If you’ve been utilizing iOS 16, iPadOS 16, or macOS Ventura, you’ve most likely observed that Apple needs you to collaborate on all the pieces together with your family and friends. You can now have a number of individuals wanting on the identical precise tab as you on Safari, share photograph albums through iCloud, in addition to initiatives in productiveness apps like Keynote and Numbers. Adding to the rising record of collaboration instruments is Freeform, Apple’s brand-new digital whiteboard app.

You can entry this digital whiteboard in your iPhone, iPad, or Mac. What begins as a clean canvas can shortly flip right into a storyboard for a movie challenge, an inspiration board for a marriage, an itinerary for an upcoming trip, or an inside design board for a brand new dwelling. You can draw sketches, add objects, and import information or net hyperlinks; maintain all of it to your self or share them with fellow Apple customers. It’s saved in iCloud, so any modifications you make sync throughout all of your units in actual time.

Freeform isn’t the primary of its variety—there are a variety of whiteboard apps on the market—nevertheless it’s one of many few (if not the one one) that solely works with Apple units; there’s no cross-platform help. It’s free to make use of, and whereas its options aren’t revolutionary, it’s a probably helpful device for anybody with an Apple gadget. 

How Does Freeform Work?

To entry Freeform, you’ll must be sure you’re working the newest model of your respective working system: iOS 16.2, iPadOS 16.2, and macOS Ventura 13.1. On your iPad and iPhone, you’ll should go to Settings > General > Software Update, the place you must see the choice to obtain the brand new variations. On your Mac, go to System Preferences > Software Update > Update Now (or Upgrade Now). The Freeform app will robotically seem in your system after the replace is full.

When you begin a board, you’re greeted with a clean canvas. Apple refers to it as “flexible,” which implies you’ll be able to tweak the scale of the board everytime you need—as far out as 10 % and as shut up as 400 %. This makes it straightforward to see all the pieces from a chicken’s-eye view the bigger your board turns into. I like that you just don’t must faucet by way of or scroll a number of pages; it’s extra pure.

At the highest of every board are 5 instruments. There’s Markup, for entry to varied writing instruments like pen, pencil, or marker; the self-explanatory sticky notes device; and the shapes device, which helps you to add a wide range of shapes starting from a circle to animals, meals, and crops. You additionally get a textual content field icon to kind out textual content as a substitute of scribbling it, and a media device to simply import content material out of your photograph albums or the Files app (or scan paperwork and insert net hyperlinks).

The technique of sharing boards for collaboration ought to be easy. Technically, all you must do is faucet on the Share button inside Freeform and ship an invite by way of Apple’s Messages app or through e-mail. If you ship the hyperlink to a gaggle chat, everybody inside that chat shall be added to the board robotically. You’ll have the ability to see who’s at the moment working throughout the board in real-time—with everybody’s respective icons showing wherever they’re on the board, just like collaboration in Google Docs. You may also begin a FaceTime name whereas immediately on a shared board.