Excalidraw Keyboard Shortcuts
Excalidraw keeps its interface deliberately sparse, and the shortcut scheme follows suit — a small set of single unmodified number and letter keys cover every drawing tool, styled closely after Figma and other modern design tools rather than older, denser CAD-style conventions. Because the whole point of Excalidraw is quick, low-friction sketching rather than precise professional output, the shortcuts favor rapid tool-switching over deep configuration options, and most of the visual styling (stroke color, fill style, roughness) is set via a persistent side panel rather than keyboard shortcuts at all. Since almost every tool shortcut here is an unmodified single key, platform barely matters at all — the only place Windows and Mac genuinely diverge is the handful of commands that involve copy, paste, or duplicate. This page is aimed at anyone using Excalidraw for quick technical sketches, wireframes, or explanatory diagrams embedded in docs and READMEs, since that's the tool's core use case — precise professional illustration work is better served by a dedicated vector tool, but for fast, expressive diagramming Excalidraw's compact shortcut set can be learned in a single sitting. Because it runs entirely in the browser with no account required for basic use, it's also a common choice for quick collaborative sketching during a call, where the low-friction tool-switching shortcuts matter even more since you're often drawing live while someone watches.
Drawing Tools
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Selection tool | V or 1 | V or 1 | Switches to the Selection tool for clicking and dragging existing elements, Excalidraw's default tool and the one you return to constantly between drawing actions. |
| Rectangle tool | R or 2 | R or 2 | Activates the Rectangle tool, rendering a boxy shape with Excalidraw's signature hand-sketched wobble; add Shift mid-drag to lock the proportions to a square instead of a free rectangle. |
| Diamond tool | D or 3 | D or 3 | Activates the Diamond tool for drawing rhombus shapes, commonly used as a decision node in flowcharts. |
| Ellipse tool | O or 4 | O or 4 | Activates the Ellipse tool, producing the same loose, sketchy-style oval Excalidraw is known for; add Shift mid-drag to lock it to a circle. |
| Arrow tool | A or 5 | A or 5 | Activates the Arrow tool for drawing connector lines with arrowheads, which automatically bind to nearby shapes' edges when drawn close enough, keeping the connection intact if the shape is later moved. |
| Freehand draw tool | X or 7 | X or 7 | Activates freehand drawing mode for sketching loose, unconstrained lines with a mouse, trackpad, or stylus, rendered in the same hand-drawn style as the shape tools, useful for annotations that don't fit a predefined shape. |
| Text tool | T or 8 | T or 8 | Activates the Text tool for placing freely positioned text labels on the canvas, or double-clicking directly inside a shape to add centered text bound to that shape. |
Selection Editing
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delete selected element(s) | Delete or Backspace | Delete or Backspace | Removes the currently selected element or elements from the canvas entirely. |
| Duplicate selected element(s) | Ctrl+D | Cmd+D | Duplicates whatever is currently selected and places the copy slightly offset from the original, quicker than a separate copy-and-paste step when you just need another instance of the same shape. |
| Group selected elements | Ctrl+G | Cmd+G | Combines selected elements into a group that moves and selects together as one unit, following the same convention used across most design tools. |
| Send selected element to back | Ctrl+Shift+[ | Cmd+Shift+[ | Moves the selected element behind every other overlapping element in the stacking order, useful for fixing a shape that's accidentally covering something meant to stay visible on top of it. |
Canvas View
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zoom to fit all content | Shift+1 | Shift+1 | Snaps the view back to show the entire drawing at once, the quickest recovery move after scrolling or zooming yourself somewhere you can no longer see any content. |
| Reset zoom to 100% | Ctrl+0 | Cmd+0 | Resets the canvas zoom level to exactly 100%, without necessarily fitting all content, useful when you specifically need to view elements at their true rendered size. |
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do most drawing tools have both a letter and a number shortcut?
Excalidraw assigns both a mnemonic letter (R for Rectangle, O for Ellipse — O rather than E since E is reserved elsewhere) and a positional number (2, 3, 4...) to most tools, giving users a choice between whichever is faster for their own habits — some prefer typing the first letter of the tool name, others prefer a left-hand row of sequential number keys without needing to think about which letter maps to which shape.
Why does an arrow sometimes move away from a shape when I drag the shape?
Arrows drawn close enough to a shape's edge automatically bind to it, meaning the arrow's endpoint tracks that shape's position and updates automatically if the shape is moved later — this is intentional and useful for diagrams, but if an arrow was drawn just slightly too far from the intended shape to bind, moving the shape leaves the arrow behind unchanged, which looks like unexpected behavior but is really just a binding that never registered in the first place.
Does the Text tool always create a separate standalone label?
Not necessarily — clicking with the Text tool on empty canvas creates a freely positioned standalone text element, but double-clicking directly inside an existing shape instead creates text bound to and centered within that shape, which moves and resizes together with it. Which behavior you get depends on where exactly you click or double-click, not on a separate mode toggle.
What's the practical difference between the freehand Draw tool and the Arrow or Line-based shapes?
The freehand Draw tool captures your actual unconstrained pointer movement as a loose sketched line with no straightening or snapping applied, suited to annotations, underlines, or casual markup. Arrow and other shape tools instead produce geometrically defined, straight or curved connectors that can bind to shapes and maintain a predictable structure, which matters for anything meant to represent an actual relationship in a diagram rather than free expressive marking.
Why would I need Send to Back if I could just draw the background shape first?
Drawing order determines initial stacking, but it's common to realize only after a diagram has grown that a background shape needs to move behind something that was actually drawn later — rather than deleting and redrawing everything in the correct order, Send to Back lets you fix the stacking of a specific element retroactively without touching anything else on the canvas.
Can I lock the canvas to prevent accidental edits with a keyboard shortcut in Excalidraw?
Yes — pressing Q toggles a view-only lock on the entire canvas, disabling further edits until toggled off again, useful when sharing your screen to walk through a diagram without risking an accidental drag or deletion while gesturing near the trackpad.