programmer; Date; and Convert. A memory row — MS, MR, M+, M−, MC — and both C and AC. Type with the number pad while it is open; Enter works out the answer. It answers as you type and lets you carry an answer into the next sum. Unlike the cover tools it is only a helper — never saved, printed or replayed.
Programmer modeWork in HEX, DEC, OCT or BIN, at BYTE, WORD, DWORD or QWORD width. All four bases are shown at once alongside the bit pattern, so you can see a number in every form together. Bitwise AND, OR, XOR, NOT, NAND, NOR, shifts Lsh and Rsh, rotations RoL and RoR, and Mod. Switching base converts what is showing rather than re-reading the digits. Sums are done in whole numbers at the chosen width, so large 64-bit values stay exact.
Date modeTwo jobs: the difference between two dates — in years, months and days, with the day and week totals underneath — and add or subtract a period of years, months and days from a starting date. Month arithmetic clamps to the end of the month, so 31 January plus one month lands on 28 or 29 February rather than rolling into March.
ConvertThirteen categories: Length, Area, Volume, Mass, Speed, Duration, Energy, Power, Pressure, Angle, Acceleration, Data and Temperature. Pick a category, a value and the two units; Swap turns the conversion round. The value box takes a sum as well as a number, so 2×3 is a fine thing to type. Temperature handles the offsets properly, and data covers both the decimal (kB, MB) and binary (KiB, MiB) families.
Working to the boardPlace on board puts the current calculation on the board as a real equation object — selectable, resizable, and re-openable in the equation editor like any other equation. Every step is kept in the History list underneath, each with its own → button to place that one step. All steps → board places the whole working as one stacked object, which is usually what you want for teaching: the class sees how the answer was reached, not just the answer. Memory actions are recorded too, so MS, M+ and MR appear in the working alongside the sums.
TipA board has one cover at a time, so choosing a focus tool puts the shade away and the other way round. While a cover is on, dragging moves it rather than drawing underneath.
51Faster
Right-click & hold
Right-click anywhere — or press and hold on a tablet — and Slate offers what makes sense for whatever is under your finger. It is a shortcut, never the only way: everything here can still be reached the long way round.
On the boardYour recent symbols, recent colours and saved labels, which used to be three panels deep. Tap one and it lands where you clicked, not in the middle. Plus Paste here, Note here and Callout here — again at the pointer.
On an objectDuplicate, bring forward, send back, lock and delete. Anything Slate drew for you also offers Edit and Detach.
What it offersThe menu changes with what you clicked. A sticky note offers all thirteen shapes and its colours; text offers colour and typeface; ink offers colour and six thicknesses — all applied on the spot. These appear for a single object; select several and you get the alignment tools instead.
Copy a lookCopy style takes an object's colour, size, shape and font; Paste style puts it on anything else you select. Use this colour makes the pen match what you clicked.
Format painterTakes how one thing looks and puts it on others, leaving their words, position, size and identity alone. Select the one that looks right, right-click it and choose Format painter, then tap what you want painted — one tap and it puts itself down. Format painter — keep it on stays armed so you can paint several in a row; Esc puts it down. With several things already selected, Paint this format onto the rest does the lot in one go — and one Undo takes it all back, however many it painted, because it counts as a single change.
What the painter will and will not copyOnly between things of the same kind, because the same field means different things on different objects. Pen and pencil marks pass colour, width, opacity and the fill they are painted with. Shapes pass colour, line width, opacity, dash and whether they are filled. Lines and arrows pass colour, width, opacity, dash and their arrowheads. Text passes font, size, weight, italic, underline, colour and alignment. Notes pass their paper and ink colours, font and border. What it never copies: the shape itself — a rectangle is not restyled into an ellipse — and never position, size or content. Point it at something of another kind and Slate leaves that one alone and says so, rather than pouring a stroke width into a font size. Pictures and containers carry no transferable look, so they are not targets.
Line things upSelect two or more and the menu offers align left, centre, right, top, middle or bottom. With three or more, space out across or down gives even gaps while leaving the outermost two where they are. Match size makes everything the size of the last one you picked.
On a tabletPress and hold for about half a second. Moving your finger cancels it, so it never interrupts a stroke or a pinch.
52Room to work
Growing the board
A board is one screen by default and always has been. When a timeline or a mind map needs more room, you can grow it — a quarter of a screen at a time, up to four screens each way.
Find itBoard → the Size tab → Room to work.
Grow it+ and − on width and height, in quarter-screen steps. Back to one screen returns it.
Move aroundPast 100% the board is larger than the window. Scroll with a trackpad or wheel — hold shift to go sideways with a mouse. Or take the hand that appears in the tool rail, or hold space with any tool.
Knowing where you areEdges with more board beyond them carry a soft shadow, and a small map in the corner shows where this window sits in the whole. Both appear only once the board is grown.
Playing it backPlay follows the work. As a replay reaches a part of the board that is off-screen, the view moves with it — only when the drawing is about to leave the window, so it stays easy to watch rather than swimming about. Scrubbing lands the view straight away.
Printing itExport and print already ask what to include: Board area gives the whole board however big it is, What’s drawn crops to your work. Both handle a grown board without anything extra. A very large board is scaled to a size browsers can actually produce, with a note when that happens.
Staying quickOnly the part of the board you can see is redrawn as you move, so a big board with a lot on it pans as smoothly as a small one.
Helper genieThe bubble in the corner. Tap it and ask in your own words — make the ink fade, print several boards. Two kinds of answer appear under the question, sized to fit your screen: Show me on a board runs a guided walkthrough on a throwaway board that is deleted when you exit (the highlight sits on the real control, on phones and tablets too), and In the guide points to the exact line of this guide that answers it, opening on its chapter page (offline, the whole guide opens at that chapter). Students in a live session get the guide answers. It is on by default; to hide it, use (?) guide button → Genie helper — Slate remembers the choice.
Choose your helperThe bubble can wear one of six faces: Genie (the original), Hoot the owl, Bolt the robot, Pip the fox, Chalky the stick of chalk and Nova the star. Right-click the bubble (on a tablet or phone, press and hold it), tap the face at the top of the ask panel, or use (?) guide button → Choose your helper…; pick one and it waves hello. Arrow keys and Enter work too. The choice is remembered on this device and changes nothing else — not the board, and not what anyone else in a live session sees.
Genie copilotGenie also does things. Type an instruction in your own words and a ✨ Do it line says exactly what will happen; press Enter (or tap it) and it is done — drawn, selected and ready to move, with one Undo. Follow-up buttons appear underneath (Undo, Bigger, Smaller, Another one and a row of colours), and you can keep typing about what you just made: make it blue, move it left, copy it 3 times. When a detail is missing Genie offers quick picks rather than guessing — add a table shows 2×2 to 6×5, timer shows 1, 3, 5 and 10 minutes. Things to try:
Draw — a red trapezium, three yellow stars at the bottom, a filled purple hexagon in the top right, a circle labelled “Sun”, an arrow from left to right, a box next to it, add 10 squares (up to 40 at a time, laid out in a grid that fits the screen; all 19 shapes, with everyday names: trapezium, rhombus, oval, right-angled triangle…).
Write — write “Photosynthesis” as a title, a yellow note saying “homework due Friday”, add 10 sticky notes (a tidy grid, in different colours unless you name one), a 4 by 3 table.
Change what is selected (or what Genie just made) — make it green, fill it with orange, remove the fill, bigger, make the lines thicker, make it bold, change the font to marker.
Arrange — select all, align left, space them out evenly, group them, bring it to the front, rotate it 45 degrees, flip it, lock it, move it to the top left, delete it, undo.
The board — switch to a blackboard, add a grid, remove the template, change the frame to gold, dark mode, new board, go to board 3, rename this board to Fractions.
Tools — use a thick red pen, eraser, turn on fades.
The class — timer 5 minutes, stop the timer, stopwatch, play Hit the Target, start Dots and Boxes, and in a live session pick a random student and a 3-minute break.
Open — insert a mind map, a bar chart, an equation “x^2 + 1”, a symbol of a plane, a YouTube video (paste the link), a calendar, a reward sticker, open the calculator.
Save and share — save as PDF, print, download a picture, make a video, save the lesson, replay the board.
It all happens on your device — no server and nothing sent anywhere — and every instruction runs the same code as the matching button, so undo, replay, saving and a live class work exactly as usual. Clear the board and delete this board still ask first. A question (how do I…) is answered with a walkthrough or the guide instead, and Slate’s own words for things it does not have are honest: draw a heptagon offers a hexagon. Students in a live session can ask Genie questions but not change the board.
What it coversEvery tool — pen, pencil, highlighter, eraser, shapes, magnify, text, fill — tables and their colours, thinking frames, calendars, reactions, reward stickers, infographics, charts from data, diagrams of every kind, board settings, managing boards, and exporting as an image or a PDF. Ask in your own words; if it is not sure which you mean, it offers a couple of buttons rather than guessing.
Nothing changesA board left at 100×100 behaves exactly as it always has — same drawing, same export, same everything. The extra room is only there when you ask for it, and it is remembered per board.
53Pictures
Image lab — clean up a photo
A photo of a worksheet or of last lesson's whiteboard is rarely ready to teach from. It is grey rather than white, lit brightly down one side, shot at an angle, and the writing is a washed-out charcoal instead of black. The image lab is a darkroom built into Slate that fixes exactly that, and it can go further: turn a photograph into a line drawing for the class to colour in, lift a subject off its background, or restyle a picture as a comic, a blueprint or a pencil sketch.
Everything happens on your own device. No picture is uploaded, nothing is sent to a server, and there is no account or sign-in — the same as the rest of Slate. A large photo is worked on at a sensible size so the preview keeps up as you drag a slider.
Getting a picture in
From the boardPaste or add a picture, select it, then tap the image lab button on its action bar. What you place afterwards goes back in the same spot at the same size, and ⌘/Ctrl+Z undoes it like any other change.
On its ownOpen Tools → Image lab with nothing selected. Drop a file onto the panel, paste one straight in with ⌘/Ctrl+V, or choose a file. Useful when you only want a PNG to send to someone.
FinishingPlace on board puts the result on the board; Download saves it instead. Reset throws away every adjustment and shows the picture exactly as it arrived, however far you have wandered. Cancel leaves the board untouched.
Start from a workflow
Twenty-three starting points, grouped by what you are trying to do. Each one sets a dozen or so controls at once, and for most jobs picking the right one is the whole task.
Clean up a photoWhiteboard turns a photo of a board into dark ink on white paper, evening out the lighting and taking down camera glare. Document flattens and sharpens a page of writing. Marker does the whiteboard job but keeps the marker colours. Receipt rescues faint thermal print. Photo tidy is a gentle all-round correction — white balance, levels, a little local contrast. Cut out drops the background away to transparency. On white puts the subject on clean white paper.
Line drawingsBalanced is the safe first try — even outlines, most noise gone. Clean lines keeps fewer, bolder lines. Fine detail keeps everything and smooths nothing. Portrait is kinder to faces. Pencil gives a soft graphite sketch, Ink wash brushy ink outlines, Etching a crosshatched engraving, and Blueprint white lines on deep blue. These are the ones to reach for when you want a colouring sheet or a diagram to trace.
StyliseComic (bold halftone dots), Cartoon (flat cel shading with an outline), Pop art (few colours, high punch), Newsprint (dithered like old newspaper), Painterly and Oil paint (soft and thick brushed colour), Pixel art, and ASCII, which rebuilds the picture out of letters.
Adjust, when a workflow is nearly right
Sixty-five controls sit under Adjust, in seven groups. Only the ones the chosen effect actually uses are shown, so the list stays short instead of burying the three that matter.
Lighting & inkEven out lighting removes the bright-one-side look of a photo taken under a window, and Lighting detail sets how local that correction is. Take down glare handles the hotspot where a flash or a lamp bounced off the board. Ink, Paper point and Ink strength decide how far the writing is pushed to black and the paper to white — keeping marker colours, or forcing everything to mono.
Straighten & cropStraighten rotates by a fraction of a degree to level the writing. Perspective squares up a page shot from an angle. Crop trims each edge as a percentage, Turn rotates in quarters, and Flip mirrors across or over.
ColourBrightness, Warmth and Tint for a photo shot under the wrong light; Colour and Vibrance for how strong the colours read; Shadows and Highlights to open up the dark or pull back the bright; Auto white balance to let Slate judge it.
Sharpen & cleanSharpen for soft handwriting, Local contrast to make faint pencil readable, Smooth to quiet camera noise without losing edges, plus Midtones, Contrast and Auto levels.
BackgroundFind the background by its corners, by a colour you pick, or by whether it is light or dark, then replace it with transparency, white, black, a colour of your own, or a blur. How fussy, Soften edge and Pull in edge tidy the cut, and Show the cut-out displays the mask itself so you can see what is being kept.
EffectTwenty effects, from edge finders (Canny, Sobel, XDoG, Sketch) through thresholds for text (Threshold, Adaptive) to Posterise, Cel, Duotone, Kuwahara, Oil, Halftone, two dithers, Crosshatch, Stipple, Pixelate, Emboss and ASCII — each with only its own settings on show.
FinishVignette and Grain for atmosphere, and a Border in any colour. Invert and Transparent flip a line drawing to white-on-black or drop the paper entirely — handy for laying ink over a dark board.
Checking your work
Before / after splitTick Before / after split under the picture and the left half shows the original while the right half shows the result, with a line down the middle. It is the quickest way to tell whether a pass has actually improved the writing or merely lightened everything.
Size & timingThe size of the result and how long the last pass took are shown beside the title, along with a figure for the effect where one makes sense — how much of the picture ended up as ink, how many dots a halftone used, how many letters an ASCII rendering needed.
Good to knowThe lab loads the first time you open it rather than with the page, so it costs nothing until you want it — and it is stored for offline use, so the first time works with no connection too. Results are saved in whichever format is genuinely smaller for that picture: a cleaned page of writing packs down far better as a PNG, a tidied photograph as a JPEG, and anything with transparency stays a PNG because it has to.
22Classroom tools
Fading ink
Working a big problem — a long multiplication, a multi-step equation — fills the board with scaffolding you only need for a moment. Turn on Fades and write your working: it stays put while Fades is on, so nothing disappears mid-thought. When you switch Fades off, each section holds briefly, then clears — leaving the board tidy for the next step.
Find itWith Pen, Pencil or Highlighter active, the Fades toggle appears in the style bar, with a − seconds + hold control beside it.
Use itPick a hold (3–30s), turn on Fades and write. A soft card outlines each section and marks it stays. When you're done, turn Fades off — the sections hold for your chosen time, then fade away.
Saved & replayedFading sets are part of the lesson: a saved .slate remembers them, and the player replays each section being written, holding, then fading once the whole section is down.
Part VI
Live sessions
23Live sessions
Start or join a live session
Share your board live with a small group. Whatever you draw appears on their screens as you draw it, and everything travels directly between browsers — your sketches are never stored on a server. Where a school network blocks a direct link, Slate passes it through a small relay instead, which forwards it without keeping anything.
Find itThe Collab button beside Export opens the collaboration panel. Its sections — In session, Spot question, Break & activities, Focus, Quiz, Live poll, Snapshots — are rows you tap to open; opening one closes the others, so the panel stays short even on a tablet, and the one you used last opens next time. People waiting to join and questions waiting for you always show open at the top.
What the class seesAnything you do to the board reaches them as you do it — drawing, of course, but also Group, Align, Distribute, Flip, Match size, the format painter, Paste as picture, and a snapshot placed or restored from the time machine. Kept regions are board content, so they reach the class like any other board change, and a step of a progressive reveal is mirrored step by step — the class sees the same areas appear in the same order, and nothing is revealed to them early. A region replay and a step of the time machine are mirrored too — the class watches the same marks appear, in the same order, at the same speed, on their own copy, and a time-machine step is outlined on their board so nobody mistakes a look back for the live one. Nothing is added to or taken from their board to do it, and Hold the view still holds. Every export and print stays with you. Someone who has joined is watching your board rather than holding their own copy, so the editing tools are refused for them — Slate says so rather than letting a board drift out of step with everyone else’s.
Use itPresent: sign in with your access code (signing in starts nothing), then press Start a new session to get a six-character room code, or Start one of your Links for later. End session signs you out again. Share that code; each person who joins appears under Waiting to join for you to Admit or Deny. There is no small limit on numbers — a whole class can join (up to 60). Join: switch to the Join tab, type your name and the room code.
Invite link and QR codeUnder the room code, Copy invite link copies a link that opens Slate straight on Join with the code already filled in — students only type their name. QR code shows a big code to put on the projector so a class can scan it with their phones. The link stops working when the session ends, like the code.
Links for laterMake a join link before the lesson, so it can go in your Meet, Teams or Zoom invite. In Collab → Present, Sign in with your access code: Links for later appears under Start a new session, with any links you have saved. It also sits in the Collab panel during a live session, as its own fold-out row (🔗 Links for later), so you can make and copy links for future lessons mid-class (to teach in a different link, end the session first). Give the link a name if you like (“Year 4 Tuesdays”) and press New link; it is copied straight away. Each link shows its code with a copy and a QR button beside it. You can keep three, and they are kept with your access code, so they are there on any computer you sign in with. When the lesson starts, press Start on that link: the session opens with that link’s code, so everyone who has the link can join. The same link works lesson after lesson. Reset gives it a new code (the old link stops working at once — use it if a link has gone further than it should), Rename changes its name, and Delete frees the slot. A student who opens the link early is told the lesson hasn’t started yet, and their page joins by itself the moment you press Start — you still admit them as usual. End session puts the link back to waiting for next time, and signs you out: the access code is cleared from the box, and nothing of yours stays on screen.
ConnectionChosen by the presenter before starting, and it applies to everyone. Auto (recommended) connects each student directly and moves anyone who cannot connect onto the relay by themselves, after a few seconds — students do nothing. Direct only never uses the relay; Relay only sends everyone through it, which is useful when testing or on a very strict network. A small relay tag beside a name in your panel shows who is on it. Students cannot choose; it follows your setting.
Back in as themselvesA student whose page reloads, or whose link drops, can join again with the same name in the same tab and is let straight back in — their Spot question working and marks follow them. You see “Priya rejoined”.
Heads-upA session holds up to 60 students. Anyone you remove is disconnected immediately.
24Live sessions
What participants see
Participants join in view-only mode with a Viewing live session badge. Editing tools are hidden so nobody can change your board by accident. Your board's surface, frame, texture, decorations, size, reactions, fading ink and timer all mirror across, so everyone sees the same thing you do.
Use itParticipants can tap Magnify to zoom into part of the board on their own screen, and tap it again to turn it off. It's local — it doesn't move anyone else's view.
25Live sessions
Talking & listening
Switched off for now. Live sessions are used alongside Meet, Teams or Zoom, which carry the voices, so the microphone buttons are hidden in this version. The notes below describe it for when it is switched back on.
Find itTurn on microphone in the panel — presenters and participants each have their own.
Use itTap to talk, tap again to stop. As presenter you can mute any participant with the speaker button beside their name — tap once to silence them, again to let them back in.
Heads-upMicrophones need a secure connection (an https address). Participants hear the presenter and the presenter hears each participant; participants don't hear one another.
26Live sessions
Letting participants write
Hand the pen over when someone should show their thinking, correct a step, or annotate your diagram. Their strokes stream onto your board as they draw, and out to everyone else.
Use itTap the ✏️ beside a name to let just that person draw — everyone else stays view-only. Tap Let everyone annotate to open it up to the whole group at once; anyone joining later is included automatically.
Writing areasTo stop students scribbling all over the board, give each one a box to write in. In Collab, tap ▭ beside a student’s name, then drag a box on the board: that student can now write inside it and nowhere else, on that board only. Give several students a box each — they can all write at once, each in their own (the plain ✏️ still passes one pen around). You see every box outlined with its student’s name; a student sees only theirs, marked Your area, with the rest of the board dimmed. A press outside does nothing, and a line drawn past the edge stays inside it. Your own work is safe: a student can rub out only their own marks, and anything that tries to change your work or land outside the box is refused by your Slate and put back on their screen. More than one box: tap ▭ again and drag another — one for each question. A student keeps every box you give them (up to 12), on this board or on others; the ▭ button shows how many, you see them numbered (Priya 1, Priya 2) and the student sees Your area 1, Your area 2. A line belongs to the box it starts in and stays inside that one. On a board where a student has no box, they pause; come back and their boxes there work again. A student who reloads and rejoins gets their boxes back. Tap ✏️ beside their name to take all their boxes away; ending the session clears them all.
Heads-upTheir marks become part of your board, so they save, replay and export exactly like your own.
27Live sessions
Focus tools & hands up
Small things that make a remote group feel like a room.
LaserTurn on Laser pointer and move over the board — a glowing dot follows your pointer on every screen. Drawing pauses while it's on, so it's purely for pointing.
Eyes upFlashes a full-screen prompt with a soft chime on every screen — a quick "look up here".
PulseParticipants tap 🟢 Got it, 🟡 Unsure or 🔴 Lost. You see a live count, so you know whether to push on or go again.
HandsRaised hands are numbered in the order they went up and sort to the top of the list, so you take them in turn. Tap a hand to lower it; participants can lower their own too.
Ask a question — studentsOpen Collab and press ❓ Ask a question, then tap the part of the board you are asking about — mouse, finger or pen. A small card offers a reason if you want one (I don’t understand, Why this step?, Can you explain?, My answer differs) — none is needed — then Send question. Cancel or Esc backs out at any point, and tapping to place a question never leaves a mark on the board. A small ? shows your spot, and your list under the buttons says whether it is Waiting, Seen or Answered. Only you and the teacher ever see your questions. If the link drops while you send, it says so and sends by itself when the link is back — once.
Ask a question — teachersQuestions never interrupt you: your view never moves on its own. The Collab button shows how many are waiting, each one appears as a small ? with the student’s name at the spot they asked about, and the Questions section of the panel lists them with the reason and board. Go to takes your view to the spot (switching board if needed) and counts as Seen; Seen and Resolve tell the student, quietly. Resolved questions leave the board; Clear resolved tidies the list. Markers are never part of the board itself — they are not selected, erased, exported, printed or saved — and questions last for the session.
Spot question — askingAsk the class something in the moment and collect everyone’s working. In Collab → Spot question, press ▭ Draw region and drag a box round the question on the board (Esc cancels); or take This view, or a Blank card with just a typed prompt. Add a prompt, choose a time limit if you want one, whether you will watch as they work (students are told) and whether a typed answer is allowed, then Send to class. A pill at the bottom counts hand-ins and the time left; tap it for the gallery. One question collects at a time — asking another offers to stop the first.
Spot question — studentsA card opens with the question at the top and room to work underneath — pen, finger or mouse, six colours, three sizes, an eraser, undo and clear; the page grows as you write. Press Hand in; you can change it and Hand in again until your teacher stops collecting, and only your latest counts. When time runs out, whatever is on your card is handed in for you. Only you and your teacher see your working. If your link drops it says Sending… and sends by itself when it is back; if you reload the page, join again with the same name and you pick up where you were. – tucks the card away to a pill, and once you hand in it tucks itself away — tap the pill to change your answer. When your teacher stops collecting, the question folds into My spot questions in your Collab panel; every question of the lesson is listed there, and tapping one opens it again with your teacher’s marks. Marks for an earlier question wait there with a red dot (and a number on the Collab button) rather than interrupting what you are working on.
Spot question — gallery and markingHanded-in work comes first (newest at the top), then anyone still working (live, if you chose to watch), then those who have not started. Open one to see it large, with ‹ › to step through. Mark lets you write on it in red, add ✓ ✗ or ★, pick a reward (the reward sticker designs, with the student’s name on) and a short comment, then Send back — it pops up on that student’s card under Teacher’s marks. Show to class puts it on your board as an ordinary picture labelled A student’s working; tick Show name first if you want the name on it.
Spot question — keeping itSave PDF gives a cover page (the question, who handed in and who did not) and a page per student with their working, typed answer, marks and comment. Collections are saved with the lesson file — hand-ins and marks, not live drafts — and ✍️ Spot questions in this lesson in the Collab panel opens them again later.
Break timeIn Collab → Break, choose how long (1 to 30 minutes) and press ☕ Start break. Every student’s screen is covered by a calm break screen — a large countdown over slowly drifting light — and their board takes no taps, pen or keys until the break is over. Your own screen stays yours: a pill at the bottom shows the time left with +1 min and End break. The break ends for everyone when the time runs out or when you end it early. Your board keeps updating underneath, so anything you prepare during the break is there when it ends; a student who joins or reconnects mid-break lands on the break screen with the right time.
Random pickChoose who answers next, fairly and in front of everyone. In Collab → Break & activities, press 🎯 Random pick. Every screen in the session opens the same full-screen spin — a colourful wheel with a slice per name when 30 or fewer are in the draw, or a rolling list of large names for a bigger group — that slows to a stop, and the chosen name is revealed — You’re up next! — with a burst of confetti; the student it lands on is told That’s you!. Only you can spin; the choice is made once, on your device, so everyone sees the same result. In ⚙ Settings: pick from Live participants (everyone in the session, kept up to date as people join and leave) or My list (one name per line — paste from a spreadsheet; remembered on this device); No repeats until reset (on by default — the count shows how many are left, and when everyone has had a turn it says so and offers Reset selections); an optional question or task, shown under the name on every screen; and an optional sound. Space spins, Esc or Return to board closes it for everyone. Someone joining mid-spin sees the same result.
Game TimeDots and Boxes for 2–6 players. Open it from Tools → 🎲 Game Time, or in a live session from Collab → Break & activities. It opens over the board in its own layer — nothing you do in the game becomes ink, and Return to board brings the board back exactly as it was. The rules (shown to everyone as three moving pictures while you set up): join two dots next to each other with one line across or down; draw the fourth side of a box to claim it for a point and take another turn; when every box is taken, the most boxes wins. Setting up (only you): tick the players — students in the session, and Me if you want to play — or, with no live session, choose 2–6 and type names to pass-and-play on one screen. The board size is suggested from the number of players (6×6 for two, 8×8 for three, 10×10 for four, 12×12 for five or six) and you can set anything from 2 to 20 boxes each way; a board of W×H boxes has (W+1)×(H+1) dots. Choose 10, 15 or 20 seconds a turn, and turn sounds (off by default) or celebrations on or off. Playing: every screen shows the same board, scores and countdown; the player whose turn it is points at a gap — the nearest free line lights up in their colour — and clicks, or on a tablet presses and lifts (slide off the board to cancel). Keyboard: Tab to the board, arrow keys move between lines, Enter draws. Each player has a colour and a shape (● ▲ ■ ◆ ★ ✚), so boxes can be told apart without colour. The countdown turns amber in the last five seconds; when it runs out the turn passes on. A player whose connection drops shows as away and is skipped until they rejoin — they get their seat back. Students who are not playing watch. Your controls: Pause/Resume and End game; you see every move, the clock, the scores and who is connected. At the end the result — winner or tie, places and boxes — stays on every screen until you Dismiss it (each person can tap See the board to look at the final board). Rematch and New game are separate; dismissing never starts another game. Add result to board puts the result on your board as a picture, so it is saved and printed with the lesson. Only you can start, pause, end or restart a game — your device keeps the score and checks every move, so a late, repeated or out-of-turn move is simply refused.
Game TimeHit the Target — a mental-maths game for the whole class. Open Tools → 🎲 Game Time and choose 🎯 Hit the Target at the top of the setup (Dots and Boxes is the other choice). Everyone gets the same target number and the same number tiles, and makes the target using each tile at most once — they don’t need them all. Setting up (only you): choose the operations — add, subtract, multiply, divide and brackets are on by default; powers (exponent 0–10), square roots (exact only) and factorials (0! to 10!) are optional, and at least one of + − × ÷ must stay on. Choose the difficulty — Easy (4 tiles, targets 10–50), Medium (5 tiles, one larger number, targets 40–150) or Hard (6 tiles, two larger numbers, targets 100–500) — 1–10 rounds, 30 s, 1, 1½ or 2 minutes a round, and whether the unique and speed bonuses, sounds and celebrations are on. A sample puzzle shows what your choices give. Each puzzle is checked to have several solutions before it is dealt; the solutions stay on your device until the round ends. Playing: students tap tiles and operations (or type: 1–8 for tiles, + − * / ( ) ^ r ! , Backspace, Enter) — the live value shows as they build — and Submit; they can submit again to improve before time runs out. Each student sees only their own answer; you see who has answered, never what. You can add +15 s or End round early. Scoring: hitting the target scores 10, plus up to 20 for complexity (more different operations, more steps, ×/÷, brackets that matter, advanced operations, more tiles — trivial moves like ×1 don’t count), +5 for a way nobody else found, and up to +3 for speed; a near miss within 4 scores 1–4 with no bonuses. After each round every screen shows the leaderboard with each student’s points broken down, and the ways the class found (if nobody hit it, a way is revealed); Show another way reveals more. At the end the final standings, podium and round-by-round chart stay up until you Dismiss them; Play again, New game and Add result to board (a picture of the standings) are there too. Without a live session you can play on your own. Only your device deals puzzles and scores answers, so a late, repeated or tampered answer is simply refused.
Puzzles from Puzzle SolversOn puzzlesolvers.netlify.app, the Sudoku, Killer Sudoku, Calcudoku, Futoshiki, Kakuro, Hitori, Nurikabe, Pearl Path (Masyu), Number Snake and Magic Sum games have a ✏️ Send to Slate button beside Send to Solver. It opens the puzzle in Slate on a fresh whiteboard (or the one you are on, if it is empty): the grid, cages, clues and given numbers, drawn crisply with the puzzle’s rule written above it. The puzzle is locked, so it never moves and the eraser never touches it — the pen is ready in blue, so your working stands apart from the printed numbers; write candidates, circle, highlight and erase as on any board. It saves, prints and exports with the lesson. If Slate is already open — say you are teaching a live session — the puzzle goes to that tab as a new board, your class sees it straight away, and the extra tab tells you it can be closed. Only the puzzle is sent, never the answer or anything you had filled in, and it travels in the link itself (nothing goes to a server). For each student to solve their own copy, put a Spot Question region over it. Hex Number Snake is not drawn in Slate.
Still live?Once a session starts the panel tucks itself away and the Collab button beats with a green pulse for as long as you are connected — amber while a student’s link is reconnecting. A number on the button counts students waiting to be let in and questions waiting for you; tap it to open the panel.
28Live sessions
Run a quiz
Open a quiz file made in Quizmaker and play it through the session. Each question pops up on every participant's screen; answers come back to you, get marked, and each person is told how they did.
Find itThe Quiz section of the collaboration panel — Load quiz file, then Start quiz.
Use itWatch the answered count climb, then Reveal to show the correct answer and send everyone their result and running score. Next moves through the set; End finishes and shows you the final scores.
TypesMultiple choice (one or several answers), true/false, short answer, numbers, long answer, ratings, put-in-order, match-the-following, fill-in-the-blank and find-it-on-a-picture. Pictures and equations render in both questions and options.
Heads-upIf the quiz file is code-locked you'll be asked for its play code. Marking uses Quizmaker's own rules, so a score here matches a score there. Scores live in the session only — nothing is stored.
29Live sessions
Live polls
Gauge the room in seconds. A poll has options but no right answer — useful for choosing a direction, checking opinion, or warming up a discussion.
Find itNew poll in the collaboration panel.
Use itType the question, add up to six options, and Start poll. You can also paste a picture into the question — handy for "which of these…" — and a picture alone is enough, no wording needed. Show results fills each option with a bar and a percentage on everyone's screen.
30Live sessions
Action register
A shared list of what happens next. Anyone in the session can add to it, and every entry appears for everyone straight away — so agreements don't evaporate when the session ends.
Use itType an action and press Enter (or tap Add). As presenter you can remove any entry with ✕. Print register to PDF opens a clean dated list — choose Save as PDF in the print dialog.
31Live sessions
Snapshots & awards
Keep a record, and end on a high note.
SnapshotsTake photo captures the board as it stands. Presenter and participants each build their own set, and Save PDF turns it into a print-ready page-per-photo document.
AwardAward best participant lets you pick one person or several. A trophy banner with their names appears on every screen, with fireworks, for a few seconds.
Part VII · Diagrams & drawing without a tablet
32Type it, watch it draw
Sequence diagrams from a script
Describe a conversation in a few lines and Slate draws it — participants across the top, lifelines dropping down, messages between them. Because it is built from ordinary Slate objects, it replays message by message, you can write over it, recolour it, and print it with the rest of the deck.
Find itInsert → Sequence diagram…, or the Shapes panel while a shape tool is active.
Write itOne line per message. Alice->Bob: Request is a solid arrow, Bob-->Alice: Reply a dashed one. Add actor Alice or participant Cart to set who appears and in what order.
Who is busyA->+B: call starts an activation bar on B; B-->-A: done ends it. They nest.
Branchesalt / else / end for choices, plus opt, loop, par / and, break, critical, neg and ref. They nest to any depth.
Say morenote over A,B: text (also left of / right of), == Phase two == for a divider, # to start a comment, and #red at the end of a line to colour just that message.
Built for replayEvery statement becomes its own beat, so pressing play walks the class through the conversation one message at a time — and the arrow keys step between them. Merge or reorder beats afterwards if you want fewer, bigger reveals. A line Slate cannot read is skipped with a count, never a blank board.
33It stays yours
Editing a sequence diagram
The diagram behaves as one thing even though it is made of many pieces, and the script travels inside the .slate file so you can come back to it next term.
SelectTap any part to select the whole diagram, so it drags as a unit. Tap again to select the single line or label underneath — useful for recolouring one message.
EditDouble-tap the diagram to reopen its script. Change a line, press Update, and it redraws in place.
SizeWith it selected, + and − scale it evenly. Reflow to fit re-runs the layout for the board, which re-wraps labels rather than shrinking them — better for a big change.
AnnotateDraw straight over it. Your ink is separate, survives a script edit untouched, and moves with the diagram if you drag it.
DetachCuts the link to the script. It becomes plain objects you can edit and erase by hand — and can no longer be regenerated. Until you detach, the eraser will not cut through it.
ReuseCopy and paste to another board and the script comes too, as an independent copy. Edit one and the other is untouched.
34Twenty-six kinds
Diagrams from code
Flowcharts, class and state diagrams, Gantt charts, mind maps, timelines and more — described in Mermaid, a plain-text diagram language, and placed on the board as a picture you can size and arrange.
Find itInsert → Diagram from code…, or the Shapes panel.
StartPick a type along the top and a working example appears — edit it rather than learning the syntax cold. The preview redraws as you type.
Place itPlace on board drops it in the middle, selected and ready to drag. It behaves like any picture: resize handles, rotate, crop, bring to front, send to back.
Mind map is differentA Mind map from code becomes a real, editable mind map, not a picture.
Edit laterDouble-tap it to reopen the code. The code is saved inside the .slate file, so a lesson can be reopened and one line changed rather than the whole thing redrawn.
First use is slowerThe diagram engine is only fetched the first time you open this panel, so Slate itself starts as quickly as ever. After that it is cached and works offline like everything else.
35Make it match
Styling a code diagram
A diagram with default colours looks pasted on. The controls under the code area put it on your board properly.
ColoursText, Lines, Fill and Accent each take a colour. Fill has a tick beside it — leave it off for open shapes that let the board show through, turn it on for solid boxes.
TypeFont offers the same faces as the board, so a diagram can be chalky like your handwriting or clean for a handout. Size sets the base text size.
Match boardSnaps every setting back to the current surface and ink colour in one press.
Reading the codeThe editor colours keywords, labels, arrows, numbers and comments as you type, so a mistyped keyword shows up before you render. Tab indents instead of jumping out of the box.
Kept with the pictureColours, font and size are saved alongside the code, so reopening a diagram brings back exactly what you set. Duplicating one gives the copy its own settings — change the copy and the original is untouched.
36No tablet needed
Air draw with a mouse
Drawing with a mouse is awkward: holding the button while steering is tiring, and the wobble shows. Air draw removes both problems — you draw with nothing held down, and Slate tidies the line once you finish.
Find itThe Air draw button in the style bar, next to the pen settings. It appears whenever Pen, Pencil or Highlighter is chosen on a computer. It starts off — press it once to switch it on, and it lights up while it is. Slate remembers your choice.
Use itClick once to start. Move the mouse with no button held — a light trail follows. Click again to finish, and the tidied stroke appears.
While drawingEsc throws the stroke away. Enter or Space finishes it. Moving off the board pauses the trail rather than dragging a line across your work, so you can reach a menu and come back.
Clean-upRight-click the button for Light, Medium or Strong. Slate removes hand tremor, straightens a line that was meant to be straight, closes a shape whose ends nearly meet, and tapers the ends the way a real pen does.
Why it looks betterThe tidying happens after you finish, not as you go — so Slate can see the whole path at once and knows what you were aiming for. That is why a shaky line comes out straight instead of merely smoothed. On an iPad with a stylus nothing changes: the button stays out of the way.
37Hands on the keys
Every keyboard shortcut
Nothing here is required — every one of these has a button. They are for when your hands are already on the keyboard.
ToolsV select · P pen · N pencil · H highlighter · E eraser · F fill · T text · S shape · M magnifier
EditingCtrl/⌘ + Z undo · Shift + Ctrl/⌘ + Z or Ctrl/⌘ + Y redo · Ctrl/⌘ + C copy · Ctrl/⌘ + V paste · Ctrl/⌘ + D duplicate · Delete or Backspace remove the selection
ReplaySpace play or pause · ←→ step a beat back or forward · Home to the start · End to the finish
Air drawEsc cancel the stroke · Enter or Space finish it
AnywhereEsc closes a panel or dialog, and steps back out of whatever you are in the middle of.
Typing is safeShortcuts never fire while you are typing in a text box — a diagram script, a board name, a chat message. P types a P, Space types a space, and Backspace deletes a character rather than your artwork.
Part VIII · Making things from code
38Numbers into pictures
Charts from your data
Type the numbers, pick a shape. No spreadsheet, no menus of options — the first line says what kind of chart, the rest is your data.
Find itInsert → Chart from data…
The shape of itFirst line: the chart type. Then any of title, x, y, series. Then one line per bar, slice or point.
Examplebar · title Marks by term · y Score · Term 1, 62 · Term 2, 71
More than one lineAdd columns and name them: series Maths, Science then Term 1, 62, 70. Use stack instead of bar to pile them up.
Typesbar, hbar, line, area, stack, scatter, pie, doughnut, funnel, treemap, sunburst, radar, gauge, sankey, boxplot, heatmap. Pick one along the top and a working example appears.
Special formsGauge takes value 92 and max 100. Sankey takes Lesson > Teaching, 45. Scatter takes two numbers per line. Box plot takes five.
ColoursText and axis colour pickers, five palettes, any of the board's fonts, and a size. Match board puts it all back to your surface's ink.
Paste from a spreadsheetCopy a couple of columns from Excel or Sheets and paste them straight in. Tabs, commas and semicolons all work, trailing commas are ignored, and a label containing a comma just needs "quotes around it". If a line cannot be read, that line is reported and the rest still draws.
When the simple form is not enoughEdit as JSON reveals the full chart definition underneath. Change anything, and the preview follows. While JSON is showing it is in charge and the data lines are ignored — press Back to data to return.
39Proper maths
Equations
Fractions, roots, matrices, integrals — written in LaTeX, the notation textbooks are typeset in, and placed on the board as clean type rather than something you hand-lettered with a mouse.
Find itInsert → Equation…
Start hereSixteen starters along the top — quadratic formula, Pythagoras, simultaneous equations, matrices, integrals, standard deviation, long division. Click one and edit it.
The basicsx^2 raises, x_1 lowers, \frac{a}{b} makes a fraction, \sqrt{x} a root. Anything starting with a backslash is a command; braces group what it applies to.
Symbols\pm \times \div \leq \geq \neq \approx \infty \pi \theta \Delta \rightarrow — and the highlighting colours commands, so a misspelt one stands out before you render it.
LookInk colour, point size, and a display toggle for the larger centred style. It is placed as text-sized artwork, not stretched to fill the board.
Why it always looks rightEvery letter is drawn as a shape rather than typed in a font, so an equation looks identical on the projector, on a tablet, in a print-out and in a saved file — with no font to install and nothing to download.
40Start the lesson
The lesson header
One tidy line across the board: a thought for the day, the class, a name, the date, the lesson's times.
Find itInsert → Lesson header…
ChooseTick what you want. The thought can be one of fifteen presets picked at random, or your own. Time starts now and runs for however many minutes you set.
LookText and rule colours, five underline styles, and top or bottom placement. The preview shows the finished line as it will appear.
AfterwardsIt is ordinary text and a line, so you can drag it, retype it, or recolour it like anything else on the board. It never overlaps the watermark.
On every boardIn the Lesson header panel, under Repeat on every new board, three switches: Add this header automatically, Stamp the board number and Stamp the date & time it was added. Switching one on applies it to every board in the deck straight away — the first board included — and to each board you add afterwards. A board never gets stamped twice. The board number and time sit together in a small note bottom right; Board 2 of 5 updates by itself when boards are added, removed or reordered. Switch the number or time off and the notes go; a header, once added, stays like any other writing.
41Four panels, one question
Which one should I use?
Slate has four ways to make something from text. They overlap a little, so here is the short answer.
Sequence diagramA conversation between people or systems, step by step. Use this one when you want to reveal it message by message in replay — it is drawn as real Slate objects you can annotate, recolour and erase after detaching. Chapter 32
Mind mapA central topic with branches you type into, fold and build together in a live class. Mind maps
Diagram from codeEverything else structural: flowcharts, class and state diagrams, timelines, Gantt charts, and twenty more. Placed as a picture. Chapter 34
Chart from dataAnything with numbers in it. Chapter 38
Take it apartSelect any diagram, chart or equation and press Convert to editable objects. It stops being a picture and becomes ordinary Slate lines and text — draw on it with the pen, recolour one bar, rub out a label, and it reveals piece by piece in replay.
Changed your mindBack to a picture rebuilds it from its code, with the code editable again. That works however long ago you converted it, and after saving and reopening the file — it does not rely on undo. Anything you drew or changed since converting is lost, so it asks first.
One rule worth knowingAnything made from code is locked while it still has its code: the pen and eraser will decline, because a mark made on it would vanish the moment it redrew. Double-tap to change the code, or Detach a sequence diagram to break the link and edit it freely by hand. Everything else — moving, resizing, bringing to front — works as usual.
The ? buttonEvery one of these panels has a ? beside its title that opens this guide at the right chapter. You should never have to go hunting for the syntax.
42Bring your own
Pasting a drawing
Copy a line drawing from anywhere — an icon site's copy SVG button, Inkscape, Illustrator, Figma, a diagram from a web page — and paste it straight onto the board.
Or open oneAn .svg file behaves the same way whether you paste it, drag it in, or choose it under Add image. It arrives as a picture, and Detach then turns it into editable lines whenever you want them.
Two ways to landSlate asks whether you want it as editable lines or as a picture. Editable means real Slate ink: recolour one line, rub part of it out, and it draws itself piece by piece in replay.
Too detailedIf a drawing uses gradients, blur, masking, an embedded photo, or simply has too many parts, Slate places it as a picture and says why. Converting it would look wrong rather than simply simpler.
Match the boardMost artwork is dark ink on white, which vanishes on a dark board. Pasted lines are adjusted automatically, and the Match the board button does the same for anything already there — it flips what would not read, keeps colours you would recognise, and removes the white plate behind the drawing.
What converts wellPlain line art is the sweet spot — icons, technical drawings, simple diagrams. Shaded illustrations and anything photographic are better kept as pictures, which is what Slate will suggest.
43Structure a lesson
Thinking frames
A T-chart, a KWL grid, a Frayer model, a Venn, a storyboard — and, for work that isn't a lesson, a business model canvas, a sailboat retro or an empathy map. Unlike the chart and diagram panels, a frame draws nothing of its own: it is a blank scaffold to write into, on the board or after you detach it. There are ninety-nine.
Find oneFrames are grouped by what they are for, and each group shows how many it holds. Click a heading to open or close it — only the group you are in starts open. Or type in the search box, which looks across every group at once and opens whatever matches.
Fill it inGive it a title, rename each area in its own box, and set how many rows, columns or steps it has. A frame with a word in the middle — a Frayer, a word map — gets a Middle box too. Switching frame keeps your title.
SourceEverything you type is kept as a couple of plain lines, folded away under Source at the bottom. You never need to open it; it is there if you would rather type than click, and it is what gets saved.
Make it yoursText and line colour, a solid background, typeface, label size, line thickness and corner rounding. Turn Cells on to tint each area from a palette so they read as separate zones. Match board puts it back to the board's own colours.
Write in itPlace it and write straight on top. Or use Detach to turn it into real Slate objects — then every box and heading is yours to move, recolour, retype, or reveal one at a time with Fades.
Sticky notes snapDrag a note onto a frame and drop it inside one of the areas — it snaps neatly into that cell and shrinks to fit if it needs to. A placemat or a diamond 9 becomes somewhere a group sorts their ideas rather than a picture with paper on top.
TipFrames are re-editable. Select one and press Edit to change the frame, the wording or the colours without starting again.
Some lines you can add
title a heading across the top · labels rename the areas · centre the word in the middle of a Frayer or word map · rowscolsstepscausesparts how many areas to draw.
44Rows and columns
Tables
A table for a board, not a spreadsheet. Type into the grid, or paste a block straight from Excel or Google Sheets and it fills in one go.
Find itInsert → Table…. Sweep across the little grid to say how many rows and columns you want, then drag out on the board where it should go and how big — the table appears there, at that size, open and ready to type into. A quick tap instead of a drag gives it a standard size. Fastest of all: copy a block of cells in Excel, Sheets or Numbers and paste onto the board — the table is made for you, with those cells already in it.
Type in itThe table is edited where it lives, not in a dialog over the board, so you can always see it against the rest of your work. Click a cell and type. Tab moves across, Enter moves down, and either one at the end adds a row rather than stopping. Esc finishes, and so does clicking anywhere else on the board.
Paste into itCopy a range from a spreadsheet and paste into any cell: the block fills from that cell outwards, and the table grows to fit if what you pasted is bigger than it is. Tabs and newlines are exactly what every spreadsheet puts on the clipboard, so there is nothing to import and no format to choose. More → Copy as text sends it back the other way, for pasting into a spreadsheet or another table.
Shape it by handEverything about the structure is on the table itself. A bar of column handles sits along the top and a bar of row handles down the left: tap one to select that column or row and get insert, move, clear and delete for it. Between every two columns — and before the first and after the last — there is a dot that inserts one there, with a line showing exactly where it will land; the same down the side for rows. Between columns there is also a grip you drag to set that column’s width, and only its neighbour gives up the room, so one edge does not shuffle the whole table. A + past the right edge adds a column, one below adds a row, the corner sizes the whole table, and the grip at the top left slides it around the board without leaving the editor.
Dress itThe toolbar floats just above the table. Style offers eight ready-made looks — including a Chalk one with no fills at all, so a chalkboard shows through — plus the header row, a bold first column, banded rows or columns and rounded corners. Font and the size stepper, the three alignment buttons, Colours and Borders are each one tap away. Colours asks what to colour first — text, cell fill, header text, header fill, the background behind the table, or the lines — and then shows the swatches for that one, with a full picker for any colour at all. Choosing the target first is what keeps the panel small enough to stay on screen.
What you change is what you selectedThe button on the left of the toolbar says what the next change will land on, and that follows your selection. With the whole table selected, the size and colour are the table’s own. Tap a column handle and the alignment is that column’s. Tap or drag across cells and the size, text colour, fill and alignment are those cells’ — so one total row can be shaded, one answer can be red, and a heading can be centred over numbers that sit right. Setting the whole table again hands the individual cells back, so nothing is left fighting.
Merge cellsDrag across the cells you want to join, then press Merge on the table’s toolbar. Merge all makes the whole block one cell — a title over the top of the table, say. Merge across joins each row of the block separately, and Merge down joins each column separately — a subject name down the side of several rows. Unmerge splits any merged cell you have selected back into its cells. The words in the cells are kept, joined into the merged cell, and the merged cell takes the look of its top-left cell. A column or row handle offers Merge the column or Merge the row in one tap. Selecting part of a merged cell takes in the whole of it, inserting a row or column inside a merged cell makes it bigger, and pasting over one splits it first so nothing you pasted is hidden. You can also ask Genie: “merge the header row”, “merge column 1” or “unmerge the table”.
Write on itOnce you finish, the table is an ordinary mark on the board: replay it, cover it with a region, print it, export it, and a live class sees it like anything else. Write straight over the top, or More → Turn into text on the board to break it into text objects you can edit and rub out one at a time.
TipColumns size themselves to their contents, so a Yes/No column stays narrow next to a column of sentences — until you drag one, and then your width is the one that is kept. More → Measure the columns again hands that decision back. A paste that changes the shape of the table measures them afresh, because a width chosen for four columns means nothing once there are eight.
🧠New
Mind maps
A mind map you type into, right on the board — a central topic, branches coming off it, and branches off those. It lays itself out as you go, so it always looks organised, and in a live class several people can build the same map at once.
Find itInsert → Mind map…. Pick a starting point — Blank (one central topic), Brainstorm (a topic and five idea branches), Four branches (Who / What / Why / How) or Study map (key ideas, vocabulary, examples, questions, links). It lands in a clear part of the board, with Main Topic already selected: just start typing to replace it. Esc on the picker adds nothing. With a map selected, Insert → Mind map… opens that map instead. Make as many maps on a board as you like.
Type, Tab, EnterThe keyboard does almost everything. Tab adds a branch to the selected topic, Enter adds a topic beside it (a sibling), and the new one is ready to type into straight away — so type, Tab, type, Enter, type builds a map without touching the mouse. Shift+Enter starts a new line inside a topic. Esc finishes typing; a second Esc closes the map. A new topic you leave empty simply disappears; emptying an existing one puts its words back. On the mouse or a tablet, double-click a topic to type in it, or tap the selected one again, and use + Branch / + Sibling on the toolbar or the round + beside the selected topic. Press ? (or the ? button) for the full list of keys.
Get aroundThe arrow keys move between topics: outwards and inwards along a branch, up and down between neighbours. F2, or just typing a letter, edits the selected topic.
ReorganiseDrag a topic onto another to move it there — everything that hangs from it comes too. The topic you are over is highlighted before you let go, and a short click never moves anything, so selecting cannot re-arrange a map by accident. Drag to the top or bottom edge of a neighbouring topic to change the order instead (a line shows where it will land), or use Alt+↑ / Alt+↓. A topic can’t be dropped inside its own branch. Drag the empty part of an open map to move the whole map.
Delete safelyDelete (or the toolbar button) removes a topic and its branch, and Slate tells you how many topics went. Ctrl+Z brings the whole branch back exactly as it was. The central topic stays; to remove a whole map, press Done and delete it like any other object.
Fold a branchSpace, the Fold button or the small circle at the end of a branch tucks it away. A folded topic shows a badge with how many topics are hidden, and nothing is lost — unfold to see them again. Folds are yours: folding a branch changes only your own view, so a student can focus on one branch without changing anyone else’s map. Your folds are saved in your .slate file.
Colours, shapes, themesEach first-level branch gets its own colour, and every topic under it follows, so a branch reads as one idea. Colour recolours the selected topic’s whole branch in one tap. Shape offers rounded box, pill, box, underline, circle, cloud, hexagon and burst — tick The whole branch to change them all at once. B (or Ctrl+B) makes a topic bold; A− and A+ make it smaller or bigger. Look holds twelve themes (Chalk, Night, Ocean, Sunset, Neon and Forest for dark boards; Paper, Pastel, Spring, Classic and Candy for light ones; Ink in the board’s own pen colour), the layout, four fonts and a background — none (the board shows through), twelve ready colours or any colour at all; on a background the words and lines switch to a colour that reads on it. Colour also has twenty more colours and Any colour for a branch. A new map picks the theme that suits your board.
Layout is automaticTopics are placed for you every time the map changes — there is nothing to straighten up. Look → Layout chooses Both sides (branches balanced left and right), To the right, or Downwards (a tree). Long topics wrap onto several lines. The map grows around its centre, so it stays where you put it. Tidy opens every branch and fits the map to the board if it has grown too big. Topics can’t be placed by hand.
UndoWhile a map is open, Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y undo and redo your own changes to it. Once it is closed, the ordinary board Undo works as usual.
From Mermaid codeInsert → Diagram from code… → Mind map (or paste any Mermaid mindmap). The preview counts the topics, and Place on board makes the same editable mind map as Insert → Mind map — not a picture — so everything above works on it. The indentation sets the branches, and the node shapes are kept: ((circle)), (rounded), [box], {{hexagon}}, )cloud( and ))burst((. ::icon(…) and class lines are not used, and the preview says how many were skipped. A mistake gets a message naming the line. The code is only read, never run, and is not kept once the map is made. An older mind map placed from code (a picture) turns into an editable one the next time you open it and press Update.
Together, in a live classA map you insert appears for everyone. When you let students edit (✏️ for one student, or Let everyone annotate), each of them can open the same map and add, rename, move, colour and delete topics, and everyone sees each change as soon as it is made — no refresh. A small name tag shows on a topic someone else is typing in. Students who are not allowed to edit can look but not change the map; the teacher’s device checks every change, so this does not rely on hiding buttons. A student with a writing box can’t change maps.
When two people edit at onceAdditions never clash: two people adding branches at the same moment both get them. If two people retype the same topic, the first to finish wins, and the second is told who changed it and shown their own words, so nothing disappears unannounced — it is not live character-by-character co-typing. If a topic is deleted while someone is typing in it, the delete wins and they are told, with their words. Moving a topic and renaming it at the same time both happen. For colours and styles, the last change wins. Every screen always ends with the same map.
Shared and yoursShared with everyone: the topics and their words, the branches and their order, colours, shapes, theme, layout and font. Yours only: where you are on the board, what is selected, what you are typing until you finish it, and your folds. Someone else editing never moves your board. The teacher can choose Look → The class sees what I fold to reveal a map one branch at a time: while it is on, the teacher’s folds are everyone’s.
Dropping outA student whose connection drops gets the current map as soon as they are back, including everything that changed while they were away. A change that was still on its way is never applied twice.
Good to knowOn the board a closed map is an ordinary picture, so replay, region covers, print, export and the Time Machine all show it. The map engine is only fetched the first time you use a mind map (or open a lesson with a folded one), so Slate starts as quickly as ever. One map holds up to 400 topics.
▶New
Video on the board
Put a YouTube or Vimeo video — or a link to an .mp4 / .webm file — on the board as a card, and play it right there, without leaving the lesson.
Find itInsert → Video…. Paste the link from the address bar or the video's Share button. Slate says which kind of video it found, fills in the title when the site provides it, and shows the card before you place it.
Start part-wayStart at takes a time such as 1:30. A link that already carries a time (YouTube's Share → Start at) fills it in for you.
Play itTap the play button on the card. The player opens over the card, at its size — or larger, in the middle, when the card is too small to watch. Esc or ✕ puts it away. Double-click, or Play in the right-click menu, does the same. A tap anywhere else on the card just selects it, so you can move, resize or delete it like any picture.
Change itRight-click → Change link… swaps the video, title or start time on the same card.
In a live classStudents get the card like anything else on the board, and can tap play to watch it on their own screen. As the presenter, right-click → Play for the class opens the player on every student's screen at once; closing yours closes theirs.
Saved with the lessonThe card is saved, printed and exported as a picture; the link travels with it, so it plays again when the lesson is opened. Playing needs an internet connection, and the video's own site decides what it shows (some videos can't be embedded, and a site may show adverts).
The picture on the cardWhen the video site allows it, the card shows the video's own picture; otherwise it gets a plain card with the title. Either way the board still exports cleanly.
45Dates
Calendars
A month or a whole year, dropped on the board as something to write on — homework due, trip days, countdowns.
Find itInsert → Calendar.
ChooseMonth or Year, which year, which month. This month jumps back to today.
Dress itStart the week on Monday or Sunday, shade the weekends, ring today, and turn the day boxes on or off. Plus the usual colours, typeface, size and corners.
Write on itWrite straight over it, or Detach to make every date a real object.
46Flag what matters
Labels
A small coloured badge with a word and an icon — Important, Homework, Check this — to mark what a busy board should draw the eye to.
Find itInsert → Label.
Make oneType the text, pick one of sixteen icons (or none), then set the colour, text colour, outline, typeface, size and how round the corners are.
Keep itSave this one adds it to Saved labels, which holds ten. Click a saved label to load it back; the × on the chip removes it. Save an eleventh and the oldest makes way. They stay on this device.
TipLabels are not attached to anything, so drag one wherever it needs to sit and it stays put.
47Lists and symbols
Lists, symbols & screenshots
ListsWith the Text tool, the style bar now offers a bulleted, numbered or checklist style. Blank lines keep their gap without taking a bullet or a number.
TickingOn a checklist, select it once then tap a box to tick or untick it — so a class can work through a list together.
SymbolsSymbols live under Decor, below the accessories, covering emoji, travel, maths, arrows, shapes, Greek, accents, signs, music, nature, food, science, school and sport & games — about 700 in all. Recent is the first tab: it collects the ones you actually use, and the panel opens on it once there is something there.
Search by nameType what you want — plane, hotel, passport, train station, koala, tick, fraction — and every set is searched by the symbols’ own names, best match first; the start of a word is enough (air finds the aeroplane). Point at a symbol to see its name. Enter places the top match, and ↓ then the arrow keys move through the tiles.
Which ones you can recolourA plain symbol (maths, arrows, Greek, ★, ♥, and the plain travel and science signs such as ✈︎ ⚓︎ ♨︎) is drawn in your pen colour, and changes colour like any text: select it and pick a colour. A colour emoji (✈️ 🚢 🏨) keeps its own colours — the font draws it as a picture, so no app can repaint it. Pointing at a symbol says which kind it is, and Plain only beside the search box hides the colour emoji. Many travel signs are offered both ways. How plain signs look depends on the fonts on your computer.
ScreenshotsUnder Add image, Screenshot takes a still of another tab, a window or the whole screen. Your browser asks which one — Slate never picks for you, and cannot.
Why it says “Share”That wording belongs to your browser, not to Slate, and the same dialog is used for video calls. Nothing is shared and nothing leaves your device: Slate takes a single still picture and immediately lets go. Slate also asks the browser not to switch you to the tab you picked, so you stay on the board. Not available on iPad.
48Say well done
Reward stickers
A badge you can hand out on the board — drop one onto a pupil's work, or onto the board at the end of a lesson. Twenty shapes, ten colour schemes and sixteen icons, so the same words never look the same twice.
Find itInsert → Reward sticker.
Quickest wayTap one of the ready-made ones — Well done!, Superstar, Champion, Kind friend — and it sets the shape, colour and icon in one go. Any name and message you have already typed stay put, because those are about the child, not the design.
Make it theirsThree lines: a headline, the pupil's name, and a short message saying what it is for. The words shrink to fit the badge rather than spilling over it, so you can write as much or as little as you like.
Change the lookPick a shape — rosette, star, medal, trophy, shield, heart, banner and more — then a colour scheme. Nudge the badge, edge or text colour individually if you want something the schemes don't offer, and Reset colours puts them back. Tick Gradient to shade the badge from one colour into a second of your choosing.
CelebrateEach sticker has an Animation — Pop, Spin, Bounce, Sparkle burst, Confetti, Jelly wobble, Flip, Hearts, Fireworks or Shine — with ▶ Preview in the dialog. It plays once as it lands (untick Play when placed to place it quietly), then rests. Click the sticker with the select tool to play it again — a drag still just moves it. In a live session your play reaches the whole class; a student clicking a sticker plays it on their own screen only. Saved files, exports and prints always show the still sticker, and devices set to reduce motion get a gentle glow instead.
TipStickers stay editable: select one and press Edit to change the name for the next pupil. Detach turns one into ordinary shapes and text if you want to pull it apart.
49Make it look designed
Infographics
Type a list; pick a look. Forty-six layouts across nine groups — chevrons, cycles, pyramids, cards, stat tiles, timelines, hub-and-spokes — in twelve colour schemes. The picture is bound to the list: add a seventh item and the layout reflows, delete one and the rest redistribute. You never drag a box.
Find itInsert → Infographic.
The listEach item has a title, a line of detail, a value for the layouts that show numbers, and an icon. Add, reorder with the arrows, or remove. Every layout says how many items it takes, and tells you if some are hidden.
ColourTwelve schemes, or set the text, on-shape text and background yourself. Turn on gradient fills and each shape shades from its own colour — running down or across. Pick a second colour and every shape blends towards that instead of the palette.
LinesAn outline on every shape with its own colour and thickness, and a separate colour and thickness for the connectors — the arrows and rails are a different job from the boxes. Plus corner rounding.
It animatesEvery item is drawn as its own piece. Detach turns the graphic into real objects grouped item by item, so Play builds it up one step at a time instead of everything appearing at once.
TipGradients survive Detach: a two-colour shape stays a two-colour shape on the board.
Part IX
The board’s own history
54Going back
Time machine, milestones & snapshots
A lesson is not only where it ended up. The question as it was first written, the attempt that went wrong, the moment it clicked — all of that is worth keeping, and Slate does. The time machine slides back through this board, and milestones and snapshots keep the points you want to hold on to.
Find itTools → Time machine, beside Region — the other panel that opens over the board. It walks the board in the order the lesson was made, the same order the player and a region use — so a detached diagram steps through box, arrow, box rather than through every arrow first.
Slide back and lookDrag the slider and the board shows itself as it was. It is a preview: the board is outlined in amber and a banner says Preview — not the live board, because nothing you are looking at has changed anything. Now brings you back. The slider runs over every mark on the board, in the order you made them — step 0 is an empty board, step 40 is the first forty marks — so a lesson with two hundred marks has two hundred steps. There is no ceiling on it and nothing is stored to provide it: the board itself is the record, which is the same order the replay plays in.
What the slider does not showIt walks the marks that are on the board. A mark you moved or recoloured later appears in its final state rather than its first, and a mark you deleted is not on the timeline at all. Undo still covers the last few of those (ten, or five on Battery saver), and a snapshot covers anything you want kept for good.
Replay from a pointReplay hands that point to the player and plays the board building itself up to there — the same replay as everywhere else, with beats, speed and the rest. Esc brings the board back exactly as it was, preview or not.
MilestonesMilestone names the point you are looking at and keeps it. The name box offers the ones a lesson actually uses in order — Question, First attempt, Key insight, Correction, Final solution — so naming one is usually a tap and Enter. Milestones are listed in the panel, can be renamed or removed, and stay with the board when you save it.
SnapshotsSnapshot keeps the same thing with a picture of itself, so the panel shows you what each one is rather than only what it is called. Each snapshot carries its name, its thumbnail and the time it was taken. Tap one in the panel for everything you can do with it.
What a snapshot actually isNot a screenshot. A snapshot holds the real marks — every stroke, shape, note and picture as its own object, written the same way the board itself is saved. That is what makes the rest of this chapter possible: you cannot fork, restore, copy from or edit a screenshot. The thumbnail is only its face.
ForkFork makes a new board from that point and leaves the one you are on completely alone. The new board arrives named after where it came from, with its own history and its own beats — so you can take the lesson a second way without losing the first. Useful for “here is what happens if we try it like this instead”.
RestoreRestore puts this board back to that point. Before it changes anything it keeps what is on the board now as a snapshot called Before restore, with the time — so work is never quietly lost, and one Undo also steps it back. Restoring to an earlier point removes the marks made after it, which is what restoring means. Restore is the only button here marked in red, because it is the only one that changes the board you are on.
Copy from a snapshot or milestoneCopy onto this board brings that point’s marks onto the board you are working on without replacing anything — they arrive slightly offset and already selected, ready to drag into place. This is the one to reach for when you want the original question back on the board under the working, a diagram you drew earlier reused rather than redrawn, or a finished example brought into a new explanation.
Put a snapshot on the boardPlace it on the board drops a snapshot object onto the board: a small picture of that point that you can move, resize, rotate, crop, duplicate and delete like any other picture, and open in the image lab. It is more than a picture though — right-click it for Open as a new board, Copy its contents onto this board, Restore the board to it, Export it and Rename, because it is still carrying the work inside it. Put three of them along the bottom of a board and you have a visible before-and-after of a whole lesson.
Export one on its ownExport as a picture saves just that milestone or snapshot, rendered at full board quality through the same export Slate uses everywhere — surface, frame and all — not the little thumbnail. Handy for a worksheet showing the question and the answer side by side.
What travels, and what does notMilestones and snapshots are saved in your .slate file and come back when you reopen it, with their marks intact and editable — and because the slider is built from the board itself, the whole timeline comes back with the file too. A board may keep up to thirty milestones and snapshots — they hold real work, so they have real size. Files saved before this existed simply have none, and open exactly as they always did.
In a nutshellPreview to look, Replay to watch, Milestone or Snapshot to keep, Fork to branch, Restore to go back, Copy to bring a piece of it forward.