Draw your first stroke

Press ⌥⇧D, or hover the toolbar handle and touch anything on the toolbar. Drawing starts, and you can draw anywhere on the screen.

Start drawing

Any of these switches drawing on:

• The toolbar. Hover the handle on the edge of the screen, then touch a tool, a colour, a weight or the round pen button.
• The shortcut. Press ⌥⇧D. It works whatever app is in front.
• The menu bar. Click the pen in the menu bar and choose Start drawing.

When drawing starts, the toolbar comes out briefly so you can see where it is parked.

Draw

The pen is selected to begin with. Press and drag to draw. To switch tools, click one on the toolbar or press its number key. See The drawing tools.

Stop drawing

While you draw, the round pen button on the toolbar turns into a glowing red stop button. Press it to stop drawing and hand your clicks back to your apps. ⌥⇧D stops drawing too.

The toolbar stays where it is after you press stop, since your pointer is still on it. Touching anything on it starts drawing again. It slides away once you move off.

Stopping clears the screen

By default, stopping throws the drawing away, along with its undo history, so the next session starts blank. If you’d rather pick up where you left off, change When drawing stops in Preferences. See Choose what happens when drawing stops.