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

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

1. Open Settings → Community plugins in Obsidian.
2. Click Browse and search for Pencil.
3. Click Install, then Enable.

Manual install

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release.
2. In your vault, create a folder .obsidian/plugins/obsidian-pencil/.
3. Copy the three files into that folder.
4. 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

1. 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.
2. 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).
3. Pan & zoom — scroll to pan, ⌘/Ctrl + scroll (or two-finger pinch) to zoom. Use Fit to frame everything, Reset view to return to 100%.
4. Erase — select the Eraser (E) and drag over strokes to delete them.
5. Select & move — pick Select (V), drag a box around strokes, then drag the selection to a new spot. Press Delete/Backspace to remove it.
6. Colors — use the built-in palette, or click + to add a custom color via the native picker. Long-press (or right-click) a custom swatch to remove it.
7. Undo / redo — ⌘/Ctrl+Z to undo, ⌘/Ctrl+Shift+Z (or ⌘/Ctrl+Y) to redo.

Everything you draw is saved automatically to the .pencil file, including your current view position.

Notes

• Pressure sensitivity is on by default for pen input. Turn it off from the toolbar if you want uniform strokes.
• .pencil files are plain JSON, so they're diffable, sync-friendly, and inspectable.

Author

Anand Ramanathan (rcanand) — rcanand.com · @rcanand on X

More from rcanand:

• Maibook — a local-first desktop app for personalized AI agents.
• maiweb — a highly customizable feed of the public web.
• ollamadash — Comparing the latest AI models.

If Pencil is useful to you, buy me a coffee on Ko-fi.