The drawing tools and their keys

PenLayer has ten tools. Pick one on the toolbar, or press its number key while you’re drawing. The keys follow the order of the tools on the toolbar.

Key	Tool	What it does
1	Pen	Ink that gets thicker and thinner with pressure or speed
2	Highlighter	Translucent ink with an even width
3	Arrow	A straight arrow
4	Freehand arrow	Draw any curve; the end gets an arrow head
5	Rectangle	Drag to draw a box
6	Ellipse	Drag to draw an ellipse
7	Line	A straight line
8	Numbered step	Tap to drop a numbered badge: 1, 2, 3…
9	Icons	Stamp any of 1,848 icons
0	Eraser	Removes whole strokes you touch

When the number keys work

The number keys only reach PenLayer once the drawing canvas has focus, which your first click on it gives it. Until then, the toolbar is the reliable way to pick a tool.

Pressing 9 also slides the toolbar out and puts the cursor in the icon search field, so you can type the icon you want straight away.

Other keys on the canvas

Key	Action
⇧1 to ⇧6	Pick the colour in that position on the palette
[ / ]	Thinner / thicker
S	Cycle the line style
Esc	Stop drawing

The full list, including global shortcuts, is on Keyboard shortcuts and the shortcuts page.

More about each tool

• Pen and highlighter
• Arrows
• Rectangles, ellipses and lines
• Numbered steps
• Icons
• Undo, erase and clear