52Room to work
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.
Part of the Slate guide — or read the whole guide on one page.