Regardless of why you’re here, let’s jump into how you can customize your Drawboard PDF settings to increase productivity.

Set up your toolbar

• First thing’s first. Make sure all of your tools are in the right place. Like a worker’s tool belt, your toolbar is designed to keep all the tools you need right at your fingertips. To ensure it’s set up to help you work faster, remove tools that you don’t use often and add tools that you use regularly. Grouping similar tool types can be useful for taking advantage of muscle memory. Try keeping your pens together, then highlighters, then lines, shapes and finally other specialist tool types like Snapshot Tool or Measurement tools and Hyperlinks last in your bar.

To add tools to your toolbar, tap the plus sign in your toolbar ➕

To remove tools, simply double tap any tool and then Remove. Here, you can also change the default settings of your tools, for instance color and thickness.

• Don’t forget the “duplicate” tool feature. Use this when you might be tempted to change your black pen to a red one only to later find you no longer have a black pen any more. Duplicate your tool first to preserve the initial tool.
• Set up your tool lock toggles. Ask yourself “when I use X tool in my workflows, is it typically a one off?” If the answer is yes, then you will likely want to keep tool lock off. With tool lock off, you will default back to Pan after a single use.
• Want to move the toolbar around your canvas? Simply click and drag the Drawboard PDF logo that is in your toolbar.
• Want to try the radial menu? Head to the Settings cog ⚙️ → View & Layout → Use radial menu

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Bookmark Drawboard PDF Quick Tools in your browser

Ever need to quickly merge, split, flatten or compress PDFs? Add Drawboard PDF’s Quick Tools to your browser’s bookmarks to gain quick access when you need them.

Upload documents that you use often to the cloud

Uploading documents to the cloud means you can access them from any device, anywhere, any time. No need to send files back and forth. Instead, keep them in the one centralized location, accessible from anywhere.

Log in on your laptop, tablet and mobile device

Use more than one device? If you want to access your documents at any time from any of your devices, make sure you’re logged into Drawboard PDF on each device. The Drawboard PDF app can be downloaded on Windows, Apple devices and can be accessed via any web browser. When logged into your account, your cloud documents, including changes and annotations will be synced across each device.

Nail down your keyboard shortcuts

Memorizing a few handy keyboard shortcuts can help you work faster and more seamlessly. Speed up some of your regular actions with a few nifty keyboard shortcuts. If you’re on Drawboard PDF pro, you can even set your own customized shortcuts in order to tailor Drawboard PDF to the way you work best.

To find all of your keyboard shortcuts in Drawboard PDF, head to the scholar’s cap. 🎓

• On the Windows app, you can find the scholar's cap at the bottom left corner of your screen.
• On iOS and your web browser, the scholar's cap is at the top right corner of your screen.

Update your default units of measurement

Using the measurement tools to measure length, rectangular or polygon area? Change your default units of measurement between metric and imperial to suit your measurement requirements. Head to the settings cog ⚙️ → View & Layout.

Set up your canvas layout

Like to work with your full canvas in view? You can minimize distractions on your canvas by hiding tools like the Undo/Redo buttons, zoom controls and page indicator. You can hide these and also automatically hide your top and left menu bars by heading to the Settings cog ⚙️ → Views & Layout.

Set Drawboard as your default app for opening PDFs

Add Drawboard PDF as your default PDF software to help you work faster. Each time you open a PDF file, Drawboard PDF will automatically open and you’ll have all of your PDF markup tools at your fingertips.

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Set your close Window Behaviour

When closing your Drawboard PDF application, rather than needing to decide which files you should preserve in the session for when you resume the application you have the ability to set a blanket rule and save yourself the daily question. We find most users prefer to “Close all documents” and start fresh with each session.

Set your signature now

While you’re around a touch screen or have time to use our mobile signature workflow we recommend setting up your signature as you never know how much it might help you later.

Tip: you can also save other common annotations as signatures and use them as a kind of stamp. E.g. your date of birth or address in a hand-scripted format.

Use dark mode

Make working a little easier on the eyes by setting Drawboard PDF to dark mode. To enable dark mode, got to the Settings cog ⚙️ → Views & Layout.

Taking a couple of minutes to tailor your Drawboard PDF settings to the way you work can save a lot of time and make the experience of using Drawboard PDF a lot better.

Want more support? Head to the Drawboard Help Centre.

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