51Faster
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.
Part of the Slate guide — or read the whole guide on one page.