Cabinet’s tools

Notes, shapes, connectors, tables, sketches, frames and diagrams, all on one canvas.

Cabinet is local-first. Boards are saved in your browser, and you don’t need an account. Google Drive sync is optional.

Notes & text

Notes, stickies and cards

Anything you place can be moved, resized, recoloured, duplicated and undone.

Text Note

Rich text: lists, checklists, highlights, fonts and colours. For anything longer than a phrase.

Sticky Note

Quick thoughts in nine colours. The fastest way to get an idea down.

Card

A labelled card in nine colours. Good for statuses, owners and tags.

Text notes, sticky notes and labelled cards.
Shapes & connectors

Shapes, lines and connectors

Shapes

Fifteen shapes, from rectangles and diamonds to clouds and comic bursts. Each has editable text, a fill and an outline.

Connectors

They attach to shapes, notes, images, tables and frames, and stay attached when things move. An arrow ends on the shape’s real outline.

Line styles

Straight, elbow or curved. Solid, dashed or dotted. Arrowheads at either end.

Shapes joined by connectors.
Visual material

Images, icons and sketches

Image

Paste or drag in pictures. Caption them, compress them, or make one the board’s cover.

Icons

128 hand-drawn icons in 18 categories, from animals and weather to charts and planning.

Sketch

Draw with pencil, marker, ink nib or chisel tips. There are soft erasers, and it reads stylus pressure.

Pictures, icons and a sketch on one board.
Structure & feedback

Tables, frames and comments

Table

A small grid, up to 12 columns and 20 rows. Colour the cells, and mark any of them with a tick, a cross or a circle. A table pasted from a chat, a doc or a spreadsheet stays a table.

A table with ticks, crosses and coloured cells.

Frame

Groups things under a title. Collapse it, hide it, tint it or recolour it. The + on its side adds another frame next to it.

Comment

Pin a comment to an item and it stays where you put it, even when the item is resized. Resolve it when it’s dealt with.

Frames, with a comment pinned to a note.
Diagrams

Three diagram tools

Every node is an ordinary board item.

Flow Diagram

Built from the keyboard. Tab adds a connected node, Enter adds a sibling, and Shift+Tab moves a node up a level. Drag a node onto another to reconnect it.

Mind Map

Ideas branching out from one central theme.

Concept Graph

A curve on a pair of axes, with labels you place along it. Good for showing how something rises, dips or levels off.

A Flow Diagram.
Playful widgets

A couple of playful widgets

Rating System

Quick scores you can put beside anything.

Dice Roller

Pick from d4 to d100 and roll 3D dice in a tray. It keeps a history of your rolls, and uses flat dice if 3D isn’t available or you prefer reduced motion.

Want these already arranged?

The Templates page has planners, timetables, checklists, habit trackers and step guides. They’re built from these tools, so you can edit them the same way.

Organisation

Boards, folders and covers

A home for your boards

Boards, folders, covers and the Bin are all on the home screen.

  • Every board has a live preview of what’s on it.
  • Or upload a cover picture and crop it.
  • Sort boards into coloured folders. Archive the ones you’re not using.
  • Deleted boards stay in the Bin for 30 days.
  • Share a single board as a file, and import one back as a copy.
The board gallery, with folders in the sidebar.
Across boards

Boards that point at each other

Live References

Draw a rectangle round part of a board and show that area, live, on other boards. Edit the original and every reference follows.

  • Good for a legend you want on every board.
  • You can name, move and resize the area. Every reference updates.
  • A reference shows the real items at their real size.
  • Add something inside the area later and it appears in every reference.
  • References are read-only. Double-press one to go to the original.
  • If the original is deleted, the reference says so.
A legend shown on another board as a live reference.

Links inside Cabinet

Words on a board can link to another board, or to one thing on it.

  • Right-click anything and choose Copy link to this, or Link this to… to pick where some words should lead.
  • Typing [[ while writing opens the same picker.
  • Following a link moves the view there and flashes a ring round what it points at.
  • A link to another board opens it. The back arrow takes you back to where the link was.
  • Comments can hold links too. Every board lists what links to it.
  • Hover a link to see where it goes.
Linked words, and the list of what links to this board.

Search

Find any board, or anything on one, by typing a few letters.

  • Search from the boards list, from the button beside the zoom controls, or with ⌘K.
  • It finds words inside tables, mind maps and dialogues too.
  • Choosing an object opens its board and frames it.
  • The same search is used to pick where a link points.
Search, with the matching letters marked.
Speed

Fast with a keyboard

On a phone, the Tools sheet and the undo and redo buttons do the same jobs.

⌘ on a Mac; Ctrl everywhere else.

Your data

Local-first, by design

You don’t need an account. Boards are stored on your own device unless you choose to share or sync them.

The full detail is in the privacy policy.

Open a board and start placing things.

Everything on this page is on the toolbar.

Open Cabinet Start from a template