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How to Draw On and Annotate your Boards

12th December 2022

1:17

Mac | QuickTips

| Freeform

Jacob Woolcock

12th December 2022

Jacob Woolcock

129 views

1:17

| Freeform

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Description

Using Annotations are a great way to quickly write down your ideas and highlight sections of your Freeform board. Despite not being able to use the Apple Pencil or even your finger to draw on a Mac, there is a sneaky trick to making this work in Freeform! This short and easy-to-follow tutorial will get you up to speed with drawing and annotation in Freeform for Mac in no time at all.

Transcript

You might be clicking on this video and thinking “well, hang on a minute – how can I use the annotation tools on my Mac when I haven’t got a touchscreen?!”

Well this is a really cool little trick!

All you’re going to do is click onto Insert on the Menu Bar and then you’re going to go down to where it says Insert From iPhone or iPad.

Any device that’s on your same Apple ID and on the same network should show up here, and if you choose to Add a Sketch you’ll get this screen coming up on your device.

From here I can use all of the built-in drawing tools on the iPad or the iPhone (including the Apple Pencil) if I’m on the iPad.

And as soon as I’m finished and press Done it will send that drawing back into Freeform on my Mac.

A little thing to be aware of here is at the time of recording there’s a bug where when you insert that drawing it actually puts two documents on the page.

One is the drawing itself and one seems to be like metadata about the picture.

I found it safe to delete that second one and only your picture will remain and it seems to work perfectly well.

That means I can still make handwritten notes, I can still do little drawings and sketches, and I can still emphasise places that I want to visit even though I’m using my Mac for the main Freeform Board.

Okay, in the next video we’ll have a look at collaborating with other users on your Freeform Boards, so follow that link and I’ll see you there shortly.

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About Freeform
The Freeform app is a versatile digital canvas developed by Apple, designed for creative brainstorming and collaborative projects. It allows users to freely sketch, write, and organise ideas visually and supports real-time collaboration.
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The content used in this video is intended for educational and informational purposes only. All rights to the images, music, clips, and other media used belong to their respective owners. I do not claim ownership over any third-party content used. This video has not been authorised, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc.

iPhone, iPad and iPadOS are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries and regions. iOS is a registered trademark of Cisco Systems Inc. Whilst I have done my best to list all applicable trademarks for this video, in the (hopefully unlikely) event that I have missed any you can find a full list of trademarks registered to Apple Inc. here.

Finally, please note that whilst every effort has been made to ensure the information contained within this video was correct at time of publication, please be aware that as future updates and software changes occur some or all elements of this video may become outdated. I will endeavour to remove videos which are completely obsolete so as not to cause confusion!
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