The canvas

Where everything in a file happens: the board in the middle, your pages and layers on the left, and the design panel on the right. This page covers finding your way around it, picking things and moving them.

The editor at a glance

Top left: click the Kite mark to open the file menu: Back to files, Version history, the view settings and Keyboard shortcuts. Click the file's name beside it to rename it.
Left panel: two tabs at its top. Layers lists the file's Pages, then the layers on the page you are on; Assets holds your components and design system. Drag the panel's right edge to make it wider; double-click the edge to put it back. See Layers and pages.
The board: the canvas itself, where frames sit side by side. The toolbar floats at its foot.
Right panel: across the top, the faces of who else is here, the zoom percentage, Preview (▶) and Share. Below, the design panel for whatever you have selected, in sections: Position, Layout, Appearance, Fill, Stroke, Effects and the rest. With nothing selected it shows the page: how many frames are on it, Add a 1440 × 1024 frame, and Background, the canvas colour behind this page's frames.

Most of what you can do to a layer is in its right-click menu: right-click it on the board. For anything else, open the file menu and choose Keyboard shortcuts: it lists every command, so type a few letters of what you want and click its row to run it. ⌘K opens the same list as Actions. Every key is on Keyboard shortcuts.

The tools float at the foot of the board. From left to right:

Move (an arrow pointer) and Hand (a hand), to pick things and to move the board.
Frame (a # grid), Section (a folder), the shapes button (a square: the small corner at its bottom right opens Rectangle, Ellipse, Line, Arrow, Polygon and Star, and the button then shows the one you picked), Pen (a pen nib), Pencil (a pencil) and Text (a T).
Place a picture (a picture) and Comment (a speech bubble).

Hover a button to see its name and its key. Each tool is explained in Drawing tools.

To move the bar, right-click it, or open the file menu and choose Toolbar, then Floating at the bottom, Docked on the left or Docked on the right. Kite remembers your choice in this browser.

Someone who can only view the file sees Move and Hand, and Comment if they may comment.

Hide the sidebars

At the top of the left panel, click the panel button after the file's name (Hide sidebars) to give the board the whole window. The file menu and name stay as a small pill at the top left, and the people, zoom, Preview and Share as one at the top right. Click the same button in the pill (Show sidebars) to bring the panels back.

On a phone or a tablet, a file opens to look at and comment on, not to edit: one finger moves the board, two pinch it.

Moving around

Trackpad: scroll with two fingers to move the board; pinch to zoom.
Mouse: the wheel scrolls up and down. To scroll sideways there's no button: hold ⇧ as you turn the wheel.
Drag: pick the Hand in the toolbar and drag the board, or drag with the middle mouse button. With any other tool, hold Space and drag.

Using a mouse? Open the file menu and turn on Scroll wheel zooms: the wheel then zooms instead. It is kept for this browser.

Zooming

Click the zoom percentage at the top right, beside Share: it goes to 100%, or, at 100% already, fits everything on the page into view.
Right-click the empty board for Zoom to fit and Zoom to 100%. Right-click a layer and choose Zoom to selection, at the foot of the menu, to fill the view with it. Zoom to fit is in the file menu too.
To zoom a little at a time, pinch on a trackpad, or turn on Scroll wheel zooms for a mouse.
The Zoom tool has no button in the toolbar: press Z, then click a spot to zoom in on it, or drag a box to fill the view with it.

The board goes from 2% to 6,400%.

Frame to frame

There's no button for this on the board: press N to select the next frame on the page and bring it into view, and hold ⇧ as you press it to go back. Frames are taken as you read them: row by row, left to right. To see one frame at a time, full size, click Preview (▶) at the top right and step through them with its arrows; see Preview.

Selecting

The frames on the board are your screens, so a click goes to what is in them:

Click selects the layer directly inside a frame. To select the frame itself, click its name, drawn just above it.
Double-click goes one level deeper, into a group or a frame inside a frame. On a text, it starts typing.
Hold ⌘ as you click to go straight to the deepest layer under the pointer, however far in it is.
Hold ⇧ as you click to add a layer to the selection, or take it out.
To go up to the parent or down to the children, right-click and open Select (below). Or click the row you want in the layers panel on the left: every layer is there, however deep.
Click the empty board to select nothing.

A locked layer can't be clicked on the board: the click goes to what is under it. Select it in the layers panel instead. Hidden layers are never picked.

Dragging a box

On the empty board, a drag selects every layer it touches, and every frame it holds entirely. Drag round everything to select it all.
Started on the empty background of a frame, it selects the layers inside that frame it crosses.
The keys work as they do for a click: hold ⌘ as you start to select the deepest layers the box touches, inside frames too, or ⇧ to add to what is already selected.

Right-click a layer on the board and open Select:

Parent and Children.
Matching layers: every layer on the page of the same kind that looks the same, or that is an instance of the same component.
Inverse: everything beside the selection that isn't selected.
All with same fill, stroke, effect, font, text properties or instance: everything on the page that shares it with what you selected. Handy for changing one colour or one font across a page.
Below those, every layer under the pointer, outermost first: the way to reach a layer hidden under others.

Moving and duplicating

Drag a layer to move it.
Layers snap to the edges and middles of the layers around them, to their frame and its layout grid, and to guides.
Drag a layer onto a frame and it goes into it: the frame is outlined as you hover, and in a flex frame a line shows where it will land. Drag it out onto the empty board and it becomes a layer of its own on the board.
To copy, right-click and choose Duplicate. A frame's copy goes beside it; a layer's sits on top of it. Move the copy and choose Duplicate again: the next copy goes the same distance further, so a row of cards takes a few clicks.
To delete, right-click and choose Delete.

There's no button for these: hold a key as you drag.

⇧ keeps to one direction. On a handle it keeps the proportions, and turning, it goes in steps of 15°.
⌥ leaves the original where it was and moves a copy. On a handle it resizes from the middle.
⌃ places it freely, without snapping.

To nudge, there's no button either: the arrow keys move the selection a pixel at a time. Open the file menu and choose Nudge amount… to change the step. In a flex frame, the arrows move a layer up or down the line instead.

Right-click the board and choose Paste here to paste at the pointer. Right-click a layer for Paste over selection, to paste on top of it, and Paste to replace, to put what you copied in its place. Pasting from Figma and elsewhere is covered in Bring work in.

Resizing and rotating

Drag a handle to resize. The keys you hold while moving work here too (above).
To type a size, use W and H under Layout in the right panel.
Double-click a handle to fit the layer to what it holds, along the sides that handle moves.
To rotate, move the pointer just outside a corner until it turns into a curved arrow, then drag. Under Position in the right panel are the angle and three buttons beside it: Rotate 90°, Flip horizontal and Flip vertical.

Resizing a frame doesn't change the size of what is in it. To scale everything together, text sizes and strokes included, use the Scale tool. It has no button in the toolbar: press K.

Even gaps

Select layers that sit in a row or a column with the same gap between each, and a pink handle appears in every gap: Drag to change every gap. The first layer stays put and the others move to the new spacing. For layers in a flex frame, drag the frame's own gap and padding bars instead (see Layout).

Measuring

There's no button for this: select a layer, hold ⌥ and point at another. The distances between them show in red. With the pointer over nothing else, you get the distances from one selected layer to the edges of the frame it sits in.

Rulers, guides and grids

Rulers, layout grids and the pixel grid have no button of their own. Open the file menu, choose Keyboard shortcuts and click their row:

Rulers (or press ⇧R) shows the rulers along the top and left of the board. They mark where the selection starts and ends.
Drag from the top ruler for a horizontal guide, or from the left one for a vertical guide. Drag a guide back onto its ruler to remove it. Guides are saved with the page, so everyone sees them, and layers snap to them while the rulers are showing.
Layout grids shows or hides frames' layout grids (Layout grids).
Pixel grid turns the pixel grid on or off. It shows once you zoom in to 800% or more.

Two more are in the file menu itself:

Snap to pixel grid is on to start with: anything you move, resize or draw lands on whole pixels. Turn it off to keep fractions.
Outline mode draws every layer as a thin outline, to find what is hidden behind or under something else.

Working together

Everyone in the file at the same time sees each other's pointer, with a name beside it, and what each person has selected outlined in their colour. Their faces sit at the top right: you, then up to three others, then a count of the rest.

Click a face to Follow that person: the board goes to their page and keeps their pointer in the middle, edged in their colour. Click Stop following, or click or scroll the board, to stop. Agents show up in the same way while they work; see Working with agents.

Someone who can only view the file sees a View only line at the top of the board: it tells them to ask the file's owner to let them edit, or whether they can comment. Who can do what is set in Sharing.

Saving

Every change saves as you make it, so there is no save button. The top of the right panel only says something when it matters: Saving…, Offline, Couldn't save, or Updated live for a moment when someone else's change arrives.

If your connection drops, a line on the board says Offline · changes will save when you're back. Keep working and keep the tab open: your changes wait in the browser and go through once you are back online.

Undo and redo

There's no undo button: press ⌘Z to undo and ⇧⌘Z to redo, or click Undo or Redo in the file menu's Keyboard shortcuts. Undo takes back your own changes, up to 300 steps, never someone else's: if a teammate or an agent has since changed a layer you changed, that step is skipped rather than writing over their work. Deleting a page can be undone too.

To go further back, or to get back something another person changed, open Version history from the file menu. See Preview and history.