08Editing
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; Undo Redo 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.
Part of the Slate guide — or read the whole guide on one page.