Miro is great for involved, collaborative diagramming with a team when you want to build out a design or idea in great detail, but sometimes you just want to quickly sketch something that looks good and share it with a co-worker.
My go-to software for this is excalidraw. It’s limited to shapes, lines, and text (no fancy UML), but if that’s all you need to get your idea across it’s extremely quick and easy to use.
Holy wow excalidraw is good, thank you! I’ve spent a long time being frustrated that I know exactly what I want from this kind of application and nothing does even half of it. But excalidraw is exactly the ideal program I was imagining. Several times when trying it out I thought “Ok in my ideal program, if I hit A it will switch to the arrow tool.” and then it did. “Cool, I wonder what other shortcuts there are” so I hit ”?” and hey a nice cheat sheet pops up. Infinite canvas, navigated how I would expect. Instant multiplayer, with visible cursors so you can gesture at things. Even a dark mode. Perfect.
I would choose it for very different use cases to slides; I’ve never diagrammed anything in a slides editor. I have historically drawn things in excalidraw, screenshotted them, then pasted them into a slides editor though.
Tableau Noir—supports LaTeX formulas. It’s weird in that it requires a few additional key presses: (1) make a text field; (2) write a formula enclosed in single dollar signs; (3) with the cursor anywhere in the text field, press enter, then backspace (this step is silly, but otherwise it doesn’t work); (4) press Esc.
Tableau Noir—has an eraser.
Tableau Noir—you can insert pages from pdf documents.
Both—no registration, no bullshit.
Both—work alright on ipad in the browser, although I have tried both only briefly.
Software: excalidraw.com
Need: quick diagramming
Other programs I’ve tried: draw.io, miro
Miro is great for involved, collaborative diagramming with a team when you want to build out a design or idea in great detail, but sometimes you just want to quickly sketch something that looks good and share it with a co-worker.
My go-to software for this is excalidraw. It’s limited to shapes, lines, and text (no fancy UML), but if that’s all you need to get your idea across it’s extremely quick and easy to use.
Holy wow excalidraw is good, thank you! I’ve spent a long time being frustrated that I know exactly what I want from this kind of application and nothing does even half of it. But excalidraw is exactly the ideal program I was imagining. Several times when trying it out I thought “Ok in my ideal program, if I hit A it will switch to the arrow tool.” and then it did. “Cool, I wonder what other shortcuts there are” so I hit ”?” and hey a nice cheat sheet pops up. Infinite canvas, navigated how I would expect. Instant multiplayer, with visible cursors so you can gesture at things. Even a dark mode. Perfect.
Another very simple one (and easy to self-host too) is WBO: https://wbo.ophir.dev/
Oh wow, this is great.
It’s been an absolute delight using excalidraw, thanks for the rec! Everything just works and it looks pretty:)
Does excalidraw have an advantage over a slides editor like PowerPoint or Keynote?
I would choose it for very different use cases to slides; I’ve never diagrammed anything in a slides editor. I have historically drawn things in excalidraw, screenshotted them, then pasted them into a slides editor though.
I have a pretty good competitor—https://tableaunoir.github.io. Here’s how they compare:
Excalidraw—is more polished.
Tableau Noir—supports LaTeX formulas. It’s weird in that it requires a few additional key presses: (1) make a text field; (2) write a formula enclosed in single dollar signs; (3) with the cursor anywhere in the text field, press enter, then backspace (this step is silly, but otherwise it doesn’t work); (4) press Esc.
Tableau Noir—has an eraser.
Tableau Noir—you can insert pages from pdf documents.
Both—no registration, no bullshit.
Both—work alright on ipad in the browser, although I have tried both only briefly.