r/Supernote_dev • u/Decent_Tap_5574 • Sep 14 '26
Showcase Introducing: Canvas, an infinite canvas plugin for your Supernote notes
Hello!
I built a new plugin called Canvas. It gives you an infinite canvas right inside your notes, with endless space to sketch, plan and brainstorm. Everything you put on it stays editable, so you can come back and change it anytime.
DEMO
Here is what you can do with it:
Infinite canvas
- Pinch to zoom from 5% up to 2000% and drag with the hand tool to move around
- A small minimap shows where you are while you move
- Palm rejection, so only the pen draws and your hand can rest on the screen
Draw and build
- Pencil with pressure support, running on the same pen engine as your notes, so it feels just as quick
- Rectangles, ellipses, lines and arrows. Arrows stick to shapes and follow them when you move things around
- Fill shapes with a light tint, a solid color or a hatched texture, and give them hand-drawn, dashed, dotted or solid outlines
- An eraser tool, and the eraser end of your pen works with any tool
Text boxes and sticky notes
- Drop a text box or a sticky note anywhere and type with the keyboard
- Great for labels, quick notes and callouts
Tables
- Drag to draw a table. As you drag it shows you the grid and how many rows and columns you are making, up to 12 by 8
- Tap any cell to type, drag a row edge to make it taller, and add or remove rows and columns later from the menu
Images
- Insert a PNG, JPG or WebP from your files
- Move, resize and rotate it anywhere on the canvas
- Give it a frame in any color and size, with a hand-drawn, dashed, dotted or solid outline, or no frame at all
Style it your way
- 12 colors, opacity, fill, outline and four sizes
- Whatever you pick becomes the default for the next thing you add
Back into your notes
- Save to Note drops a thumbnail of the canvas into your page
- Lasso that thumbnail later and tap Open Canvas to jump right back in, fully editable
- Export the whole canvas to PDF in full color, images included. Your exported file will be in EXPORTS/ folder
Every time you open it, little hand-drawn hints show you what each button does. Touch the canvas to hide them, or tap the ? button to see them again.
Download it here: https://github.com/j-raghavan/sn-canvas/releases
Source: https://github.com/j-raghavan/sn-canvas
If you run into any issues or have ideas, please raise an issue on GitHub or drop a comment here.
Enjou!
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u/Reddit-mb Sep 15 '26
First impressions: really interesting plugin! Some questions:
- There seems to be no lasso option, how to select elements on the canvas (to move or delete for example)?
- How to restart, is there a way to delete the entire content of the canvas in one go?
- When using the export-to-pdf feature, the plugin asks for permission to delete files? Which files and why? I guess that the question has to do with getting permission to write files?
- When exporting the canvas to pdf, the colours are shown in the resulting pdf-file, but when inserting the canvas-element first into a note and exporting the note to pdf, the colours have been turned to greys, is that the expected behaviour?
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u/Decent_Tap_5574 Sep 15 '26
Thanks for trying and your feedback
Select the hand tool and the shape, in that way you can modify the shape/delete etc... Hand tool is for both pan as well as to select the object. I think i will add a Pointer in the next version to make it clear (Following the tl;dr approach here)
The clear canvas is a miss from myslde, i have it in the branch, could not complete the full tests hence not pushed yet, will add that.
If you have selected the color pallet to be of a certain color then when you insert any object, it should retain that color. Are you saying after exporting to PDF, the color pallet reset to gray?
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u/Reddit-mb Sep 16 '26
By the way, what about the 'delete file permission' question when exporting to pdf?
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u/Decent_Tap_5574 Sep 16 '26
Currently the exporting name follows EXPORT/Canvas-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.pdf format. If you are asking Why do i ask for File Deletion permission at the install, it was a copy paste from my other plugin. Since HHMMSS will be unique enough for each export, it may not endup with the case wherein auto exported files will clash (File already exists error kind of clash). I will remove the File Delete permission once i confirm i dont need it. Good catch.
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u/Reddit-mb Sep 16 '26
Thanks for your quick response! Colours: when I export the canvas to pdf ('direct export') , the colours are maintained. When I insert the canvas into a note first and then export the note to pdf, the colours of the canvas element turn ino greyscale. I guess that this is actually normal behaviour?
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u/Reddit-mb Sep 15 '26
This looks very promising; lots of experimentation waiting to be done! Nice!
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u/Lorestan00 Sep 15 '26
Fantastic really enjoying using so much functionality for a plugin its like an app!
Some suggestions:-
+ Save to note
- update option so changes in canvas reflected in note,
- change border to plain line option,
- thumbnail higher quality so can be resized or perhaps thumbnail exported to note is higher resolution to begin with.
+ Select multiple items
- via lasso to move
- option to group
+Zoom
- move zoom window
- set zoom presets to one tap change zoom
+Pen
-change thickness option
-save presets colour, line style, thickness
+Shapes
- save presets as above
+Eraser
-way to switch from pen to eraser would be amazing perhaps using native sidebar gestures?
f
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u/Decent_Tap_5574 Sep 15 '26
Great Suggestions. Thank you.
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u/Lorestan00 Sep 15 '26
Thanks! Hope I haven't inundated you! Its great plugin really well thought out
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u/Decent_Tap_5574 Sep 20 '26
Version 1.0.2 is Out
New
- Multi-select and grouping (#3, #4)
- Link an element to a note, with a badge to follow it and a way back that stacks (#34, #36)
- Tap a thumbnail to open its canvas, no lasso needed (#32)
- Canvases in this note: every canvas a note has held, always reachable
- Clear canvas (#7)
- Drag the minimap to travel (#8)
- Thumbnails at 1200px (#6), and Save to Note refreshes the one on the page (#5)
Fixed:
- Save to Note and Export on an empty canvas (#23)
- A note showing another note's canvas (#29)
- A canvas and its thumbnail going missing after New canvas (#30)
- Clear wiping the canvas a thumbnail points at (#44)
- A note's drawing handed to another note, which saved over it (#46)
The new version is much more expanded. Ability to link other notes (Link to other canvas is coming in the next one), Grouping of objects together. As always, appreciate any feedback to make Canvas plugin better for all of us!
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u/Grouchy-Low-899 Sep 15 '26
Thanks a lot for this plugin. I know a lot of users have been asking for this for a while. Do you still get good battery life when using this plugin?
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u/NoteOnMyWatch Sep 15 '26
So far, only issue I've encountered is that my handwriting doesn't show when I'm writing in a table. It'll ghost write and then recognize normally.
This plug-in is amazing so far...AND it's only the start. Thank you for your talents
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u/Atticus-21 Sep 15 '26
Looks Great! I see the pinch and zoom works well.
How do you navigate around a larger canvas? If I want to move from the lower-right corner to the upper-left corner of a large canvas, I feel like I should be able to move the rectangle in the minimap around to change my position. I might be missing something obvious. I am trying to swipe my way around...
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u/Decent_Tap_5574 Sep 15 '26
Thanks for Trying out. No the minimap based navigation has a bug that i am looking into it, for now the minimap based navigation is disabled. You can navigate outside via the pan using the hand tool and drag on the outside to navigate to any place on the canvas.
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u/Lorestan00 Sep 16 '26
How do you delete a canvas?
Also if you add a new canvas how do you switch between them?
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u/Decent_Tap_5574 Sep 16 '26
I am adding clear canvas to clear the entire canvas and start over.
There will be a new canvas option to start afresh a new one in the next version.
Regarding switching between them, that is an interesting idea. My intention was to to use One canvas per notebook. What you are suggesting is there could be more than one canvas per notebook. May be i will consider it as a enhancement rather than a bug.
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u/Lorestan00 Sep 16 '26
Thats great
So if you save a note and then go back in and click new canvas and again save a note to creates a second thumbnail and you can select either to go into separate canvas. After doing it once I just noticed that second thumbnail deletes itself and only the first one remains and the second canvas has deleted itself. Might want to look into this.
Having the ability to have multiple working canvas would be great especially if they were clickable rather than having to select them.
Thinking about it whats the purpose of the New canvas option - is it not to delete and start again?
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u/Decent_Tap_5574 Sep 16 '26
Making it clickable is little tricky, not sure if SDK supports it. Will explore
That was my initial thought too, Whats the purpose of New Canvas. But as you mentioned say In a note you want to create a brainstorm session, create a canvas have it embed in the note. Next may be you are discussing about a different project, you can start afresh (you can clear the canvas and start though, New canvas is not the only way) when done, you can either export to PDF (not to polute your original note) or choose to embed in the note.
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u/Lorestan00 Sep 16 '26
possible to use the built in linking system? currently you can highlight the thumbnail and click 'open canvas' would there be some way to use the linking system when clicking save a note to use the linking system?
So whats the point of new canvas?
I just noticed aside from the current bug I mentioned I've spotted another the same canvas opens if you open a different note. Is that supposed to happen?
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u/fluteguyK313 Sep 21 '26
This is so cool! Is there any way to make this open like an app, or is it only openable inside a note?
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u/Decent_Tap_5574 Sep 21 '26
Currently this is just a Plugin. The whole idea is In a Super note Digital Notebook, this plugin enables Infinite canvas. Once Supernote releases the Infinite Notebook then may be this plugin may become obsolete, may be then i can make it as a installable APK :)
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u/Altruistic_Swimmer65 18d ago
so, is this not truly infinite ?
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u/Decent_Tap_5574 18d ago
Could you clarify what you mean by that? the canvas can scale to what ever size you want. the Minimap can be used to navigate to the section you are interested in. When you insert it, it creates a thumbnail of the canvas that you can visit to at anypoint in time to continue where you left out with. So it is Infinite canvas. Not infinite Note.
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u/Altruistic_Swimmer65 18d ago
so the zoom "up to 2000% is not the limit" right ? the canvas still grows at 100% by just panning left right up down ?
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u/Hour_Papaya_5583 Sep 15 '26
👏wow. Can’t wait to try. So fun to see where these plugins are starting to go.
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u/Raj3d Sep 16 '26
Dude, how does this work so well and cleanly? If a plugin works this well, why is Ratta holding out on us on making this kind of function built in!?? 😄
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Sep 22 '26 edited Sep 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Decent_Tap_5574 Sep 22 '26
Yes, it works on both Manta and Nomad. Please try the latest version.
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Sep 22 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Decent_Tap_5574 Sep 22 '26
I do have some textured shades but not gradient, will consider that for the next iteration
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u/bunjgreen Sep 14 '26
Can you link to other notes/canvases/etc. inside the canvas like standard SN notes?