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The canvas

The canvas is where you point at things. Everything it does writes real geometry into the document: fractional transforms that render identically in the editor, the presenter, and the video file.

Tools

Section titled “Tools”

One key each, Figma’s letters:

Key Tool
V Select, move, and transform
H Hand: drag to pan the viewport
T Text: click to place, type inline
R Rectangle
O Ellipse
L Line
A Arrow
M Media: insert an image or video file

A drawing tool returns to select after each placement. Escape returns to select from anywhere. Double-click a text element to edit it in place.

Selection and the gizmo

Section titled “Selection and the gizmo”

Click selects. Drag on empty ground sweeps a marquee; hold Shift to add to the selection. A selected element shows the transform gizmo: drag the body to move, a handle to resize, the top handle to rotate. Shift locks the aspect ratio, Alt resizes from the center, and Escape cancels the drag without losing the selection. A multi-selection moves as one unit; handles stay single-selection.

Arrow keys nudge by one canvas pixel, Shift+arrows by ten. A run of nudges undoes as one step.

Snapping, rulers, and guides

Section titled “Snapping, rulers, and guides”

While you drag, the canvas snaps to guides, the slide edges and center, other elements’ edges and centers, and equal-spacing gaps. Snap lines pulse as they catch. Hold Ctrl to bypass snapping for one drag.

Toggle the rulers from the toolbar. Drag off a ruler to place a guide, drag a guide to move it, and drop it back on the ruler to remove it. Guides save with the slide and never affect rendering.

Groups and blocks

Section titled “Groups and blocks”

Select two or more elements and press Ctrl+G to group them. A group moves, hides, and animates as one unit. Double-click enters the group to edit its children; Escape leaves. Ctrl+Shift+G dissolves it, and the children keep their exact places, because grouping only rewrites frames of reference, never pixels.

The Layers list moves elements across group boundaries too: expand a group and drag a row into its run to move the element inside, or drag a child to a top-level slot to promote it. Nothing moves on screen either way. With a group entered, paste and duplicate land inside it — except a pasted group itself, which lands at the slide’s top level beside the entered group. Groups never nest by an editor gesture: move, drag, and paste hold the same one rule.

A block is a group with a layout brain. The element menu’s Block submenu turns a selection into a row, column, grid, list, two-column split, or title-with-body block. The block arranges its children and re-balances when you add, remove, resize, or reorder them; the inspector’s Block section edits spacing, alignment, and the other knobs per kind. Blocks nest. Drag a child out of its block’s box to release it back to free placement. The arranged positions are ordinary transforms in the document, so a deck full of blocks renders everywhere, block-aware or not.

Arrange

Section titled “Arrange”

Z-order rides the brackets: ] brings forward, [ sends backward, with Ctrl for all the way. Lock (Ctrl+Shift+L) keeps an element out of the way of clicks; Hide (Ctrl+Shift+H) writes the spec’s visible: false, so a hidden element is honestly absent from the render. Align and distribute live in the element menu under Align.

Section titled “Menus and the palette”

Right-click anything for its menu: element commands over an element; undo, redo, paste, and select-all over empty canvas; slide commands on a slide-strip tile. Ctrl+K opens the command palette with every command searchable, recents on top. Menus, palette, and keyboard all fire the same registry entry, so the shortcut a menu prints is exactly the key that works.

Where to next

Section titled “Where to next”