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A free online whiteboard for ideas, plans and diagrams
A whiteboard is not a document. A document asks for an order before you have one: first paragraph, second paragraph, and a cursor waiting for a sentence. A canvas lets you put things down where they land and sort out the arrangement later, which is much closer to how ideas actually turn up.
Pixpoo’s whiteboard is an endless surface with sticky notes, shapes, arrows, a pen, images and text, plus a library of technical icons for drawing how a system fits together. It opens in your browser with nothing to install and no account to create, and your boards are saved on your own device rather than on our servers.
What is on the toolbar
| Tool | What it is for |
|---|---|
| Sticky notes | One thought per note, in six colours. The basic unit of a brainstorm |
| Shapes | Rectangles, rounded boxes, ellipses, diamonds, triangles, stars and polygons, plus device shapes such as a server, laptop, phone and database |
| Technical icons | 661 icons in 16 groups, from cloud and networking to security and monitoring, all searchable by name |
| Connectors | Elbow, straight or curved lines that stay attached when you move a shape |
| Pen and highlighter | Freehand marks, notes in the margin, a circle round the thing that matters |
| Text and images | Headings and labels in 24 fonts, and pictures dropped in from your machine |
| Frames | Named areas that keep their contents together. They double as your slides |
| Eraser | Rubs out just the part the circle passes over, not the whole object |
| Lasso, bucket and laser | Select an odd-shaped group, recolour in one click, point at things while you talk |
Single letters switch tools without a trip to the toolbar: V to select, P for the pen, T for text, S for a sticky note, R for a rectangle, A for an arrow, F for a frame. The last sixty steps can be undone, so trying something costs you nothing.
Architecture and network diagrams
A lot of whiteboarding is really “draw me how this works”: the browser talks to a load balancer, which talks to three servers, which share a database. For that there is a technical icon library of 661 symbols in 16 groups, covering cloud and internet, networking and protocols, applications, databases, storage, DevOps and CI/CD, containers, security, monitoring, data and analytics, compute, users and devices, and service categories for AWS and Google Cloud. They are drawn in one consistent line style, not as vendor logos, so a diagram reads as a single piece of work. Type “load bal” or “kafka” and the icon you want comes up.
Building the diagram is quicker than drawing it box by box. Select a shape and a small dot appears on each side. Click one and a panel opens with the common shapes, the device shapes and your most-used icons, with a search box at the top. Pick something and it lands on that side, lined up and a set distance away, already joined by a connector. The new item is selected, so you can carry straight on from it and have a small flow drawn in a handful of clicks.
Connectors default to elbow lines that meet each shape at the middle of a side, which is what keeps a diagram looking tidy rather than like a web of diagonals. You can switch any connector to straight or curved, put an arrowhead on either end, give it a label, and make it dashed or dotted for the optional or asynchronous paths. The lines stay attached as you drag things around, and they sit under the shapes and above any frame, so a coloured frame never hides them.
Labels, colours, borders and text
Any shape can carry a label, and you choose where it sits: inside, above, below, or to the left or right. Icons and device shapes take a caption on any side too. The label keeps its own size when you stretch the shape, and it picks up the shape’s border colour, so a recoloured box stays one colour.
Fill colours come as ready-made pairs, a light fill with a matching darker outline, eight at a time. Swipe or use the arrows for more, or open the custom picker and type a hex code. Borders have their own palette, a width slider and a border type: solid, three kinds of dash, dash-dot, three kinds of dotted, or your own pattern. Dashes scale with the border width, so a thick dotted line still reads as dots.
Text has 24 fonts in five groups: clean sans serifs, book serifs, cursive and script faces like Dancing Script and Great Vibes, handwriting fonts such as Caveat, and two monospace fonts for code. Bold, italic and underline work with the usual shortcuts, the size runs from 8 to 200, and changing a font keeps you typing on the same line instead of kicking you out of the text.
Small things that save time
Arrow keys nudge the selection a pixel at a time, or ten with Shift held, and the alignment guides show up as you go so you can line things up by eye. While you resize, the width and height appear in pixels beside the shape, measured on the shape itself and not its label. Clicking the empty board opens the board’s own settings: its name, the theme, grid, drawing style and canvas colour. Click the board again and the panel goes away.
Boards you have not named are called Untitled board 1, Untitled board 2 and so on, and the board list shows when each one was created and last changed, so a week of quick sketches does not turn into a list of identical names.
Sixty-one templates, and when a blank canvas is better
A template is worth using when the structure is the hard part and you would otherwise spend the first ten minutes drawing columns. The library covers thinking tools like , affinity diagrams and six thinking hats; diagramming with , swimlanes, org charts, ERDs and sequence diagrams; strategy work such as SWOT, business model canvas, PESTEL and OKR planning; product and research boards including , story maps, empathy maps and personas; delivery boards like , sprint planning, retrospectives and bug triage; plus teaching, planning and personal boards. or start from .
Go with the blank canvas when you do not yet know the shape of the problem. A template answers “how should this be laid out?” before you have decided whether that layout fits, and a you rearrange later is often the more honest place to start.
Frames turn a board into a presentation
Draw a frame around anything you want to show and it becomes a slide. Presentation mode plays the frames in reading order, down the board and then across, zooming to fit each one. Arrow keys or the space bar move on, and Escape brings you back. The same frames export as a multi-page PDF, one page each, at twice the on-screen resolution.
It is a different way to build a talk. Instead of writing slides and hoping the argument holds, you lay the whole argument out, see how the parts connect, and then frame the pieces you want to walk people through. The audience gets slides; you keep the map.
Working with other people
Starting a share gives you a room and a link. Anyone who opens it lands on the same board, edits alongside you with a visible cursor and can leave comments in a side thread. It is quick and needs no invitation system.
The syncing runs through Pixpoo’s own relay at collab.pixpoo.com. It passes changes between the people in a room and keeps the room only in memory while someone is in it; when the last person leaves, it is gone, and nothing is written to disk. Only pages on pixpoo.com can connect to it. A room is identified by a long random code, not a password, so anyone holding the link can join. That makes it a good fit for a working session with people you have sent the link to, and a poor fit for anything confidential. When you are not sharing, nothing leaves your machine.
Where your boards live
Boards save themselves into your browser’s storage about a second after each change, on the device you are using. There is no account because there is no server holding your work, which is why this is private by default. It is also why the limits are worth knowing: a board does not follow you to another computer, and clearing your browsing data removes it along with everything else.
The answer is the JSON export. It writes the whole board to a file that re-imports exactly as it was, so anything you would be annoyed to lose belongs in a file somewhere, not only in a browser. You can also export PNG, JPG, WebP, SVG, PDF or a standalone HTML page, capturing the whole board, just the current view or only what you have selected, at the resolution you choose and on a white or transparent background.
Alongside the rest of Pixpoo
A board exported as a PNG is an image like any other, so the compressor will get it under an attachment limit and crop will trim it to the part you want. Slide decks exported as PDFs can be joined to other documents with Merge PDF, made smaller with Compress PDF, or marked as drafts with Watermark PDF before they go round.
Frequently asked questions
Is the whiteboard free?
Yes, all of it. No account, no seat count, no board limit, no watermark on anything you export, and no feature waiting behind an upgrade. The canvas, the 61 templates, the 661 technical icons, presentation mode, collaboration and every export format are open from the start.
Where are my boards saved?
In your browser’s own storage on the device you are using, saved automatically about a second after each change. Nothing is sent to Pixpoo, which is why there is no sign-in — there is no account holding your work. The trade-off is worth understanding: boards live in that one browser, so they do not follow you to another computer, and clearing your browsing data removes them. Export a board as JSON whenever it matters; the file re-imports exactly as it was.
Can several people work on the same board?
Yes. Starting a share generates a room and a link, and anyone who opens it sees the same board with live cursors and a comment thread. The syncing runs through Pixpoo’s own relay, which holds a room only in memory while someone is in it and keeps nothing once everyone has left. A room is protected by a long random code in the link, not by a password, so anyone with the link can join. It is well suited to a working session with people you have sent the link to, and not to anything confidential.
What can I put on the canvas?
Sticky notes, text, freehand pen and highlighter strokes, lines and arrows, basic shapes and device shapes (server, database, laptop, phone, cloud and a few more), 661 technical icons, images from your machine, and frames that hold an area together. There is also a lasso for odd-shaped selections, a paint bucket for recolouring, an eraser that removes only what it passes over, a laser pointer for talking through a board, and a draw-to-shape mode that turns a rough sketch into a clean shape.
Can I draw cloud, network or software architecture diagrams?
Yes, and that is what the technical icon library is for. It has 661 icons in 16 groups, including cloud and internet, networking, protocols, databases, storage, DevOps, containers, security, monitoring, data and analytics, and AWS and Google Cloud service categories. The icons are drawn in one line style rather than as company logos. Search by name, drop them on the board, and join them with connectors that stay attached when you rearrange things.
What is the quickest way to add a connected shape?
Select a shape and click one of the small dots on its sides. A panel opens with shapes, device shapes and your most-used icons, plus a search box. Whatever you pick is placed on that side, lined up with the first shape and already joined to it by an elbow connector that meets both at the middle of a side. The new shape is selected, so you can keep going from it.
Can I add a label to a shape, and choose where it goes?
Yes. Select a rectangle, ellipse, diamond or any other shape and choose Add label. The label can sit inside the shape or above, below, left or right of it, and above or below it can line up left, centre or right. It keeps its own size when you resize the shape and follows the border colour. Icons and device shapes take labels in the same way.
Which fonts and text styles are available?
There are 24 fonts in five groups: sans serif, serif, cursive and script, handwriting, and monospace. Text can be bold, italic or underlined, with the usual keyboard shortcuts, and any size from 8 to 200. New text starts at 12, which suits notes and labels on a diagram.
How do I turn a board into a presentation?
Draw a frame around each thing you want to show, then start presentation mode. Frames become slides in reading order, top to bottom and left to right, and arrow keys or the space bar move between them while Escape leaves. The same frames export as a multi-page PDF, one page per frame, so a board can become a deck without rebuilding it in slide software.
What formats can I export?
PNG, JPG, WebP, SVG, PDF, HTML and the board’s own JSON. You choose whether to capture the whole board, just what is on screen or only the current selection, set a resolution multiplier for print-quality output, and pick a white or transparent background. SVG stays sharp at any size, JSON is the one to keep if you want to reopen the board later.
Is there a limit to the canvas size?
No. The canvas has no edges — pan and zoom as far as you like, and the board grows to hold whatever you add. A minimap tracks where you are, and frames give you named regions to jump between when a board gets large enough to lose your place in.
Can I undo a mistake?
Yes, with the usual keyboard shortcuts, and the last 60 steps are kept. Single-letter shortcuts also switch tools without going to the toolbar: V for select, P for pen, T for text, S for sticky note, R for rectangle, A for arrow, F for frame and so on. Arrow keys nudge a selection by a pixel, or by ten with Shift.
Does it work on a tablet or phone?
It runs in any modern mobile browser, and a tablet with a stylus is a good match for the pen and highlighter. A phone screen is tight for arranging a large board, but fine for reading one, adding notes, or following along while somebody else presents.
Do I need to be online?
Only to load the page. After that the board runs on your own machine and keeps saving locally even if the connection drops. Two things do need the network: starting a shared session, and exporting a PDF, because the PDF library is fetched when you first ask for one.