Canvas views
Show any view as a canvas, bring its entries onto the board from the tray, and work with live entry cards. Also covers the card cap and Settings > Canvas.
A canvas is one more way to show a view, beside the list, table, board and calendar. The view still decides which entries belong to it. The canvas decides where each one sits.
Each view has one canvas board. It saves as you go and shows the same on your other devices.
Show a view as a canvas
- Open any page or view from the sidebar: All items, Projects, Tasks, Knowledge, a smart view or one of your own views.
- In the view switch at the top, click Canvas.
- The canvas fills the page. The first time you open a board on a device, it zooms to show everything on it. An empty board says how many entries match the view, with an Open the tray button.
To keep the view opening as a canvas, save the change:
- On one of your own views, click Save in the bar that appears at the top.
- On a built-in page such as All items or Tasks, the change is kept in this browser. Click Save as view to make it a view of your own, with its board.
To go back to a list or table, pick it in the same view switch. The board stays as you left it, ready for next time.
What is on the screen
Everything floats over the board, so the canvas runs underneath.
| Where | What it holds |
|---|---|
| Top left | The view’s name, the view switch, Filter, the filter chips and, once something has changed, Reset, Save and Save as view |
| Bottom centre | The tool dock: undo and redo, the tools, and Keep tool selected |
| Bottom left | Zoom out, the zoom readout (click it for the zoom menu), zoom in and the minimap |
| Bottom right | Present, and a menu for export, theme and the hand-drawn style |
| Right edge | The tray of new matches, or its New matches tab when it is closed |
| Above a selection | The selection bar: the actions for what you have picked |
Right-click a shape for its menu, or the empty board for the board’s menu. Press ? for the list of canvas shortcuts.
The tray
The tray is where entries wait before they have a place on the board. Click the New matches tab on the right edge to open it, and the arrow at its top to close it.
It has two tabs:
- New matches: the entries this view matches that are not on the board yet, newest first, with a count.
- Library: search every entry you can see, including ones outside this view. It shows the 40 newest matches.
Put entries on the board
- Drag an entry from the tray onto the board. It lands where you let go.
- Click the + beside an entry to place it in the middle of the screen.
- Click an entry, or tick its box, to pick it. Pick several, then drag any of them to bring them all.
- Place all as grid places every new match in a grid. With entries ticked, it says Place 3 as grid and places only those.
- The arrow beside it opens Place as, which lays the entries out in named frames:
| Place as | What you get |
|---|---|
| Grid | One grid of cards |
| Clusters by status | A frame for each status, in the same order as a board grouped by status |
| Clusters by topic | A frame for each topic, and a No topic frame. An entry with two topics goes in the busier one |
| Clusters by person | A frame for each person, and a Nobody frame. An entry with two people goes in the busier one |
| Timeline by date | A column for each day, week or month, oldest first, by due date or else the day it was captured. Entries with no date go in a No date column at the end |
A timeline uses days when the entries span up to two weeks, weeks up to about four months, and months beyond that. When clustering by more than 24 topics or people, the rest share one frame at the end.
Each placing is one undo step. An entry is on a board only once: placing one that is already there selects its card instead.
Pulling in entries from outside the view
Anything you place from the Library tab joins the view, so it stays on the board. On one of your own views, it is saved with the view straight away. On a built-in page such as All items, it joins as an unsaved change: use Save as view to keep it.
Undoing the placing takes the entry back out of the view.
The card cap
A board shows up to 100 cards at first, so a big view does not fill the board in one go. When a board is at its cap, the tray says so, and new matches wait there until there is room.
- Change the cap, or turn it off, in Settings > Canvas.
- Hidden cards (see below) do not count towards the cap.
- With no cap, a board still holds at most 1,000 cards, hidden ones included.
To make room, remove some cards from the board, or raise the cap.
Entry cards
Each card is the entry itself, read live. Change the entry anywhere in Ultrathink and its card follows.
A card shows:
- the entity’s colour, as a line down the left or a soft tint;
- what it is (Task, Project, or for knowledge the kind of capture, such as Link or PDF);
- the title, on up to two lines;
- the status, for tasks and other entries with a workflow;
- the due date, when there is one. A task with none says No date, and a late one shows a warning sign;
- up to three topics, and a preview image when the entry has one. Small (S) cards leave these out.
Done tasks are greyed out. When you zoom out, cards show less: the fields go first, then everything but the colour and title, and at the smallest zoom each card is a block of colour.
Working with a card
| To | Do this |
|---|---|
| Open the entry | Select the card and press Enter, or click the open button that shows on hover |
| Rename it | Double-click the title |
| Change the status or due date | Click it on the card, or select the card and use the status or due date button in the selection bar |
| Change its size | S, M or L in the selection bar. Large adds the summary |
| Show more of the entry | Drag the card’s bottom edge down, use the arrow buttons in the selection bar, or press Alt and the down arrow. Each step adds the next section of the detail panel, such as notes or the AI summary. Alt and the up arrow shows less |
| Change its colour | Colour in the selection bar. A colour you pick wins over the entity’s own |
| Copy the entry | Clone in the selection bar, or Ctrl+D. This makes a new entry, which joins the view, beside the card |
| Take it off the board | Remove from board in the selection bar, or Delete. The entry stays in Ultrathink |
Every remove asks first, and undo puts the card back. Undoing a clone deletes the copied entry again. If the board is at its card cap, the copy is still made and joins the view, but it waits in the tray’s New matches instead of going on the board.
Entries shared with you by someone in your organisation show as cards too, but only their owner can change them.
Hidden cards
When an entry stops matching the view, for example a task you mark done in a view that hides done tasks, its card hides. It keeps its place, and comes back if the entry matches again. Hidden cards do not count towards the card cap.
If an entry is deleted, or no longer shared with you, its card says Entry removed. Remove it from the board when you are ready.
On boards, in the detail panel
When an entry has a card on one or more canvas boards, its detail panel shows an On boards row with a link to each board. Click one to open that board with the card picked out.
Moving around the board
| To | Do this |
|---|---|
| Pan | Drag with the Hand tool (H), hold Space and drag, or scroll on a trackpad |
| Zoom | Pinch, Ctrl and scroll, or a mouse wheel. Ctrl+= and Ctrl+- zoom in steps |
| See everything | Shift+1 (zoom to fit) |
| Back to 100% | Shift+0 |
| Go to the selection | Shift+2 |
| Jump somewhere | Press M for the minimap, then press or drag on it |
By default, a mouse wheel zooms and a trackpad’s two-finger scroll pans. To make the mouse wheel scroll instead, open the zoom menu (click the zoom readout) and turn off Mouse wheel zooms. The zoom menu also has zoom in and out, Zoom to 100%, Zoom to fit, Zoom to selection and Show grid.
Where you were looking on each board is kept on the device, so each board opens where you left it.
Settings > Canvas
Settings > Canvas sets how every board looks. Changes save automatically and apply to all your boards.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Dot grid | Shows dots behind the cards to line things up by. On at first. Ctrl+’ turns it on and off from a board too |
| Dot colour | Default, grey, blue, violet, green, orange or red. The dots stay faint |
| Card colour | Line on the left or Soft tint: how a card shows its colour |
| Cards on a board, at most | The card cap, from 1 to 1,000. 100 at first |
| No cap | Place as many cards as you like, up to 1,000 on one board |
| Fade the tray when not in use | The tray drops to a quarter strength until you point at it or move into it with the keyboard. On at first |
Views and their boards
- Clone a view from the sidebar, or use Save as view, and the new view gets a copy of the board.
- Delete a view and its board goes with it. The entries stay in Ultrathink.
- Renaming a view renames the board, since the board takes the view’s name.
AI tools on a canvas
AI tools connected through the MCP server can read a canvas and change it: place cards, add notes, text and arrows, move things about and stamp a card done. An open canvas shows their changes as they land, without reloading. If you are editing a card, note or shape at the moment an AI tool changes the same one, your edit is kept and the tool’s change is refused. Every change it makes can be undone.
On a phone
The canvas works on a phone. The tray opens from its New matches tab as a sheet across the bottom of the screen, and the selection bar shows icons only. The + button on each tray entry and the open button on each card always show, so you can do with a tap what a drag does on a computer.