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obsidian-pencil
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Pencil
An infinite whiteboard for Obsidian. Draw and handwrite with a stylus, mouse, or finger — saved as .pencil files right inside your vault.
Pencil is an opinionated, single-slice take on handwriting in Obsidian. The existing whiteboard apps are heavy and loaded with features most people never touch. Pencil does one thing well: a fast, infinite canvas that feels like pen on paper, and nothing more.
What you get
Infinite canvas — pan and zoom endlessly; your view position is saved with the note.
Stylus-first, pressure-aware — Apple Pencil and other pens get real pressure-thickness variation. Toggle it off anytime.
Mouse and finger too — no stylus? Draw with a mouse or finger. Pressure is simply held constant.
Palm rejection — once you've used a pen, finger touches become panning so you can rest your hand. Two-finger pinch to zoom.
Eraser — stroke-level erase by dragging over what you don't want.
Select & move — box-select strokes and drag them around.
Colors & sizes — 8 built-in colors plus your own custom palette (native color picker, long-press or right-click to remove). Four stroke widths.
Undo / redo — full history (⌘Z / ⌘⇧Z, or Ctrl).
Saved as vault files — each whiteboard is a .pencil JSON file, versioned and synced with the rest of your notes.
Works everywhere — desktop, iPad, and mobile. The toolbar adapts: icons on desktop, short text labels on mobile.
Tools & shortcuts
Tool<br>Key<br>Notes
Pencil<br>Draw. Pressure varies with pen input.
Eraser<br>Drag over strokes to delete them.
Select<br>Box-select, then drag to move.
Pan<br>Drag to pan (also: middle/right mouse).
Other shortcuts: ⌘/Ctrl+Z undo, ⌘/Ctrl+Shift+Z redo, Delete/Backspace removes the current selection.
Scroll to pan; ⌘/Ctrl + scroll (or pinch on touch) to zoom. Use Fit to frame everything you've drawn.
Creating a whiteboard
Click the pencil icon in the ribbon, or run the Create new whiteboard command. A Whiteboard.pencil file is created in your active folder and opened immediately (subsequent ones are numbered Whiteboard 1, Whiteboard 2, …).
Installation
From the community plugin browser
Open Settings → Community plugins in Obsidian.
Click Browse and search for Pencil .
Click Install , then Enable .
Manual install
Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
In your vault, create a folder .obsidian/plugins/obsidian-pencil/.
Copy the three files into that folder.
Open Settings → Community plugins in Obsidian, reload the plugin list, and enable Pencil .
Pencil works on desktop, iPad, and mobile. No internet connection or sync service is required — every whiteboard is just a .pencil file in your vault.
Usage
Create a whiteboard — click the pencil icon in the left ribbon, or run the Create new whiteboard command from the command palette. A Whiteboard.pencil file is created in your active folder and opened immediately.
Draw — pick the Pencil tool (P), choose a color and size from the toolbar, and draw with a stylus, mouse, or finger. Pen input gets pressure-thickness variation (toggle it from the toolbar).
Pan & zoom — scroll to pan, ⌘/Ctrl + scroll (or two-finger pinch) to zoom. Use Fit to frame everything, Reset view to return to 100%.
Erase — select the Eraser (E) and drag over strokes to delete them.
Select & move — pick Select (V), drag a box around strokes, then drag the selection to a new spot. Press Delete/Backspace to remove it.
Colors — use the built-in palette, or click + to add a custom...