Elements
Everything you put on a page comes from one of four places: the creation bar, the Elements panel, Quick search, or your own photos and files. Drag a part onto the page, or tap it to drop it into the selected container.
The creation bar
- Seven tools — Group, Rectangle, Circle, Text, Image, Draw and Path — in a bar at the bottom of the page on the Mac and iPad, and on the first page of the bottom bar on iPhone while nothing is selected.
- Tap a tool to add it in the middle of the view, or drag it where you want it — onto the page, into a card.
- Image drops a placeholder picture. Tap the picture in the image's properties to swap in a real one from Media.
- Settings › Creation tools turns the bar off and on. With a pointer, right-click the bar and choose Hide.
The Elements panel
⌘I, or the Elements tab of the inspector, on the Mac and iPad; + Insert at the start of the bottom bar on iPhone — it reads Insert in when a container is selected, and that is where the part goes. Its search field looks through every tab at once.
| Tab | What's in it |
|---|---|
| Discover | A shelf from every other tab, to see what is there. Tap a shelf's title to open the whole tab. |
| Basic | Essentials — Text, Media, Line, Path, Drawing and the Magic AI container — then six shapes, six charts and fifteen brand icons: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and friends, coloured with the page's tint. |
| Graphics | 444 stickers in 21 themes — birthdays, weddings, food, love, speech bubbles, catchwords — and 441 illustrated icons: arrows, weather, travel, celebrations, Christmas. |
| Effects | Lens flares, smoke, ornamental dividers and corners. |
| Patterns | Fourteen seamless patterns that repeat as you stretch them. |
| Tables | Fifteen tables — with a header row, simple, or a plain grid — from two to six columns, built from ordinary groups and text you can edit. |
| Mockup | 131 iOS components in ten sections — bars, cells, controls, cards, lists, overlays, whole screens — and fourteen device frames. |
| Saved | Anything you Save Component comes back here, on every device. The tab shows up once you have saved something; Settings › My Components renames and deletes them. |
Quick search
On the Mac and iPad, the bubble in the bottom-left corner (⌘F) opens a search field. Type "heart" or "chart" and up to six matches appear as bubbles: basics, Elements parts, saved components, photos from your Library and SF Symbols. Return takes the first match; with no match, what you typed becomes a text element. On iPhone, use the search in + Insert instead.
Device frames
A device frame is a group with a device drawn around it: iPhone in both orientations, iPhone Duo, Android phones and tablets in both orientations, iPad in both, a laptop, a monitor and three watches. The screen is the container — whatever you drop inside is clipped to it, so a screenshot or a design becomes a product shot. On the iPhone, iPad and Watch Ultra frames, Realistic Frame in the inspector switches between a realistic device and a plain one. Unframe (⌘⇧G) takes the frame away and keeps what was inside.
Text
- Real type: thirty-eight font families with weight, size, tracking and line spacing. The fonts are built in; you can't add your own.
- Style a part: select a word while editing and the inspector applies to just that word. ⌘B, ⌘I and ⌘U while editing; ⌘⇧= and ⌘⇧− for bigger and smaller.
- Convert to Freeform turns up to 250 characters into shapes you can edit point by point — a logo, an outlined headline, letters with a photo inside.
- Correct, Rephrase, Elaborate, Summarize rewrite the text with AI, right from the menu — see AI.
Shapes, lines and paths
- Shapes: rectangle, circle, triangle, ellipse, star and diamond. A rectangle takes a corner radius, and so do groups and images.
- Lines have a width, a curve and a dash style. Paths are lines with as many points as you like, and a smoothness that rounds them.
- Any of them becomes a freeform — a shape you edit point by point, and one that can hold other elements. That is its own page: Freeform & vectors.
Fills, strokes and effects
- Fill: a solid colour, a linear, radial or angular gradient, a mesh gradient, or a background blur that frosts whatever is behind it.
- Stroke: colour, width, and solid, dashed, dotted or dash-dot.
- Effects: opacity and blur, a drop shadow, an inner shadow.
- Copy Style and Paste Style (⌘⌥C, ⌘⌥V) carry all of it from one element to another — text style too.
Images and media
- Media, in Essentials, holds Generate with AI, your Library of every picture you have added, and the SF Symbols; its + brings in Photos, Files and, on iPhone and iPad, the camera. The Library is indexed on the device, so searching "beach" finds the beach photo without a filename.
- In the inspector: Fit, Fill, Stretch or Tile; Crop, Flip, Rotate; Adjust, with twelve controls, and 27 filters.
- Remove Background and Extract Text run on the device, from the menu under Edit.
- Drop from anywhere. On the Mac and iPad, drag a photo from Photos, Safari or Files straight onto the page. An SVG lands as editable vectors, a PDF as pictures, one per page. ⌘V pastes a picture or text copied in another app.
Drawings and charts
- Drawing is PencilKit: Pen, Pencil, Marker, Monoline, Fountain and Eraser, with Apple Pencil or a finger. Finger drawing is on by default — switch it off in the Draw section to keep your fingers for selecting.
- Tap a selected drawing to keep drawing in it. With several drawings selected, Edit › Merge Drawings folds them into one.
- Charts: bar, horizontal bars, line, curved line, pie and donut. Double-tap one, or choose Edit Chart Data in its menu, to change the numbers.