Namapu Help

In the Help window inside Namapu, after following a link in the Contents, the Back arrow in the top bar returns you to where you were, and the Home button jumps to the top.

Contents

• Quick start: nine tips
• The starting map
• Creating cards
• Dictating cards by voice
• Lining things up
• Selecting multiple cards
• Tidying up a layout (Arrange)
• Connecting cards
• Command Palette
• Screen readers
• Usage profiles
• Styling what you selected
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Drawing by hand
  • The tools
  • Colour, thickness and fill
  • The page
  • On the board
• Boards, images & pinning to back
• Your maps: where each one lives
• Getting a map out: pictures, text and files
• AI Assist
• Installing Namapu & working offline
• Sharing a map publicly
• Presentation Slides Mode
  • Building the deck
  • Presenting
  • Presentation settings
• Editing text with Markdown
  • Bold, italic, strikethrough
  • Line breaks
  • Superscript / subscript
  • Inline code
  • Code block
  • Headers
  • Lists
  • Links (including spatial navigation)
  • Tables
  • Task lists
  • Horizontal rule

Quick start: nine tips

1. Add a card by double-clicking an empty spot on the canvas (on a desktop browser). Type straight away; on a phone or tablet use + in the bottom toolbar.
2. Duplicate quickly with D or the Duplicate button in the toolbar above a selected card. If you drag the copy somewhere, the next copies keep the same step - so D three times makes an evenly spaced row. Select the row, duplicate, move the copy, and repeat to make a grid.
3. Connect two cards: tap Connect (the arrow in the main bottom toolbar), then drag from the parent card to the child.
4. Connect several children to one parent: select the parent, then tap Connect from this card (the same arrow, in the toolbar that appears for a selected card). It stays on, so you can drag from the parent to each child - or just click the children one by one. Press Done at the top right when you are finished.
5. Tidy the children: select them (press S and drag a rectangle, or tap Rectangle Selection in the top toolbar and drag) and open Arrange for the layouts. If the children are already connected to their parent, select just the parent.
6. Dark mode or an e-ink tablet: open the main menu (the hamburger, top left), open Settings, and choose Light, Dark or E-ink under Appearance.
7. Create many cards fast, two ways. By voice: tap the microphone in the bottom toolbar (needs Chrome, Edge or Safari). Speak and the words go into the selected card; tap an empty spot to start a new card there, connected to the one before; tap another card to speak into it instead. Say "next card" or "child node" to add a sibling or a child hands-free, "comma" or "period" for punctuation, "stop dictation" to end - each phrase is one Undo. From a list: open the main menu (or press O) and choose Outline…, then type or paste an indented list, Markdown bullets or an OPML file - each line becomes a card, laid out for you. To change children you already have, select their parent first: the box starts out as that branch's outline, so edit the text and press Replace outline.
8. Edit a card's text: select the card and click it again (or double-click it). The text is edited right on the card. If you prefer a bigger window, open the main menu, then Settings, and turn off Edit text in place - or press E any time for the full editor.
9. A plainer, lighter look: in the main menu under Settings, tick No card background to draw every card in the plain card colour instead of its own fill.

The starting map

• The map you land on when you first open Namapu is an example, not a template - edit it, rearrange it, or delete every card and start blank. Nothing about it is special once you touch it.
• Deleted it, or want to see it again? Open the welcome map loads a fresh copy as a new document, named "Welcome" - it never touches whatever you're working on now.

Creating cards

• Tap + in the bottom toolbar to add a new card or shape. The panel holds cards and text alongside twenty-four shapes - a right and a left arrow, a double arrow, and chevrons, the flowchart set (diamond, hexagon, parallelogram), the 3D set (cylinder, cube, cone, pyramid), emphasis shapes like a star or a banner, and speech and thought bubbles for comments. Every shape is an ordinary item: it takes text, colour and a border, rotates, connects and presents exactly as a card does. Scroll the panel if your screen is short - the shapes carry on below the fold.
• Select a single arrow (right, left, or double), chevron, or banner to reveal two small diamond-shaped handles alongside its usual resize and rotate handles. On an arrow, one handle changes the pointer's size, the other the shaft's thickness. On a chevron or banner, the two handles are its point/notch depths - hold Alt (Option on Mac) while dragging either one to move both together, keeping the shape symmetric.
• Flip Horizontal/Flip Vertical, in the selection toolbar's Rotate popup, mirror a shape across its own centre - the tail on a thought bubble, or the slant on a parallelogram or a 3D shape's face, can end up on the wrong side, and stretching or rotating it can't put it on the other one. No effect on a shape that's already symmetric, like a rectangle or diamond.
• Select a card to reveal small + handles on its edges - tap one to add a connected child (mindmap-style) card instantly. They are for building; when you are working on a map that already exists they get in the way, so the editing aids button in the right-hand panel, second from the top just under the eye (or H) hides them and shows them again. It hides the slide frames and the grid on the canvas too, and the choice is remembered on this device. Tab and Enter still add a child or a sibling with the handles hidden.
• Double-click a card and type straight into it: the text is edited in place, in the card's own font. Enter keeps it, Shift+Enter starts a new line, Esc throws the change away, and clicking anywhere else keeps it too. Tab keeps it and adds a child card, ready to type into. (With a keyboard and mouse; see below for touch.) The text is the card's Markdown, so a heading shows as # Heading while you edit. Cmd/Ctrl+B makes the selection bold and Cmd/Ctrl+I italic by wrapping it in ** or * (press again to take it off; with nothing selected you get an empty pair to type into). The full editor does the same.
• On a phone or tablet it works the same, with the on-screen keyboard: the card is moved up so it is never hidden behind the keyboard, Return starts a new line (there is no Shift+Return on a touch keyboard), and a bar above the keyboard has B and I (bold and italic: tap with some text selected to wrap it, tap again to take it off) and Done, which keeps the text; tapping outside the card does the same. The full editor - with the card's id, type and a bigger box - opens with E or the Edit button in the bottom toolbar, and is what a rotated card opens. Turn Edit text in place off in the main menu to get the full editor on double-click everywhere.
• From the main menu (or with O), Outline… turns a typed or pasted outline into a whole branch of connected cards at once - each level becomes a child card, laid out automatically. It reads an indented list, Markdown bullets (-, *, numbered), Markdown headings (#, ##) and OPML exported from another outliner or mind-mapper - it works out which one you pasted and says so beside the card count. A line indented under a bullet joins that card as the rest of its text rather than becoming a card of its own.
• You don't have to paste: Choose file… in that dialog opens a .md, .opml or .txt file, and you can drag one straight onto the dialog instead. Either way the file lands in the box first, so you can read it - and edit it - before anything is created. Nothing appears on the canvas until you press the button at the bottom, and one Undo takes the whole thing back.
• The box starts out as your map's own outline - everything on the map, or just the cards you had selected. Edit that text (fix a typo, add or remove a line) and press Replace outline: the cards it came from are replaced by new ones built from the text, laid out again from where the first one was. Anything outside the outline (images, drawings) stays, but the replaced cards start over: they lose their colours, sizes and any group or slide number, and a connection from one of them to something outside the outline is removed with it. Undo brings all of it back. To keep what is already there and add the text next to it instead, press Add as new.

Dictating cards by voice

• Tap the microphone in the bottom toolbar (or choose Dictation Mode in the Command Palette) to start continuous speech-to-text. A red banner appears just under the top toolbar showing what is being heard; the card receiving your words has a dashed red outline. Your browser may ask for microphone access the first time. Dictation needs a browser with speech recognition (Chrome, Edge and Safari have it; Firefox does not).
• Tap a card to send your speech into it. Words are added to the end of whatever the card already says, and appear live as you talk.
• Tap empty canvas to create a new card right where you tapped, connected to the card you were dictating into, and carry on speaking into it. The microphone never stops listening in between.
• To finish a card, just move on: tap another card, tap empty space, or say "next card" or "child node". Whatever you were saying at that moment stays in the card you were dictating into - it never moves to the new one - and what you say after the tap goes to the new card. The line under the banner's status reminds you of this whenever nothing is being said.
• Say a command on its own, as a separate phrase: "next card" adds a sibling below the current card, "child node" adds a connected child to its right, "clear text" empties the current card, and "stop dictation" ends the session. Czech and Slovak equivalents (for example "další karta") work too. The banner shows which command it carried out (for example "→ Next card"), so a sentence that disappeared was a command, not a lost phrase.
• Say the punctuation: "comma", "period" (or "full stop"), "question mark", "exclamation mark", "colon", "new line" and "new paragraph" become the marks, attached to the word before them. The same works in the recognition language's own words ("čárka", "tečka", "nový řádek"; "Komma", "Punkt"; "virgule"...), and the English words work in every language.
• Change language by voice: "switch to Czech" (or "přepni na češtinu", "česky") switches recognition on the spot; the banner's language menu follows. English, Czech, Slovak, German, Spanish, French and Italian can be named this way.
• Each spoken phrase is one Undo step, so a misheard sentence goes away with a single Cmd+Z.
• Pick the speech language in the banner; changing it takes effect straight away. On a phone the banner sits just under the top toolbar, so undo and the menu stay within reach while you talk.
• Dictation stops when you tap Stop, press Escape, tap the microphone again, switch to another tool (Draw, Connect, Select several, Number items), put the app in the background, or after 45 seconds of silence. The last words you spoke are kept when it stops, as one more Undo step.
• Tapping a card that is open in the text editor first closes the editor, so what you dictate is never overwritten by it. A tap inside a Board or Slide Frame adds a card there rather than dictating into the frame's title.

Lining things up

Two independent checkboxes in the main menu's Settings group (open it with the Settings row) help you arrange cards neatly by hand. Each can be used on its own or together, and both are remembered next time you open Namapu.

• Show grid and snap to it draws a faint dot grid on the canvas, and pulls dragged and resized items onto that grid once they get close. Moving a card snaps its position; resizing snaps just the edge or corner handle you're pulling.
• Alignment guides (on by default) works against the other cards rather than the grid: drag a card and a thin magenta line appears whenever its edges or centre line up with a neighbour's, pulling it into place. Resizing does the same for whichever edge or corner you're pulling, so you can match one card's width or height to another. Line up three or more cards with even gaps between them and you'll also see the matching gaps marked, so you can space a row or column by eye.

Hold Alt while dragging or resizing to move completely freely for that one action - no grid, no guides - without having to turn anything off.

These are all editing aids: they never appear in Present mode, or for someone viewing a shared read-only map. The editing aids button in the right-hand panel (or H) hides the grid along with the creation handles and slide frames without turning it off - showing the aids again brings it back, and snapping keeps working while it is hidden.

On a touch screen every button in the app is sized to at least 44px, the size a fingertip can hit reliably, and each one carries a spoken label for screen readers. On a desktop the toolbars keep their tighter spacing - the change follows the input device, not the window size.

Selecting multiple cards

• Drag a rectangle over empty canvas (or shift-click cards one by one) to select several at once.
• Ctrl+A (Cmd+A on Mac) selects every card currently visible in the view; Ctrl+Shift+A (Cmd+Shift+A) selects every card in the whole map, including ones off-screen.
• Dragging any card in the selection moves all of them together, by the same amount.
• Resizing and turning: two or more selected cards show one box around all of them, with handles on the box only. Drag its corner to scale the whole selection - cards move and resize in proportion and their text grows or shrinks with them, like a group in a drawing app. The box's edge snaps to the grid and to other cards' edges as one object (hold Alt to move freely), and Shift keeps the box's shape. Drag the round handle above the box to turn the whole selection about its centre. Locked cards stay put.
• Group (in the item toolbar, with two or more cards selected) ties them together for good: it is saved with the map, so tapping one member selects the whole group again after a reload, and a dashed GROUP box shows around it while it is selected. Tap a member of a selected group to pick just that card. Ungroup dissolves the whole group, whichever member you have selected. A group is only a group while two or more of its cards are visible - one left on its own (the rest deleted, or hidden inside a collapsed branch) is just a card.
• Duplicate copies the whole selection. Copies of cards that were connected to each other are connected to each other, not to the originals; a connection is only copied when both of its ends are. Duplicating a whole group makes a new group of the copies, separate from the original, and duplicating just one member of a group makes an ungrouped card. Duplicate again to make a row or a grid: drag the new copy to where you want the next one, then press D again - each further copy is placed the same distance and direction away, so three more presses make an evenly spaced line. Do the same with the whole line selected to build a grid. Selecting something else starts over with the small default nudge.

Tidying up a layout (Arrange)

Select something eligible and the Arrange button (a small tree) appears in the item toolbar, opening a popup of layouts. What it offers depends on what's selected - the two groups of modes don't overlap:

• A single card with children (a mindmap branch): the seven tree layouts (the seventh, Flow, is described below). Tree → fans the whole branch out to the right of the card in tidy rows. Mind map puts the card in the middle with branches on both sides - children already on both sides keep their side; a fresh branch is split alternately so the two sides balance. Timeline lays the children out as events along a line to the right of the card, alternating above and below it, with each event's own children hanging away from the line - for plans, histories and steps. List lists the descendants below the card, one indent per level, like a file explorer - compact, and easy to read on a phone. Fan places the children one after another around the card, and Radial arranges the branch on rings around it. The two turn buttons rotate the finished layout by 45° each way, so a tree can run in any direction.
• Two or more selected cards with no branch relationship between them, or a single selected Board: the six flat layouts - Grid, Packed, Row, Column and Ring. There's no one card here to fan out from or centre rings on, so these work on the group as a whole instead: Grid lines everything up in even rows and columns, sized to the largest item. Packed fits items of different sizes together more snugly, trending toward a square-ish cluster rather than one long strip. Row and Column line the group up in a single gapped line, centred on the group's own midpoint. Colour sorts the group into one column per fill colour, in the left-to-right order the colours already have, keeping each column's cards in their current top-to-bottom order - a quick way to turn a brainstorm into themes. Ring spaces the group evenly around one circle, sized so nothing overlaps. Applying any of the five to a board's contents also resizes the board to fit the new layout, in the same step. Grid and Packed are offered for a branch too.
• Connected cards - a selection holding a card together with a card it is connected to, such as a flowchart or a process you select with a rectangle - offers Flow alone: it puts the cards in layers from left to right following the arrows (a card goes after everything that points at it), orders each layer to keep the lines short, and ignores an arrow that would close a loop. The two turn buttons rotate it by 45° each way, so a flow can run top to bottom or at any diagonal. Flow is also offered for a single card with children: the whole branch flows from the card, following any cross-links, and - like the tree layouts - it is remembered by Keep tidy and used by Arrange whole map. The other flat layouts are hidden there because they would ignore the connections.
• A single numeric field (blank = automatic) appears for every mode, relabelling itself for whichever one you pick: Spacing for Tree, Mind map, Timeline, Row and Column (the gap between cards), Radius for Fan, Radial and Ring (how far out the first ring sits), and Columns for Grid and Packed (how many cards per row - blank picks a roughly square layout). The -/+/auto buttons beside it step the value without needing to type, and auto clears it back to the mode's own default.
• Arrange whole map (in the Command Palette) lays out every branch at once, each with the layout it remembers (Tree otherwise), and moves branches apart so none overlaps another. Cards that belong to no branch stay where they are. One undo step.
• Cards glide to their new places rather than jumping, so you can see what moved where (if your system asks for reduced motion, they jump).
• Every layout applies as a single undo step, and the popup stays open afterward so you can try another - or turn it - without reopening it.
• Tree layouts pack tightly: branches are placed as close together as their shapes allow at every level, so a long thin chain next to a short one no longer leaves a block of empty canvas. Turning a layout re-arranges it for the new direction, so cards never land on top of each other.
• Keep tidy (the pin in the popup, on by default once you've arranged a branch): the branch remembers its layout and re-arranges itself whenever a card is added to it - by Tab/Enter, a + handle or dictation - as part of the same undo step as the new card. Dragging a card out of line is still allowed; the next added card tidies the branch again. Click the pin to turn it off for that branch.

Connecting cards

• Tap Connect (the arrow icon) in the toolbar, or press N, then drag from one card to another to draw a connection between them.
• To connect one card to several others in a row, select it first and tap Connect from this card (or press F) instead - it stays armed after each connection, so you can click/drag onto one child after another without reopening the toolbar. Tap the button again, press Esc, or change the selection to stop.
• Connections you draw this way, and the ones created by the + handles, can be restyled from the line properties panel once selected: pick between Straight, Curved (Bezier), and Elbow (Orthogonal) line styles, as well as custom colors, stroke widths, and arrowheads.
• To restyle several connections at once - handy on a phone, where picking one thin line out from under its cards is fiddly - select the cards at both ends instead and tap Connection lines (the link icon) in the bottom toolbar. It shows up whenever the selection includes at least one full connection between two selected cards, and restyles all of them together.
• Collapse a branch: a card that has children shows a small circle on its top-right corner - tap the − to hide the branch, tap the + to show it again. The circles stay in read-only mode, because that is how a reader opens a branch. They shrink with the cards, and when you zoom far out the circle of an open branch is left out so a big map stays readable; a collapsed branch always keeps its +.

Command Palette

• Press Cmd+K (Ctrl+K on Windows/Linux) or tap the search icon in the top toolbar to open the spotlight Command Palette overlay.
• Use ↑ and ↓ arrow keys (or move your mouse) to move the active selection line. The highlighted line displays a blue ➔ Enter badge showing exactly which command or card will execute when you press Enter.
• Search for any card on your map by title or text snippet to jump directly to it and center it on screen.
• Search for tool commands (e.g., Save As, Curved Connector, Elbow Connector, Add Card, Export SVG, Dark Mode) to run them instantly.
• Search for saved local documents to switch maps without leaving the keyboard.

Screen readers

• The map itself is a drawing, so NAMAPU tells a screen reader what happens on it: which card is selected (with the first words of its text), how many cards a multi-selection holds, and when a card is added, deleted, arranged, undone or redone. Nothing is spoken while the selection stands still.
• Every toolbar button has a name, and the keyboard shortcuts below work without a pointer: arrow keys move the selection, Tab and Enter add connected cards, and Outline… (O) shows the whole map as editable text.

Usage profiles

• A UI Profile trims the toolbars to the job at hand, and is remembered on this device. The picker is hidden while the profile is Full (the default); when a trimmed profile is active it appears in the main menu's Settings group, so you can always go back to Full. Full shows everything. Mindmap & Whiteboard keeps cards, branches, connections, colour, font size, drawing and dictation, and hides the slide deck, numbering, web-page targets and the page-layout tools (stacking order, rotation, lock, border styling, text alignment, aspect-ratio lock, pinning). Web Builder keeps boxes, text, images, links and alignment, and hides connections and their styling, branch Tidy, dictation, slides, numbering and drawing. Presentation Deck keeps frames, numbering, the deck and styling, and hides connections, Tidy, drawing, dictation and targets.
• On a phone this is the difference between two rows of icons and one: pick the profile for what you're doing and the rest gets out of the way.
• A profile only hides buttons. Nothing on the map changes, and the keyboard shortcuts keep working in every profile.
• The main menu (☰, top left) ends with the version and What's new, which opens the list of changes at the end of this Help.
• On a phone the selection toolbar starts short: the everyday buttons show, and More (the chevron at the end) unfolds the rest: stacking order, pins, target, align, rotate, copy/paste style and grouping. It stays unfolded until you fold it again.

Styling what you selected

Select something and the bottom toolbar offers its style panels.

• Colour (the filled circle) sets the card's colour from ten hues - grey, red, orange, yellow, lime, green, teal, blue, purple, pink - in rainbow order. The swatches show the card as it will look in the current look: in Light a pale fill with a coloured outline, in Dark a vivid outline over a faint tint of the same hue, and in E-ink a white card whose outline is a shade of grey (yellow lightest, purple black), since the screen has no colour. The dashed ✕ swatch means no fill at all, and the palette swatch picks any colour you like. With the panel open (press C), the number keys pick a hue directly - 1 to 9 and 0 for the ten hues in the order shown, with the digit printed on each swatch (not on a touch screen).
• Font (Aa) holds everything about the text, in three rows: the typeface; H-Align and V-Align; then Style and Size. It only appears for things that have text - a drawing, an image or a connection hides it.
• Style is abbreviated to N, B and I - normal, bold and italic, each button drawn in the style it applies. Size is A-, Def and A+: one step smaller, back to the default size, one step larger. Hover any of them for the full name.
• The line button (the diagonal stroke) opens whichever panel fits what you have selected: a connection gets colour, thickness and arrowhead direction; a card or board gets its frame thickness and corner rounding; a drawing gets the panel described below.
• Copy style / Paste style: select a card and click Copy style in its toolbar (or Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+C), then select one or more cards and click Paste style (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+V). It carries colour, border, text colour, font, size and alignment - not the text, size or position. One undo step per paste.
• Every one of these panels has a pin in its top corner. Unpinned, the panel closes as soon as you pick an option - good for a single change. Pinned, it stays open so you can try several in a row. The x beside it closes the panel, as does Escape.
• The floating toolbar above a selected card also has Duplicate (or press D with a card selected - it's the draw-mode shortcut when nothing's selected, and duplicate when something is).

Keyboard shortcuts

Most buttons show their own one-key shortcut in their tooltip - hover any of them to check. This page collects the full set in one place, and pressing ? anywhere (or Keyboard shortcuts in the main menu or the Command Palette) opens the same list as a dialog you can keep beside the map. The dialog is built from the keys the app really answers, so it is always up to date. None of them fire while you're typing in a card or a dialog, apart from Undo/Redo and Esc, which work wherever you are.

General

Styling a selection

While drawing

The pen tools below reuse some of the same letters as the panels above (L, E) - Draw mode owns the keyboard while it's active, so there's no clash.

With Cmd/Ctrl or Alt

Drawing by hand

Tap the pen in the bottom toolbar (or press D) to draw directly on the board - no separate window. The rest of the map dims so your ink stays legible over it; press Done or Esc when you're finished.

Double-click an existing drawing (or select it and tap the pen) to draw into it again - new marks join the same item rather than starting a new one.

The tools

Every tool has a one-key shortcut, shown in its tooltip, and a second row of its own colour/thickness/fill options appears under the tools while it's active.

• Pen (P) draws freehand. Highlighter (H) draws a wide translucent stroke that always stays behind your ink.
• Line (L) drags from start to end. Hold Shift to snap the angle to 15° steps.
• Rectangle (R) and Ellipse (O) drag corner to corner. Hold Shift for a perfect square or circle.
• Eraser (E) removes whole marks you drag across, even across several different drawings in one go - the entire drag undoes in one step.
• Select (V) picks one mark at a time: click it to select, drag to move it, Delete to remove it.

Colour, thickness and fill

• Each tool's row sets the colour and thickness it draws with next. The colours are the same ten hues as for cards and connections, plus Ink (near-black on the light page, near-white on the dark one, black on E-ink) and white, and they follow the look: vivid in Dark, a shade of grey in E-ink.
• Pressure, in the Pen's row (on by default), lets a stylus vary the width as you press - lean harder for a fatter line. A mouse, a finger and the highlighter all draw at a constant width regardless.
• Rectangle and Ellipse add a Fill swatch for the inside of the shape, and Rectangle adds corner rounding.
• Undo and Redo (Ctrl+Z, Ctrl+Shift+Z) step through your marks one at a time - each mark is its own undo step the moment you finish drawing it.

The page

• A drawing's page starts out the size of whatever the board viewport shows when you begin, and grows automatically whenever a mark reaches its edge - you never run out of room mid-stroke.
• Once you press Done, the page shrinks back down to fit just what you drew, so a small mark doesn't leave a huge invisible box behind it.
• The eye button hides every card and object while you draw, leaving just your ink - handy when they're in the way. Off by default; turning it off again brings the dimmed map back.
• Scroll to zoom, pinch or drag with two fingers to zoom and pan while drawing - the same gestures the board itself uses.
• Starting a second finger mid-stroke abandons that stroke and turns the gesture into pan/zoom, so a stray touch never leaves a mark.
• While a stylus is on the screen, touches are ignored altogether - you can rest your hand on the page and draw over it, and the hand neither marks the page nor pans it.

On the board

• With a drawing selected, the selection toolbar carries the drawing's own actions: the pen button re-enters draw mode on it, and Color restyles the whole drawing at once.
• The line button opens the drawing's panel: Thickness restyles every stroke, Frame shows or hides a card-style border around it when it is not selected, On top keeps it above everything else on the board, and ↺ 1:1 undoes any stretching by scaling it back to a square.
• The aspect ratio button in the selection toolbar locks the drawing's proportions while you resize. Resizing scales the line thickness along with the drawing.
• Clicks only land on the drawing where you actually drew - the empty space inside its frame passes through to whatever is behind it.

Boards, images & pinning to back

Add a Board or an Image from the shapes panel to group cards visually or drop in a reference picture. Both always render behind cards, so they never block your content.

• Pin to back: select a board or image and use the Pin button in the selection toolbar to drop it behind connection lines too, so lines between cards stay visible even when they cross over it. New boards and newly imported images are pinned by default; click the button again to unpin.
• Moving a pinned board carries along any cards resting on top of it, like a physical surface - handy for repositioning a whole grouped area at once.
• Rotating a pinned board (from the selection toolbar's Rotate popup, or by dragging its rotate handle) turns its cards along with it too, orbiting them around the board's centre as if the whole thing were one grouped symbol.
• Moving or rotating an unpinned board leaves cards where they are, so you can nudge or turn the frame itself without disturbing what's on it.
• Image properties: double-click a selected image to open its panel. Crop, Remove color and Replace sit at the top, with the aspect-ratio controls under them; the image's title and alt text are folded into Title & description, which you can open when you need it. Close the panel with the x at its top-right, or Escape.

Your maps: where each one lives

Every map can exist in two places - in this browser on this device, and in the cloud under your account. The badge beside each map in the file manager (Open) says which copy is the up-to-date one.

Renaming counts as a change like any other, because the name travels with the map to the cloud.

If a map has been edited in both places, you'll see Cloud newer - that's the warning worth acting on first, since saving over it from here would discard the work done elsewhere.

• Images in cloud maps: when you save to the cloud, each image's bytes are uploaded once to your own storage and the map carries a link to them, so a map with photos syncs and shares. On this device the original stays local, so crop, colour-key and export keep working offline; another device shows the linked image and keeps a copy once it has fetched it.

Getting a map out: pictures, text and files

Export… in the main menu is where a map leaves Namapu - as a picture, as slides, as an outline you can paste into a document, or as a file you keep.

A picture (PNG, JPEG or SVG)

Choose what to draw - the current view, the whole map, or just the selection - then the size (1×, 2× or 3×) and the background. Handles, toolbars and the selection outline are never in the picture; a collapsed branch stays collapsed, exactly as you see it.

• Page colour matches the colour scheme you're using; Transparent (PNG and SVG - JPEG can't do it) is the one to pick when the picture is going onto a coloured slide.
• SVG is the third format, and a different kind of file: it has no size to choose, because it stays sharp at any size, and its text is still real text you can select and search. Every browser opens it; some drawing apps (Inkscape among them) show only its background, so pick PNG when the picture is headed for one of those.
• The line under the choices tells you how many pixels you'll get before you export. Very large maps are reduced to a size the browser can actually draw, and it says so when that happens.

Slides, as a PDF

If the map has a deck - slide frames, or numbered items - Export slides writes it as a PDF, one page per slide, in the order Present mode plays them.

• 16:9 or 4:3 gives every page the same shape, whatever size the frames were drawn at; Slide shape keeps each frame's own proportions instead. A slide narrower than the page gets background at the sides - nothing is ever cut off.
• Pages use the Size and Background chosen above, and a page is always solid: paper has nothing behind it, so Transparent comes out white.
• The map on screen doesn't move while the PDF is made, and the button counts the pages as it goes. The PDF is saved to your downloads (on a phone, to Files) rather than opened - open it from there.

An outline (Markdown or OPML)

A map is also a list, and Export outline writes it as one - either a .md file of nested bullets, which a document, a README or a ticket can read, or an .opml file, which is what other outliners and mind-mappers open.

• Whole map writes every card; Selection writes just what you've selected and everything hanging off it, so you can take one branch out on its own.
• Markdown is the one to paste into something else; OPML is the one to open in another app, and the only one of the two that remembers which branches were collapsed.
• Cards are nested the way they're connected, and ordered the way they sit on the canvas - top to bottom. A card with no connections is a bullet of its own.
• The line above the button says what you'll get before you write it, including anything that can't come along: drawings, boards and images have no text, so they aren't in the file, and a card connected to two parents is written under the first one only.
• The text you typed is kept exactly as it is - a card's own bold, links and lists come out unchanged - and importing the file back gives you the same outline again.

A map file

A map can also live as a file on your own disk - your backup, and the way to move a map between two browsers, or to hand it to someone else, without an account.

• Export map file saves the open map as a .namapu.json file wherever your browser puts downloads. It saves the map exactly as it is right now; it doesn't change or move the map you're working on.
• Import map file… opens one back up. It always arrives as a new map - it never merges into what you have open, and never overwrites a map of the same name (you'd get "Project plan 2").
• An imported map starts out on this device only. Save it to the cloud yourself if you want it there - importing a file someone sent you never touches their copy, and never touches your account.

Everything is in the file: every card, drawing, image, connection and slide number. Exporting today and importing next year gives you the same map back. That's the difference between this and the outline above: an outline is the text of your map, and doesn't carry where anything sits, what colour it is, or which branches were collapsed - a map file carries all of it.

AI Assist

AI Assist… in the main menu asks Claude to write a branch for you, three ways - a topic in, or a card you've selected in, and a tree of cards out, placed and connected the same way a paste into Outline would be.

• The first time you open it, you'll be asked for your own Anthropic API key - get one at console.anthropic.com. It's used only from this browser, straight to Anthropic: Namapu never sees it, and it's never saved to the cloud or included in anything you export. Requests are billed to your own Anthropic account, not to Namapu. Change API key at the top of the dialog swaps it for a different one at any time.
• The key is kept in this browser's storage as plain text, the way any site's saved setting is. Anyone who can use this browser profile can read it, so on a shared computer open Change API key and press Remove saved key when you're done, or set a spending limit on the key in the Anthropic console.
• Generate - type what a whole new branch should be about and press Generate. What comes back is added as new cards at the centre of your view, laid out automatically.
• Expand - select a card first (its whole existing branch goes with it), then press Add more. The new cards join whatever children that card already had - nothing existing is moved, renamed or replaced.
• Summarize - select a card, then press Summarize to add one new card holding a short summary of everything under it - useful before presenting a branch, or just to see the shape of it at a glance.
• Selecting more than one card runs Expand or Summarize on each of them separately, so a card only ever sees its own branch, never another one's.
• Every action is one Undo away from gone, whichever tab made it.
• If a request fails - a rejected key, a slow connection, Claude declining to answer - you'll see a plain sentence explaining why, and nothing is created.

Installing Namapu & working offline

Namapu can be installed like an app - its own icon, its own window, no browser address bar.

• iPhone / iPad: open namapu.com in Safari, tap the Share button, then Add to Home Screen.
• Android: open the browser menu and choose Install app (or Add to Home screen).
• Desktop Chrome or Edge: click the install icon at the right-hand end of the address bar.

Once you've opened Namapu online at least once, it works without a connection - on a plane, in a basement, or on a tablet that's dropped off the wifi. Launch it and your maps open and edit exactly as usual; everything you type is saved on the device as you go.

What still needs a connection: signing in, To cloud, opening a map that's only in the cloud, and publishing or updating a share link. Those report a normal error while you're offline and work again once you're back - nothing you've written is lost in the meantime, because the copy on this device was saved first.

When a new version of Namapu has been published, a small A new version of Namapu is ready bar appears at the bottom of the screen. Reload switches to it straight away; Later keeps the version you're using until you next open the app, so it can't interrupt what you're in the middle of.

Sharing a map publicly

Signed in, any map you've saved to the cloud can be published as a read-only link anyone can open - no account needed on their end.

• Open the file manager (Open), select the map, and click Share.
• Publish makes a snapshot of the map's current cloud-saved state and gives you a link. It does not keep updating live - keep editing and saving as usual, then click Update public copy whenever you want the link to reflect your latest changes.
• Copy link puts the share URL on your clipboard.
• Make private deletes the public copy immediately; the link stops working right away.

A visitor with the link can pan, zoom, and step through slides, but can't edit the map - it opens straight into read-only view, the same mode the Q key toggles while editing your own maps.

Presentation Slides Mode

Turn any part of your map into a slide deck and present it full-screen, with the camera panning and zooming smoothly from slide to slide - no separate export step.

Building the deck

There is one deck, and it is simply the items you have numbered - a Slide Frame you drew, a card, a board, an image, in whatever mix you like. Open the Slides panel (the camera icon at the right end of the bottom toolbar) to see the whole list in order.

• Add slide, in the Slides panel, makes a new slide from a Format and a Template. The format is 16:9 or 4:3 and is remembered on this device; it sets the shape of every new frame, including the one from the ＋ panel. The template is Blank, Title, Title and content, Two columns or Section: the frame arrives numbered, with placeholder text boxes already in it, in the middle of what you are looking at. Click a box and type to replace its text. Ctrl+Z removes the slide and its boxes together.
• Open the ＋ panel and add a Slide Frame - a dashed rectangle in the chosen format (16:9 to begin with). It becomes the next slide the moment you drop it; drag it over the content for that slide and resize it like any shape (its proportions stay locked unless you toggle the Aspect Ratio button in the selection toolbar to make it freeform).
• Capture current view, at the bottom of the Slides panel, adds a frame matching exactly what you are looking at right now - same shape, same edges - and appends it to the deck. Use it when the composition is already on screen and you would rather not draw the box by hand.
• Number what is already there instead of drawing frames: select any unlocked item and click its # action in the selection toolbar. Click again to remove it.
• Faster for a lot of cards: click the # button in the bottom toolbar (no selection needed) to turn on quick-numbering mode, then click cards one after another - each click adds a card to the deck, or removes it if it is already numbered. The mode stays on until you click the button again or press Escape, so a whole map's worth of cards is one continuous run of clicks. A small number badge shows on each card while the mode is on.
• The numbers are always 1, 2, 3 … - no gaps. Remove slide 2 of five and the rest close up; Ctrl+Z puts every number back exactly as it was.
• From the panel: click a row's name to rename it, use the up/down arrows to reorder, the ⤢ button to jump the camera to it, and the bin to remove it from the deck. Removing a row never deletes the item - the card or frame stays on the map, just unnumbered. To get rid of a frame for good, delete it on the canvas like any other shape.
• Renaming is safe on a card. A card's text is its whole content, so a rename edits only its first line and leaves the rest untouched. A frame's name shows as a small label in its top-left corner on the canvas. Locked items cannot be renamed here (but can still be reordered and jumped to).

Hiding the frames

A slide frame is picked by its edge, not by its inside: tap or drag the dashed border to select or move it, and the middle stays free for the cards on it, for drag-selecting and for panning.

Once a map has a lot of slide frames, the dashed boxes can get in the way of editing. The eye button at the top of the Slides panel hides every slide frame on the canvas, and shows them again; the editing aids button in the right-hand panel (or H) hides them together with the creation handles. This is a setting of this browser, like the grid or snapping - not part of the map. So it does not travel with a shared map, and turning it on here does not hide the frames on your other laptop.

Presenting

Click Present in the Slides panel (disabled until at least one item is numbered). This hides all editing chrome and jumps straight to the first slide. Each slide fits the camera to that item's own bounds, recomputed live - so moving or resizing a frame or card after building the deck stays correct.

A small navigation bar sits at the bottom of the screen and fades out after a few seconds of no input - move the mouse or tap to bring it back. On a touch screen that first tap only brings the bar back; it never advances the slide, so you can reach Exit without losing your place. Exiting returns you to whichever mode (Edit or View) you were in before you started presenting.

Presentation settings

Open the Slides panel (the one with the slide list and Present): two preferences sit at its foot, remembered on this device:

• Slide transition speed - Instant, Fast, Normal, or Slow.
• Loop back to the first slide at the end - off by default.

Tapping or clicking anywhere to advance is always on.

Editing text with Markdown

Card text is written in Markdown. Each example below shows what to type, then what you get.

Bold, italic, strikethrough

Type this:

**bold text**, *italic text*, ~~crossed text~~

Result: bold text, italic text, crossed text

Line breaks

A normal Return isn't always enough - use <br> to force a new line.

Type this:

Line one<br>Line two

Result:
Line one
Line two

Superscript / subscript

Type this:

H<sub>2</sub>O and X<sup>2</sup>

Result: H₂O and X²

Inline code

Type this:

Use `<br>` for a line break.

Result: Use <br> for a line break.

Code block

Type this:

```
{
  "firstName": "John",
  "lastName": "Smith"
}
```

Result:

{
  "firstName": "John",
  "lastName": "Smith"
}

Headers

Type this:

# H1
## H2
### H3

Result:

H1

H2

H3

Lists

Type this:

1. One
1. Two
1. Three

- Hello
- World
  - Sub item

Result:

1. One
2. Two
3. Three

• Hello
• World
  • Sub item

Links (including spatial navigation)

A regular http(s):// link opens in a new tab, like on any web page.

Linking to #ID_of_a_card instead jumps and zooms the view to that card - handy for quick navigation between related cards on the same map. Append :top or :center to control how the destination lands in view, e.g. #ID_1:top. You can also target a card by a short snippet of its text instead of its ID, if that's easier to remember or write.

A new item's ID is a random string by default, but every edit modal shows its type and ID (e.g. "Card · #ID_1") next to the save shortcut hint - click the ID to rename it to something you'll actually remember, like WM_BOARD. Renaming it there updates every connection, Button target, and #id link elsewhere in the map to match, as one undo step. If the new ID is already used by another item, it's automatically made unique (e.g. WM_BOARD-2) rather than rejected.

Type this:

[Visit Namapu Website](https://namapu.com)
[Zoom to a card](#ID_1)
[Zoom and land at the top](#ID_1:top)
[Jump to a card by its text](#some words from that card)

Result:

• Visit Namapu Website
• Version: 0.30.0 (87646e6) - if something goes wrong, a red note appears with Copy details (if a part of Namapu could not load because the tab was open during an update, it offers Reload instead of a bug report); paste what it copies into a message or an issue. It contains the version, your browser, whether you are online and installed, the error, and how many cards the map has - never the cards themselves. The last errors are kept on this device, so if you missed the note, Copy error report at the bottom of the main menu (shown only while an error is on record) copies the same report.
• Zoom to a card (example only - ID_1 isn't a real card here)
• Zoom and land at the top (example only)
• [Jump to a card by its text](#some words from that card) (example only)

A Button item can jump the same way: select it, unlocked, and use its toolbar's "Set Target" action to point it at a card - no typed link needed. The button shows the target card's own title under its caption, so you can see where it leads without opening it - unless the caption already says the same thing, in which case the line is left off rather than printed twice.

Card-jump links only activate in view mode (not while editing), so editing text doesn't accidentally trigger navigation. This is an experimental feature - toggle Jump links on buttons in the main menu's Settings group.

Tables

Type this:

| Syntax    | Description |
| --------- | ----------- |
| Header    | Title       |
| Paragraph | Text        |

Result:

Task lists

Type this:

- [x] Write the press release
- [ ] Update the website
- [ ] Contact the media

Result:

• Write the press release
• Update the website
• Contact the media

Horizontal rule

Type this:

<hr>

Result: