Effortless Drawing: Custom library and Free Saving Feature with Excalidraw
A draw is worth a thousand words
Table of Contents
What is Excalidraw?
Excalidraw is an intuitive and collaborative online whiteboard tool that empowers users to create diagrams, sketches, and visualizations effortlessly. Developed with a minimalist design, it allows users to focus on expressing their ideas without the distraction of unnecessary features. Whether you’re a designer, developer, or project manager, Excalidraw is designed to cater to a wide range of professions.
Key Features
- Simplicity at its Core
- Real-time Collaboration
- Versatility in Diagramming
- Export and Embed
Library
In Excalidraw, not everything has to be black and white. We can enhance our drawings with color and more suitable shapes. Excalidraw offers the library feature for free. You can access this menu with the Library button in the top right corner.
To access published shape libraries, you can use the “Browse Libraries” option. By using the search bar on the opened site, you can access the shapes you want. For example, you can search for “aws” and add the shapes to your library by selecting “Add To Excalidraw” from the search results.
Tip: If you want the Library sidebar to always stay open, click on the pin icon.
If you’ve drawn a shape yourself and want to use it repeatedly, after finishing editing the shape or text, you can save it by clicking on the plus sign in the “Personal Library” section.
Tip: If you want to group a text and shape together, select the shape and text, then press CMD + G (for Mac) or CTRL + G (for Windows) shortcut.
To share the shapes you’ve saved in the Personal Library, you can either download them or publish them. When you publish, excalibot will create a Pull Request for you in the excalidraw-libraries repository. You can share your library even before the PR is approved.
You can obtain your library link from the PR tab of the excalidraw-libraries repository. As an example, I have published the shapes I saved, and you can add them to your own library with clicking “Installation Link”. Click here to review my library.
Saving Draws
As a developer, I use Excalidraw multiple times a day. To keep my drawings, I started clicking on “Save to” from the left menu, choosing either “Save to Disk” or “Shareable link,” then writing them to notepad, Slack etc. However, after a while, this method became messy, and I started to lose track of where everything was. Seeking a solution for organizing my drawings, I discovered Excalidraw+, but it comes with a monthly $7 fee. You can check the differences with the free version here. While exploring free alternatives, I came across Excalisave.
Excalisave
Excalisave is an open-source browser extension that allows you to save your drawings. You can find the download instructions in the repo.
- You can create new draw on excalidraw.com. You can use new drawing option resetting current drawing. Be careful when using the button; clicking it once will erase your previous drawing completely.
2. You can save your draw
3. You can see which drawing working on and you can favorite any of them
Conclusion
Excalidraw is a collaborative online whiteboard designed for effective idea expression, ideal for designers, developers, and project managers. The tool lets users improve drawings with color and shapes, offering a free library accessible through the top-right menu button. Excalisave, an open-source browser extension, enables users to save their drawings seamlessly.
