Drawings#
iPhone and iPad only — the Mac displays drawings but cannot yet edit them. See On the Mac.
Sketch straight into a note with Apple Pencil or a finger. The drawing is placed in your note as a picture, and stays editable for as long as you keep it — reopen it a year later and every stroke is still there to change.
Making a drawing#
Tap the drawing button in the toolbar above the keyboard and choose New Drawing. The canvas opens full screen with the standard drawing tools — pen, pencil, marker, eraser, ruler and the colour picker.
Draw with an Apple Pencil or with your finger; both work, on both iPhone and iPad.
Tap Done to place the drawing in your note, or Cancel to discard it. A canvas you haven't drawn on is treated as a cancellation whichever you tap — an empty picture is never what Done was meant to mean.
Naming it as you draw#
The field at the top of the canvas names the drawing. Type a name and it becomes the picture's filename and its description, which is what turns into a caption when you preview or export the note — see Captions below.
Leave it blank and FoldNotes names the file for you. A drawing named this way carries no description, so it appears without a caption.
Editing a drawing again#
Double-tap the drawing in your note. The canvas reopens with your strokes intact, ready to change — this is not a redraw over a flat picture.
You can also reach it from the image browser: tap the drawing button and choose Browse, or open the image browser from the sidebar, and tap the drawing you want.
Both routes show the drawing's current name, and changing it renames the drawing everywhere — see below.
Renaming#
Change the name in the canvas and tap Done. FoldNotes renames the drawing and updates every note that refers to it, so no note is left pointing at a picture that no longer exists.
If the name is already taken, your drawing is kept as it was and FoldNotes tells you rather than quietly renaming it to something else.
How a drawing is stored#
A drawing is two files that travel together in your collection's
.attachments folder: the picture that appears in your note, and the
strokes that made it.
The strokes file is what makes a drawing editable rather than merely viewable. You never have to manage it:
- It is hidden in the image browser — you see the drawing, not two files.
- Deleting the drawing deletes both.
- Renaming moves both.
- It is counted as part of the drawing, so it is never mistaken for an unreferenced file.
Both files sync through iCloud like the rest of your collection.
Captions#
A drawing you named shows its name as a caption beneath the figure in preview, in export, and in a bound manuscript. A drawing you left unnamed shows no caption and takes no extra space.
The full rules — including how to caption an ordinary image, and why an image inside a sentence stays inline — are in Preview, Sharing & Export.
Where a drawing is placed#
A drawing is inserted on its own line, after whatever paragraph you were writing. It is never dropped into the middle of a sentence, and it can't split a task or interrupt a numbered list.
If you want a drawing to belong to the paragraph above it — indented as its child, folding away with it — press Tab on the drawing's line. FoldNotes won't do that for you, but it won't stop you either.
On the Mac#
Drawings made on iPhone or iPad appear on the Mac as pictures: in the editor, in preview, and in anything you export or bind. The doc list shows them as thumbnails.
Editing a drawing on the Mac is not possible yet. Apple has not brought the drawing canvas to macOS. FoldNotes keeps your strokes beside the picture rather than flattening them away, so when a Mac canvas does arrive, drawings you make today will already be in the right shape for it.
Drawing requires FoldNotes for iOS 1.1.0 or later.