How to Use an Online Whiteboard

An online whiteboard is a blank canvas you draw on with your mouse, trackpad, or touchscreen. It fills the same role as a physical dry-erase board: quick diagrams, brainstorming, explaining an idea on a video call, or working through a problem visually without the ceremony of dedicated design software.

The appeal is speed and simplicity. There is nothing to install and no account to create. You open a page and start drawing, which makes it well suited to a spur-of-the-moment sketch you would otherwise scribble on paper.

Most of your work happens with a small set of tools. The pen draws freehand lines and is the workhorse for handwriting, arrows, and rough sketches. Shape tools let you drop clean rectangles, circles, and lines that would be hard to draw steadily by hand, which is helpful for boxes-and-arrows diagrams.

The eraser removes what you no longer want, and adjusting pen color and thickness lets you separate different ideas visually, such as using one color for a diagram and another for annotations. These few tools cover the large majority of everyday whiteboard tasks.

Freehand drawing is forgiving because of undo. A misjudged line or an accidental stroke can be reversed instantly, which encourages you to sketch quickly rather than hesitate over every mark. The standard keyboard shortcut for undo works on most whiteboards, so you rarely need to reach for the eraser to fix a small slip.

Because the canvas is not saved anywhere automatically, undo also means the current state is the only record of your work. If you want to keep what is on the board, you export it rather than relying on it being there later.

This whiteboard runs entirely in your browser. Your drawing stays on your device and is never uploaded, so it is private by default. That privacy comes with a trade-off: refreshing or closing the tab clears the board, so export anything you want to keep.

Exporting turns your canvas into a standard PNG image you can attach to an email, drop into a document, or post in a chat. PNG is a good fit for whiteboard drawings because it keeps sharp lines crisp and supports a clean background.

For the best result, finish your drawing before exporting and give shapes and labels a little breathing room so nothing is cut off at the edges. If you need several versions, export after each stage rather than trying to reconstruct an earlier state, since the board itself is not saved.