Add shapes, lines, or arrows to a Freeform board on Mac
Freeform contains hundreds of shapes in a variety of categories, like animals, food, symbols, and ornaments. After you add shapes to a board, you can customize them in many ways, including combining them, splitting them, or changing their size or the way they look.
Add and format shapes, lines, and arrows
Go to the Freeform app
on your Mac.
Click
, then do one of the following:
Add a shape or line: Select a shape from the suggestions, or click Browse Content Hub to see more shapes.
Tip: To clear your recently inserted shapes from the suggestions, click Browse Content Hub, then click Reset Suggestions (below the object categories at the top of the dialog).
Search for a shape: Click Browse Content Hub, then enter your search in the field in the top-right corner.
Draw your own shape: Click Draw with Pen. See Draw a vector shape with a pen tool.
To change the border thickness, color, and more, select the shape or line, then use the formatting tools.
Tool
Description
Fill Inspector button
Change the color of a shape.
Note: The color of a button may change to reflect its current state.
Stroke Inspector button
or
Change the type of border, border thickness, and border color of a shape or line.
Note: The color of a button may change to reflect its current state.
Text Inspector button
Change the formatting for all text in a shape including font, color, size, alignment, and list style.
Line Ends Inspector button
Add an arrowhead or other endpoint to a line.
Connection Line Inspector button
Change the type of connection line: straight, cornered, or curved. (Available when you add a connection line between two items.)
Edit a shape or line
Go to the Freeform app
Open a board with a shape in it, or add a shape to a board.
Select the shape or line, then choose Format > Shapes and Lines > Make Editable.
After you make a shape or line editable, you can use the handles to change the line from curved to straight or add more handles for more variations.
Tip: Experiment with all the options in Format > Shapes and Lines. Some shapes can be customized in special ways. For example, you can change the standard 5-point star into a 20-point starburst and adjust how rounded the corners of a square are. Select a shape, and if it has any green dots, drag them.
Switch a shape
Go to the Freeform app
Open a board with a shape in it, or add a shape to a board.
Control-click the shape, then choose Change Shape.
Select another shape from the menu.
Add text to a shape
Go to the Freeform app
Open a board with a shape in it.
Double-click the shape, then start typing.
To apply formatting to the text, do one of the following:
Select the text, then use the formatting tools.
Select the shape, click
, then use the formatting tools.
Combine or split shapes
You can create a new shape by combining one shape with another, and you can remove the overlapping area between two shapes—and more. When you add multipart shapes to a Freeform board, you can also divide them into their parts and then edit each part individually. For example, you can divide the map of the United States (in the Places category in the Content Hub) and change the color of each state.
After you’ve added shapes to your Freeform board, do any of the following:
Combine shapes: Select multiple shapes, click
, then below Combine Shapes click an option to unite, intersect, subtract, or exclude.
Split a multipart shape: Select a shape, click
in the formatting tools, then choose Break Apart.
Continue to build your board by adding text, sticky notes, photos, videos, diagrams, tables, links, and other files.