Move around the canvas

A desk is a canvas that is bigger than your screen. You see one part of it at a time, and you move that view around to reach everything else: across, in and out, or straight to a particular widget.

This page covers every way to move around a desk. There is more than one way to do most things, so use whichever suits your mouse, trackpad or keyboard.

Before you start

• Plan: moving around the canvas works the same on every plan.
• Open a desk first. Open one from Home or from Rooms in the side menu. See Desks, rooms and the canvas.
• Start on empty space. Dragging to move the view always starts on an empty part of the desk. Pressing on a widget and dragging moves the widget instead.

PlexiDesk remembers where you were on each desk. When you come back to a desk, it opens at the same zoom and position you left it, with the same widgets selected.

Pan: move the view across the desk

Drag the desk

1. Press on an empty part of the desk. A small ring pulses where you pressed (with a soft ping, if sound effects are on) to show you have hold of the desk.
2. Drag in any direction. The desk moves with your pointer.
3. Let go. If you flicked the pointer as you let go, the desk keeps gliding for a moment and then slows to a stop.

You can change how far the desk moves for each drag, how hard a flick throws it and how long it glides, or turn the ping off. See Canvas navigation settings.

Other ways to pan

• Hold Space and drag. Hold down the Space bar and the pointer turns into a hand. Drag from an empty part of the desk, then let go of Space. This works even if you have turned off dragging the desk in settings. It does not work while you are typing in a box.
• Drag with the middle mouse button. Press the scroll wheel down on an empty part of the desk and drag.
• Swipe or scroll. Swipe with two fingers on a trackpad, or turn your mouse wheel, to move the desk in that direction.
• Push against an edge. Move the pointer to the edge of the desk and the view moves that way. See the Edge pan section below.

Zoom in and out

You can zoom from 25% (to see a large area at once) up to 200% (to see detail).

• Pinch or scroll. On a Mac, pinch on the trackpad, or hold ⌘ and scroll. On Windows, hold Ctrl and scroll. The desk zooms toward wherever your pointer is, so point at the part you want to look at.
• Use the keyboard. On a Mac, press ⌘ ] to zoom in and ⌘ [ to zoom out. On Windows, press Ctrl ] and Ctrl [. Each press zooms by 10%.
• Use the zoom pill. See the next section.
• Dive into one widget. While you are zoomed out below 80%, hold ⌘ on a Mac (Ctrl on Windows) and click a widget. The desk jumps to 100% with that widget in the middle of the screen.

The zoom pill

The zoom pill sits in the bottom-left corner of the desk, just to the right of the side menu. It shows how far you are zoomed in, such as 100%.

1. Rest the pointer on the pill. It opens out to show more buttons.
2. Click − (Zoom out) or + (Zoom in) to zoom by 10% at a time.
3. Click the percentage itself to reset the view: back to 100%, at the desk's starting point.

The hand button at the right-hand end of the pill also resets the view.

See everything, or start again

Fit everything in view (Home)

Use Home when you have lost your place, or want an overview of the whole desk. It zooms and pans so that every widget on the desk fits on screen.

• Rest the pointer on the tool rail at the right of the desk and click Home. See The tool rail on the right of a desk.
• Or right-click an empty part of the desk and choose Home — fit all to view.

Good to know:

• Home never zooms in past 100%. On a desk with only a few small widgets, you see them at their normal size in the middle of the screen.
• Widgets you have pinned to the screen are left out, because they are always in view anyway.
• On an empty desk, Home does the same as Reset view.

Reset the view

Reset view takes the desk back to 100% at its starting point. Any of these does it:

• Click the percentage in the zoom pill.
• Click Reset view on the tool rail.
• Right-click an empty part of the desk and choose Reset view.
• Open the command palette with ⌘ K (Ctrl K on Windows) and choose Reset canvas view. See The command palette.

Jump to a Section

If your desk has Section widgets, the tool rail lists each one by name, just above Stack by type. Click a name to bring that Section to the middle of the screen. See Section widget Coming soon.

Edge pan

Edge pan moves the view when you bring the pointer close to any edge of the desk, a bit like scrolling a map by pushing against its edge.

• The closer you get to the edge, the faster the desk moves.
• Push into a corner to move diagonally.
• It works while you are dragging something too. Drag a widget, or a file from your computer, toward the edge and the desk keeps moving, so you can carry things a long way across a big desk.
• A faint glow runs along each edge of the desk. It brightens as your pointer gets close.

Edge pan pauses by itself so it does not get in your way:

• While a menu is open.
• While the pointer is over one of the buttons or panels that float on the desk, such as the zoom pill, the minimap or the tool rail.
• While you are typing in a box on the desk and the pointer is over that box.

To make edge pan slower or faster, or turn it off, see Canvas navigation settings.

Jump from widget to widget with the arrow keys

The arrow keys move the view from one widget to the next, without opening anything. Each widget you land on is framed at a size you can work with, and the rest of the desk stays around it, so you always know where you are.

1. Make sure you are not typing in a box. If you have clicked into a widget, press Esc first.
2. Press an arrow key. If one widget is selected, the view moves from that widget to the next one in that direction. If nothing is selected, the first press lands on the widget nearest the middle of the screen.
3. Keep pressing arrow keys to carry on across the desk.

Good to know:

• Each widget you land on is selected, so you can see where you are. To work in it, click it.
• At the last widget in a direction, pressing that arrow again does nothing. The view never jumps back to the other side of the desk.
• The arrow keys skip widgets pinned to the screen. They visit the widgets inside a Section one by one, rather than stopping on the Section itself.
• A widget that is too big for the screen is zoomed out until it fits. How much a small widget is enlarged is the Arrow-key zoom setting in Canvas navigation settings.
• Only the plain arrow keys do this. On a Mac, ⌘ ← and ⌘ → still go back and forward between screens.
• While a menu is open, the arrow keys move through the menu instead.

Working inside a widget

When you click a widget, it becomes the active widget, ready for you to work in it. A small label at the bottom of the desk says Widget active · click outside or press Esc to pan canvas.

While a widget is active:

• Scrolling over it scrolls the widget, as long as there is more of it to scroll in that direction. When you reach the end of its content, scrolling moves the desk again.
• Keys you press while working in it go to the widget. For example, while you are working in a table, the arrow keys move between its cells rather than between widgets.
• Edge pan still works. Move the pointer to an edge of the desk and the view still moves.

To go back to moving around the desk, click an empty part of the desk or press Esc.

Quick reference

To see every shortcut in the app, press ⌘ / on a Mac or Ctrl / on Windows. See Keyboard shortcuts.

Common questions

Dragging the desk draws a box instead of moving it. Either you are holding Shift, which always draws a selection box, or Drag the canvas to pan is turned off. Hold Space and drag to pan, or turn the setting back on in Canvas navigation settings.

The arrow keys do not move between widgets. Check that you are not typing in a box and that no menu is open. If you clicked into a widget that uses the arrow keys itself, such as a table, press Esc first, then try again.

Scrolling moves a widget's content instead of the desk. That widget is active. Click an empty part of the desk or press Esc, then scroll.

The desk moves when I reach for something near the edge. That is edge pan. It pauses over the buttons and panels on the desk, and while a menu is open. If it still moves more than you like, lower Edge-pan speed or turn edge pan off in Canvas navigation settings.

I cannot find my widgets. Click Home on the tool rail, or right-click an empty part of the desk and choose Home — fit all to view. To go straight to one item by name, use the list above the minimap. See The minimap and the jump list.

Zooming stops and will not go any further. You have reached the limit of 25% or 200%.

Related

• The minimap and the jump list: see the whole desk at a glance and jump to any item by name.
• Canvas navigation settings: change how dragging, scrolling, edge pan and zooming feel.
• Use the desk with a keyboard or screen reader: every keyboard route around a desk, and ways to make the app easier to read.
• The tool rail on the right of a desk: Home, Reset view and the desk's other tools.
• Select, move and arrange widgets: select several widgets, line them up and pin them to the screen.