Doodlepad Guide

Everything Doodlepad does, step by step.

The basics

The toolbar (at the bottom in portrait, in the top bar in landscape): Pen, Marker, Eraser, Text, Select and Hand, then ＋. Tap a tool to use it. Tap it again to show or hide its settings.
Move and zoom: two fingers move and pinch the board. The Hand tool moves it with one finger. Zoom goes from 10% to 1000%.
The zoom chip at the top shows the zoom (and the page on sheets). Tap it to fit the whole page or board on screen; tap it again right after for 100%.
Undo and redo: the arrows at the top. Or tap the board with two fingers to undo, with three to redo.
Pick anything by holding it, with any tool. See Picking and moving.
The top bar: back to your boards, the board's name (tap it for its details and to rename it), undo, redo, Layers, and ⋯ for the board's paper, pages, export and more.
Tips in the app: ⋯ → How to use on a board, or Settings → Help, with a little animation for each.

Boards, paper and pages

Make a board

On the home screen, tap New board.
Pick the paper: Infinite (no edges, room in every direction), or sheets in A4, A5, Letter or 16:9 (slides), standing or lying.
Pick the pattern and color. You can change them later.

With Pro, From a PDF makes a board from a PDF file: each PDF page becomes a sheet you can write on. The PDF itself is never changed.

Paper

Open ⋯ → Paper.
Pattern: Dots, Grid, Lines, Music (staves) or Plain. On sheets also Cornell (a title line, a cue column on the left and a summary area at the bottom).
Spacing: Narrow, Normal or Wide.
Color: a few paper colors.
The pattern is printed on the paper: it grows and shrinks with the zoom, so your writing stays on its line.

Pages (boards with sheets)

Tap + Page under the last sheet, or ＋ → Page, to add a sheet.
The page list in ⋯ shows every sheet: tap one to go there, type a name for it, copy it, or delete it.
The zoom chip at the top shows which page you're on.

Pen and marker

The pen's settings

Tap the Pen when it's already picked to open its tab:

Tip: Fine, Ballpoint, Fountain or Pencil. With an Apple Pencil, pressing harder draws thicker or darker.
Smoothing: Off, Low, Mid or High. Higher smooths shaky lines more.
Color: ready colors, your own saved colors, and recent ones. Make any color you like, or type its hex code, then save it with ＋. Hold a saved or recent color to delete it.
Size and Opacity.
Ruler and Auto-scroll: see Ruler and Auto-scroll.

Neat shapes

Draw a line, box or circle with the pen.
Keep the pen still at the end for a moment.
It snaps into a clean shape.

Don't want it? Switch off Hold to snap in the pen's tab.

The marker

A see-through highlighter, with its own color, size and opacity. It works with the ruler and auto-scroll too.

Eraser

Pick the Eraser and drag over what you want gone.
Erase: Area cuts away only the part you rub; Whole stroke takes a whole line at once.
Erases: All, only Ink, or only Objects (notes, shapes, pictures). Only the active layer leaves every other layer alone; the eraser's circle then shows a small layers mark.
Size on screen: how big the eraser's circle is. It stays the same size at any zoom.
Hidden or locked layers are never erased.

Picking and moving

With any tool

Hold a note, shape, picture or a line of ink to pick it, and drag to move it.
Hold empty space, then drag over things to pick several at once.
Tap Done, or tap empty space, to let go.
Drag near the edge of the screen and the board scrolls along.

The Select tool

Lasso: Brush (rub over things), Free (draw a loop around them) or Box (drag a box). Holding empty space with another tool uses the same lasso.
Brush size: how wide the brush is, while the lasso is Brush.
Picks: All, only Ink, or only Objects.
Multi: while something is picked, a tap adds more to it (or takes it out again).

Resize and turn

Drag a corner knob to resize, a side knob to stretch one way, and the round knob under it to turn.
On shapes and picked ink, the lock knob over the box keeps the proportions while you resize.
When you resize ink, its lines keep their width. To make them grow and shrink too, switch off the line-width button on the action bar, or Settings → Keep line width when resizing.
Pictures, formulas and combined drawings always keep their proportions.

Change what's picked

Picked ink: its tab at the top changes the color, size and opacity of the picked lines, moves them to another layer, or flips them.
Several of one kind (shapes, text boxes or stickies) picked together: their tab changes all of them at once.
One picked object shows its own tab: see Text, Shapes and Pictures.
A combined drawing: its tab mirrors or flips it (and changes its ink's color, size and opacity when it's ink only). Tap the Combine knob above it to see its pieces boxed and what it's made of.

The action bar and the hold menu

The action bar

While something is picked, the toolbar shows what you can do with it:

Arrange: to the front, one step forward, one step back, to the back.
Combine: makes picked ink (and objects) one drawing, which you can move, resize and arrange like an object. A combined drawing shows the Combine arrow lit in yellow: tap it to take the drawing apart again. Combining drawings together makes one flat drawing.
To text: reads picked handwriting and turns it into a typed text box, on your device.
Keep line width (with ink): see Resize and turn.
Group / Ungroup: several objects move together, and a tap picks them all.
Delete, and Done to let go.

The hold menu

Hold what's picked still: Copy, Duplicate, Cut, Share (as a picture) and Delete.
Hold empty space still: Paste right there. Copies work between boards too.

Text and sticky notes

A text box: pick the Text tool (Aa) and tap the board, or drag to make a text area of your width.
Type in text or a sticky: double tap it.
The text tab:
- Font: Rounded, Clean, Hand or Marker.
- Size and color (text boxes can also have a highlight behind them).
- Style: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, and left, center or right.
- Spacing: the room between lines.
- List: bullets or numbers.
Resize text with a corner knob: the letters grow with it.
Board text has no autocorrect, so your notes stay as you type them.

The ＋ button

Tap the red ＋ in the toolbar to add:

Sticky: a note to write on.
Mind map: see Mind maps.
Math (Pro): see Math formulas.
Shape: see Shapes.
Image from your photos, or Camera for a new photo.
Page, on boards with sheets.

Things added from ＋ come in picked, with the Select tool, so you can move them right away.

Shapes

＋ → Shape opens the shapes: box, circle, triangle, diamond, pentagon, hexagon, star, heart, speech bubble, cloud, line and arrow. Tap one, or drag it onto the board.
Or draw one with the pen and keep still at the end (Neat shapes).
The shape tab: Shape (change its kind), Line (width), Color (outline and fill), Corners (rounding), Opacity, Layer and Flip.

Pictures

Add one with ＋ → Image or ＋ → Camera.
The picture tab: Crop (Original, Square, 4:3, 16:9, 3:4 or Circle), Corners (rounding), Outline (an ink line around it) and Opacity.

Mind maps

Tap ＋ → Mind map. The first bubble is the main idea; double tap it to type.
Pick a bubble: its bottom knob adds a branch under it, its side knob adds one beside it. Return while typing adds the next one. Add sticky in the bar hangs a note under it, in its color.
Drag a bubble to move it with everything hanging off it. Drop it on another bubble to hang it there instead.

Math formulas (Pro)

＋ → Math opens the formula editor.
Build the formula with the buttons (fractions, roots, powers, sums, integrals, Greek letters and more). Next and Back move between the empty boxes. No LaTeX needed, but you can type LaTeX too.
Tap Add. Resize the formula with a corner knob; it stays sharp. Pick it and tap ✏️ to edit it.

Ruler

Turn it on in the pen's (or marker's) tab.
Draw along its edge for a straight line. The length shows in centimeters while you draw.
One finger moves the ruler; a second finger turns it. It clicks into place every 45°.
The buttons above the toolbar: Lock it so it stays put, and tap the angle to lay it level again.

Auto-scroll

For long notes: the board slides on while you write, so your hand never runs out of room.

Open it in the pen's (or marker's) tab.
When: Off, At the edge (slides once your writing reaches a line near the right edge), or Every stroke (slides a moment after each stroke, so writing stays in one spot).
How far it slides, and how long it waits (Every stroke).
Undo right after a slide moves the board back first; the next undo takes back your writing.
At the end of a line, the next line button takes you to the start of the next one.
Show scroll buttons: ◀ ▶ on the right edge slide the board by hand.

Apple Pencil

Pencil draws, finger moves: once you've drawn with a Pencil, a finger only picks, moves and scrolls, so your hand can rest on the screen. Change it in Settings → Apple Pencil.
Double tap or squeeze (on Pencils that have it): switches to the eraser and back, to the last tool, or opens the tool's settings, as set in the iPad's Settings app under Apple Pencil.
Hover (on iPads that sense it): a dot shows where the pen will draw, in its color and size, before the tip touches.
Pressing harder draws thicker or darker, depending on the pen's tip.

Layers

Layers keep things apart, for example a sketch under your notes. More than one layer is Pro; a free board has one.

Tap Layers in the top bar. The highlighted layer is the active one: new ink and objects go there. Tap a layer to make it active; double tap to rename it.
New adds a layer. Drag a layer's handle to move it up or down.
Each layer's buttons: lock (can't be picked or erased), hide, delete.
For the active layer: Opacity, Ink on top (its ink over its objects instead of under them), Rename, Duplicate, Merge (into the layer below), Pick all and Clear.
While something is picked, Move picked to … puts it into the active layer.
When a layer is hidden, a note on the right edge says so; tap it to show every layer again.

Export and share

⋯ → Export as image (infinite boards) or ⋯ → Export as PDF (boards with sheets). Then save, print, or send it from the share sheet.
Just a part: pick it, hold it still, then Share to send it as a picture, or Save Image to your photos from the share sheet.
Hidden layers stay out of exports.

The home screen

Hold a board for its menu: Rename, Pin, Duplicate, Move to Folder, Copy or Cut (then Paste it into another folder), Delete.
Folders: tap + Folder above the boards. Hold a folder's tab to rename or delete it. Deleting a folder keeps its boards.
Pinned boards stay at the top.
Search with 🔍 at the top. Sort by Last edited, Date created or Name.
Recently Deleted (the 🗑 tab): restore a board, or delete it for good. Boards stay there 7, 30 or 90 days.
Tap a board's name inside it to see when it was made and changed, its folder, paper, layers and how much is on it.

Settings

The gear on the home screen, or ⋯ → Settings on a board. Settings are for each device.

Apple Pencil (iPad): "Pencil draws, finger moves". Once you've drawn with a Pencil, a finger only picks, moves and scrolls.
Moving and resizing: snap objects to the grid, line up with other objects (guide lines show), and keep line width when resizing.
Recently Deleted: how long deleted boards are kept.
Help: the tips, and this guide.
Doodlepad Pro: unlock or restore it.

Doodlepad Pro

One payment, no subscription, on all your devices with the same Apple Account. Pro unlocks:

Unlimited boards (3 are free).
Boards from a PDF.
More than one layer on a board.
Math formulas.

Everything else is free, iCloud sync too. Without Pro, existing boards and layers keep working. To restore it on a new device: Settings → Doodlepad Pro → Restore Purchase.

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