Canvas Designer

The Canvas Designer is a drag-and-drop authoring environment for creating multi-page interactive graphics, overlays, and presentations that play back on your LED displays. It is part of the Creator suite — a set of creative tools accessible from the Create button in the main toolbar.

Getting Started

The Canvas Designer lives at https://one.vu.studio/canvas — click the Vū Studio icon to go Home → click Create in the main toolbar to open the Creator suite → choose the Canvas Designer. You can start from a blank canvas or open an existing design.

Canvas Elements

The canvas supports the following element types, each with its own properties panel on the right:

Element	Description
Text	Rich text block with font, size, color, alignment, and shadow controls
Image	Static image from your media library
Video	Video asset with looping and autoplay options
Shape	Rectangles, ellipses, and other geometric shapes with fill and border
Line	Straight SVG line with configurable start/end points, stroke color, width, and cap style
Carousel	Auto-advancing or hover-triggered image slideshow
ScrollBox	Scrollable content region with configurable scroll behavior
Gallery	Browsable image and video gallery with a full-screen lightbox that supports video playback
iFrame	Embedded web content
Live Video	A reserved zone where a live NDI or UDP feed plays in front of the design when it is cast — see Keeping a Live Video Feed on Screen While Pages Rotate

Adding Elements

Elements are added from the floating toolbar at the top of the editor. The toolbar is split into three clusters: how you point (Hand, Select), what you draw (Text, Shapes, Icon, Layout), and what you bring in (Add Media). The left side of the editor is kept for the combined pages and layers tree (see Layers Panel).

1. Click a tool in the toolbar, or press its shortcut key. The tool is now armed.
2. Drag on the canvas to draw the element at the size you want, or click once for the first corner and again for the opposite corner.
3. Press Esc to cancel an armed tool without placing anything.

Toolbar button	What it adds	Shortcut
Text	A text element	T
Shapes	Rectangle, Circle, Triangle, Diamond, Polygon, or Line	S (L for a line)
Icon	An icon element	—
Layout	HStack, VStack, or Grid (gallery layouts), or a Scroll Box	F
Add Media	Opens your library to insert an image, video, web page, or PowerPoint file; its menu also holds Embed and Live Video	M

Shapes, Layout, and Add Media are split buttons. The small arrow beside each one opens its menu (for example Choose shapes). For Shapes and Layout, the button face shows the last item you used from that menu, so clicking the face again inserts the same kind of element without reopening the menu; clicking the face while that item is already armed opens the menu instead. Undo and Redo sit at the right end of the toolbar.

Adding Images and Videos

Images and videos come from your media library rather than being drawn on the canvas. There are three ways to bring one in:

1. Click the Add Media button in the floating toolbar at the top of the editor.
2. Press M, the keyboard shortcut for Add Media. PowerPoint files are picked from the same library picker — there is no separate PPTX entry.
3. Drag files straight from your desktop onto the canvas. An overlay reading Drop to upload to your library confirms the drop target — dragged-in files are uploaded to your library first, then placed.

Options 1 and 2 open the Select Media picker, where you can browse folders and choose an image, video, web page, or PowerPoint asset. If the file isn't in your library yet, use the upload option inside the picker.

How an added image or video is sized

Media is inserted at the source file's own pixel dimensions and always keeps its native aspect ratio. A 1920 × 1080 video arrives as a 16:9 element, not a stretched or squared-off box.

The one adjustment Vū Studio makes is a fit-to-canvas clamp: if the file is larger than 90% of the canvas in either direction, it is scaled down proportionally so the element sits inside the canvas instead of overflowing it on insert. A 4K file dropped onto a 1080p canvas therefore comes in scaled down, but still exactly 16:9. Files smaller than the canvas are not scaled up — they arrive at their true size.

A few related details:

• Where it lands. A file chosen from the Select Media picker is placed centered on the canvas. A file dragged in from your desktop lands at the point where you dropped it, and each additional file in the same drop is offset slightly so they don't stack exactly on top of one another.
• If the dimensions can't be read. When a file's dimensions can't be determined, the element falls back to 480 × 270 for a video and 300 × 200 for an image. Resize it by hand, or use Reset to natural size in the Properties panel (see Proportional Resizing from Width and Height).
• PowerPoint files have no native pixel size, so a PPTX element is inserted at a standard 16:9 slide size of 960 × 540 and then fit to the canvas the same way.
• Minimum size. Every element has a floor of 20 canvas pixels per side, so even a very small source file becomes an element you can select and grab.

Selecting and Moving Elements

Click any element to select it. Selected elements show resize handles. Drag the element to reposition it.

To select multiple elements, hold Shift and click, or drag a selection box around them.

Grouping Elements

Select two or more elements and use Group (right-click → Group, or the toolbar shortcut) to combine them into a single unit. Grouped elements move, resize, and copy together. Right-click a group and choose Ungroup to release them.

Proportional Resize

Hold Shift while dragging a corner handle to resize an element proportionally.

Cropping Images and Videos

Select an image or video element and double-click it (or click the Crop button in the toolbar) to enter crop mode. Drag the crop handles to define the visible region without modifying the underlying file.

Rotating Elements

Every element on the canvas has a rotation handle at the top center of its selection box. Grab the handle and drag to rotate the element visually on the canvas — the element orbits around its center and the bounding box rotates with it. While you drag, a live degree readout shows the current rotation angle.

Rotation can still be set precisely by entering a value in the element's properties, which is useful when you need an exact angle rather than a freehand rotation.

Independent Corner Radius

Shapes and other elements that support rounded corners can have each corner's radius rounded independently, so you can round individual corners by different amounts rather than applying a single uniform radius to all four.

Alignment and Smart Guides

When you drag elements, smart alignment guides appear automatically — lines that snap to the edges and centers of other elements and the canvas boundaries. This makes it easy to align elements precisely without a grid.

To align multiple elements:

1. Select two or more elements
2. Use the Alignment Controls in the Properties panel (right side) to align by left edge, center, right edge, top, middle, or bottom, or to distribute elements evenly

Context Menus

Right-click any element on the canvas to access the Canvas Context Menu with quick actions including copy, paste, duplicate, group, lock, and layer order controls.

Right-click a layer in the pages and layers tree on the left (see Layers Panel) to access the Layer Context Menu with the same options, plus Rename, Move to page, Bring Forward and Send Backward, Hide/Show, and Lock/Unlock.

Where Duplicates and Pasted Elements Land

Copies are placed so you can see them straight away, rather than exactly on top of the original:

• Duplicate (Ctrl/Cmd+D, or Duplicate in either context menu) places the copy slightly down and to the right of the original, and puts it directly below the original in the layer list instead of at the top of the stack. Duplicating again steps each new copy a little further, so repeated copies don't pile up in one spot.
• Duplicate Page (in a page's ⋯ menu) inserts the copy directly after the page you duplicated, rather than at the end of the design, and opens it. The copy is named after the original with (copy) added.
• Paste (Ctrl/Cmd+V) places the pasted elements at your mouse pointer, centered on it, when the pointer is over the canvas. Choosing Paste from the canvas context menu places them where you right-clicked. If the pointer isn't over the canvas, the paste lands in the middle of the part of the canvas you can currently see.
• Pasting several elements at once keeps their layout relative to each other — the set moves as one.
• Pasting again at the same spot steps each copy slightly, and pasted elements are kept inside the canvas edges. If snap to grid is on, the paste position snaps to the grid.

A Live Video zone can't be copied, cut, duplicated, or pasted, because a design supports only one (see Keeping a Live Video Feed on Screen While Pages Rotate).

Layers Panel

Pages and layers share one panel on the left of the editor, headed Design. It is a tree: each page is a row, and expanding a page lists its layers underneath it, so you can see and work with every page's elements without switching back and forth. Hide the panel with the arrow at its edge, and bring it back with the tree icon that replaces it.

• Page rows show the page number, its name, and Active on the page the canvas is showing. Click the arrow on a page row to expand or collapse it; the page you're editing is always expanded. Expand all pages / Collapse all pages at the top of the panel opens or closes every page at once, and Collapse all groups / Expand all groups appears when the design has groups.
• Background is the first row under each page. It is labelled Canvas when the page uses the canvas-wide background, or Page when the page sets its own. Click it to select the page background.
• Layer rows are listed under their page. Click a layer to select it — selecting a layer on another page switches the canvas to that page. Hold Shift, Ctrl, or Cmd to select several. Hover a layer to show its Hide/Show (eye), Lock/Unlock, and Delete controls. Double-click a name, or press F2, to rename it.
• A Live Video zone is listed with an All pages badge, because it belongs to every page.
• Drag a layer by its grip to reorder it, nest it, or move it onto another page (see Layer Drag-and-Drop Reordering). You can also right-click a layer and choose Move to page.
• With the tree focused, the arrow keys move between rows, and Right/Left expand or collapse a page or group.

Typography and Fonts

The Typography section in the Properties panel provides font selection, size, weight, line height, letter spacing, color, alignment, and text shadow controls.

Available fonts include Inter, Roboto, Open Sans, Lato, Montserrat, Playfair Display, and more. Custom fonts can also be uploaded and used in text elements. Tenant-specific fonts may also be available depending on your organization's configuration.

Pages

Canvas designs can have multiple pages — think of these as slides in a presentation. Each page has its own set of elements.

• Click Add Page at the bottom of the Design panel on the left to add a page. The same footer shows how many pages the design has, and how many are hidden
• Drag a page by its grip to reorder it; the page's layers move with it
• Click a page's row in the Design panel to switch to it
• Hover a page and click its ⋯ button (or right-click the row, or long-press it on a touch screen) for Rename Page, Duplicate Page, Hide Page/Show Page, and Delete Page

Setting a Thumbnail

Right-click a design in the library or use the Set Thumbnail option in the editor's top menu to choose a custom thumbnail image for the design. This controls how the design appears in the Asset Library and Experiences page.

Saving

Designs are saved automatically. Use File → Save (or Ctrl/Cmd+S) to save manually. A design name can be set from the top toolbar.

Presenting a Design

Click Present in the top toolbar to launch the design in Present Mode — a full-screen interactive playback environment.

See Present Mode for details on interactive actions, page transitions, and exiting.

Resuming Where You Left Off

A design that contains a PowerPoint element remembers the slide that element was on. Refresh the browser, or navigate away and come back to the design, and it resumes at that slide instead of restarting from the first one — useful when a presentation is running unattended on a wall and the page reloads, or when you step away from a kiosk mid-deck.

The remembered position is stored per design and per element in the browser you are viewing on, so each device picks up where it left off; it is not shared between viewers. Presenting the design somewhere else, or on another device, starts from that device's own last position.

Casting a Design to a Player

Canvas designs can be sent directly to a connected Vū Media Player without entering Present Mode:

1. From the Experiences page, open the design's context menu and click Launch Canvas Design
2. In the dialog, select Cast to Wall and choose your target player
3. The design begins playing on the wall immediately

This allows operators to push a canvas design to a display without it taking over their local screen.

Auto-Advancing Slides on a Timer

A design can advance its own pages: each page stays on screen for a set time, then the next page shows. Use it for a design that runs unattended on a wall — a sponsor rotation, a lobby loop, or an information screen — without anyone pressing a button.

Where to set it up: open the design in the Canvas Designer — https://one.vu.studio/canvas — click the Vū Studio icon to go Home → click Create to open the Creator suite → choose the Canvas Designer → open your design → click Canvas Settings in the top menu bar → Slideshow.

1. Tick Advance pages automatically.
2. In Each page holds for, enter the number of seconds every page stays on screen. The default is 15 seconds and the minimum is 1.
3. Leave Loop back to the first page ticked to keep the rotation running, or clear it to stop on the last page.
4. Optional — give one page a different time. Choose the page in Give one page a different time and click Add. The page appears under Exceptions, starting at the default time; type its own number of seconds. Use the reset button on the row to put it back on the default.
5. Optional — wait for the page's media instead of a fixed time. On an exception row, click the play button (Use "when its media ends"). That page then advances when its video or PowerPoint finishes, rather than after a set number of seconds.
6. Click Done.

Settings apply as soon as you change them — there is no separate Save step for this section. The line under the settings shows the Full cycle time and how many pages are in the rotation, and Show every page in order lists each page with its time and whether it uses the default or an exception.

How the rotation behaves

• It runs in Preview, in the published Present view, and when the design is cast to a wall. The editor itself never advances.
• It runs on elapsed time. Unlike Timeout to Page, touching or clicking the screen does not delay it, so every page gets its full time on screen. A design can use both — a slideshow and a return-to-start timeout.
• Pages play in their current order in the design. Reorder pages and the rotation follows the new order; hidden pages are skipped.
• A page's time starts once its images and videos have loaded, so a page isn't counted as shown while it is still blank. If media hasn't loaded after about 10 seconds, the page's time starts anyway.
• Each page's own exit transition plays when it advances. If a page's time is shorter than its transition, the transition is skipped.
• With Loop back to the first page off, the rotation stops on the last visible page.

"When its media ends" pages

• The page waits for every video and PowerPoint on it to finish, not just the first one.
• The option is dimmed for a page with nothing that ends — a page with no video or PowerPoint, or one whose only video is a Live Video zone (a live feed never ends), is hidden, or has no source picked. Hover the button to see why.
• A looping video never ends. If a page set to wait for its media only has looping video, a warning appears under that page's row and on the video's Loop setting. Turn the loop off, or give the page a time.
• As a safety net, a page that is waiting for its media advances after 5 minutes regardless.

Holding a slide during a show

When a player is showing an auto-advancing canvas design, the Remote shows a Hold this slide button. Press it to freeze the rotation on the current page, and Resume slides to carry on. The resumed page gets its full time again rather than the few seconds it had left.

Limitations

• Hold this slide is available on the Web Player and the Vū Studio Player desktop app only. It is not shown for a wall driven by a Vū Media Server.
• The Remote's own preview of the design does not reflect a hold. Check the wall itself.
• The slideshow needs at least two pages that aren't hidden.
• The Slideshow section is unavailable when the design is set up to start on more than one display. Pages are one list, so an automatic advance would move one display onto another display's pages. Reduce the design to a single output to use a slideshow.
• The canvas-wide slideshow settings are not part of undo. A page's exception is, and its reset button also takes it back.
• A cast design reloads itself once shortly after midnight UTC so its images keep loading. The rotation restarts from its first page when that happens; a Live Video feed is not affected.

Keeping a Live Video Feed on Screen While Pages Rotate

A Live Video zone reserves an area of the design for a live NDI or UDP feed — for example a game feed in the middle of a wall with sponsor slides rotating around it. When the design is cast, the player plays the feed in front of the design, exactly over the zone. Because the feed sits in its own layer, it keeps running without interruption while the pages underneath change, including during page transitions and an automatic slideshow.

Where to set it up: open the design in the Canvas Designer — https://one.vu.studio/canvas — click the Vū Studio icon to go Home → click Create → choose the Canvas Designer → open your design.

1. In the floating toolbar, click the arrow next to Add Media and choose Live Video.
2. Drag on the canvas to draw the zone. Its shape is locked to 16:9, the feed's own aspect ratio, while you draw and resize it.
3. With the zone selected, in the Properties panel under Source, click Select a live source… and pick an NDI source or a UDP stream from the Select Live Video Source picker. The zone shows the source's name and whether it is NDI or UDP. Use Clear source to remove it.
4. Cast the design to your wall.

What to expect:

• The zone belongs to every page of the design. It is listed once in the pages and layers tree with an All pages badge, pages you add later get it automatically, and deleting a page does not delete it.
• The zone always sits above the other elements, in the editor as well as on the wall, because the feed is played in front of the whole design.
• In the editor the zone shows a Live Video placeholder. In Preview and Present it is a black rectangle — the feed itself only appears when the design is cast to a player.
• A design can have only one Live Video zone. Adding a second, or copying, cutting, duplicating, or pasting the zone, is refused with a message explaining why.
• If a zone was saved in a different shape, the Shape section warns that it won't be filled and offers Fit to 16:9.

Limitations

• UDP streams play on the Vū Studio Player desktop app only. A wall driven by a Vū Media Server, and the Web Player in a browser, show nothing for a UDP source — use an NDI source there. The Properties panel shows a warning when you pick a UDP source.
• The feed plays on the wall's primary display only.
• The feed is hidden whenever the display has no other content, so clearing the design also takes the feed off the wall.
• Casting other content to the display that holds the feed replaces the design and removes the feed. Adding content as a layer leaves the feed playing.
• If the zone's source has been deleted from your library, casting the design warns that the live video could not be cast, and the zone stays black.
• A page whose only video is the Live Video zone can't use when its media ends in a slideshow, because a live feed never ends.

Building and Editing a Design with Vū AI

You can ask Vū AI to build a canvas design for you, and then change it by describing what you want different — no need to open the editor for every tweak.

Where to ask: https://one.vu.studio/ai — click the Vū Studio icon to go Home → click Vū AI to open the Vū AI module → type your request into the chat.

Creating a design

Describe the screen you want. Two things are worth knowing about how the request is interpreted:

• Say where it is going. "A screen for the lobby wall" gets you a canvas design. "A shareable link I can send a client" gets you a microsite instead. The word presentation on its own means a microsite — it only means a canvas once you have said it is for a display or a wall. If the destination is unclear, Vū AI asks you which outcome you want, in plain terms, rather than guessing.
• You will be asked for the target size, because a design cannot be resized afterwards (see Limitations below). Answer with the resolution of the display it is going on.

When it is finished the design appears as an attachment in the conversation with:

• a live thumbnail of the design,
• an Open in canvas editor button that takes you straight into the editor for that design, and
• an interactive fullscreen preview, so you can click through pages and test navigation without leaving the chat.

To use your own images or video, attach them to your message from your library before you send it. Vū AI places them by reference, so the design points at your library asset rather than at a copy.

Editing a design

Describe the change in words. You do not need to upload a screenshot, and you should not be asked for one — Vū AI reads the design's actual structure, so "there are two horizontal lines, remove the top one" is enough to identify the right element.

What it can change:

• Add, update and remove elements, and move or restyle them.
• Add and remove pages, and set a page's exit transition. A design always keeps at least one page. Deleting a page also removes any navigation that pointed at it, so you are not left with a button that does nothing.
• Author clickable navigation — a Next button that jumps to another page, a link that opens a web page, and controls that show, hide or toggle another element.
• Tidy an existing design's layout when you ask it to.

Edits are targeted. Vū AI changes only what you asked about and leaves elements you positioned by hand where you put them. If you and Vū AI edit the same design at the same time, your saved work is respected rather than overwritten.

Limitations

• It will not resize a design. "Make a portrait version" or "make this 4K" is not supported. Scaling every element, font size, stroke width and corner radius proportionally is real work that has not been built, and a partial version would look worse than starting over. Choose the size when you create the design.
• It cannot author hardware actions. Actions that reach outside the design — sending content to another display, lighting, camera control, OSC, and Vū commands — are deliberately left to you. A design runs unattended on a wall, so an action nobody confirms at the moment it fires is not something Vū AI will write. Vū AI can still drive those things directly through its own tools, where you see each step. Add hardware actions by hand; see Sending a Canvas Page to Another Display.
• Grouping is not exposed. Ask for positions and sizes rather than for groups.
• Asking for an existing design by name works — "what canvases do I have?" lists your most recent ones, and naming one lets Vū AI edit it. Only designs you are allowed to read are returned.

Sending a Canvas Page to Another Display

An element in a canvas design can push content onto a different display on the same wall. Tap an object on display A and display B changes. The content can be an image, a video, a web asset, or — new in this release — a page of a canvas design.

Where to set it up: open the design in the Canvas Designer — https://one.vu.studio/canvas — click the Vū Studio icon to go Home → click Create in the left sidebar to open the Canvas Designer → open your design.

1. Select the element you want to be the trigger. (You can also attach the action to the page itself, on the Page Actions tab of the Actions panel.)
2. In the right-hand properties panel, open the Actions tab.
3. Under Add Action, choose Send Content.
4. Choose when it runs from the trigger dropdown: On Click, On Double Click, On Idle Timeout, or When Media Ends.
5. In the action's Content row, click Select content... and pick what to send.
6. If you picked a canvas design, a Page row appears. What it offers depends on which design you picked:
   • The design you are editing: leave it on First page, or choose the exact page that should land on the target display. Hidden pages are listed with (hidden) after the name.
   • A different canvas design: the row reads Its first page — the other design opens on its own first page. Its pages can't be listed from this editor.
7. Set Wall — the wall holding the display you want to change.
8. Set Display — listed as Display 1, Display 2 and so on, with the display's name in brackets where one has been set.

Only displays that are switched on for that wall are offered, and sending to one display leaves the wall's other displays alone rather than reloading all of them.

To send different pages to different displays from one tap — for example page 2 to Display 2 and page 3 to Display 3 — click Add action under the first Send Content action and set up the next one. All of them run from the same trigger.

Layer, next to Display, adds the content on top of what the display is already showing instead of replacing it. It isn't offered for a scene, which always replaces the display's content.

info

Send Content appears only where cross-display canvas actions are enabled for your account. If you do not see it under Add Action, contact support.

Casting a design from the Library honours the outputs the design declares, so a design authored for one display of a wall arrives on that display.

Sending OSC from a Button

A button or other element in a canvas design can send an OSC message when it is tapped — for example to switch a video input, trigger a lighting cue, or fire a show-control command on another system on your network.

Where to set it up: open the design in the Canvas Designer — https://one.vu.studio/canvas — click the Vū Studio icon to go Home → click Create → choose the Canvas Designer → open your design.

1. Select the element you want to be the trigger.
2. In the right-hand properties panel, open the Actions tab.
3. Under Add Action, choose Send OSC.
4. Choose when it runs from the trigger dropdown: On Click, On Double Click, or, for a video or other media element, When Media Ends.
5. Fill in the message:
   • Path — the OSC address, for example /lights/1/on. A path is required; an action without one sends nothing.
   • Args — optional arguments, separated by commas, for example 1, 255, true. Whole and decimal numbers are sent as numbers, true and false as true/false values, and anything else as text. Empty items (such as a trailing comma) are ignored. Arguments are sent in the order you type them.
   • Target — the IP:Port to send to. Separate several destinations with commas. Leave it blank to use the wall's default OSC target, set in the Vū Media Server operator menu — or, on the Vū Studio Player desktop app, under Operator Options → System → OSC output (see OSC Output).
   • Send from — the wall that sends the message while you preview the design. It is used for previewing only.
6. Preview or cast the design and tap the element to test it.

Once the design is cast, the message is always sent from the wall that is showing the design, whatever Send from says. Only the messages you set up in the design can be sent from a cast design.

info

Send OSC appears only where cross-display canvas actions are enabled for your account — the same setting as Send Content. If you do not see it under Add Action, contact support.

Vū AI does not add OSC actions to a design; add them by hand as above (see Building and Editing a Design with Vū AI).

Canvas Editing Enhancements

The Canvas editor includes several precision and consistency improvements: adjustable guide rulers, a new push page transition, a global Canvas Settings panel for applying settings across your whole design, a full-resolution image preview, a hand tool for moving the view, hide/unhide on the pages list, steadier layer drag-and-drop, and proportional resizing from the numeric size fields.

Guide Rulers

The editor can display measurement rulers along the top and left edges of the canvas, with tick marks that reflect the current zoom level. Use them to place adjustable guides for precise alignment:

• Show or hide the rulers with the Shift+R shortcut. (Cmd/Ctrl+R is reserved for browser reload.)
• Create a guide by dragging out from a ruler: drag from the top ruler to place a horizontal guide, or from the left ruler to place a vertical guide.
• While you drag a guide, a value badge shows its exact position, so you can drop it precisely.
• Hold Shift while dragging to snap the guide to coarse percentage-of-canvas positions.
• Reposition an existing guide by dragging it; the value badge appears again while moving.

Guides act as alignment references for arranging elements accurately across the canvas.

Full-Resolution Image Source

While you edit, image elements normally render from a thumbnail of the source file — fast to load, but a large photo scaled up on the canvas can look soft or blurry while you are working on it, even though it plays back sharp.

Show full-resolution images switches the editor to the original source image instead:

1. Open the View menu in the top menu bar.
2. Click Show full-resolution images. A checkbox next to the item shows whether it is on; it is off by default.
3. Image elements on the canvas re-render from the full-size source file. Turn it off again the same way.

Notes and limitations:

• The setting is a view preference for the editor. It does not change the design, the stored asset, or how the design looks when you present or cast it — presentation always uses the full-size source.
• The setting applies to the whole canvas, across every page, not to one selected element.
• Full-size files are heavier than thumbnails, so a design with many large images takes longer to paint with this on. If the editor feels sluggish while you arrange elements, switch it off and turn it back on when you need to judge image detail.
• If a full-size source can't be loaded, the element falls back to its thumbnail rather than showing nothing.

Hand Tool and Panning

Zoomed in, you often need to move the view rather than the artwork. The Hand tool does that without any risk of dragging an element out of place:

• Click the Hand tool (the hand icon) in the floating toolbar, or press H. The cursor becomes a grab cursor.
• Drag anywhere on the canvas to move the view. The cursor changes to a closed grab cursor while you drag.
• Switch back to editing with the Select tool (the arrow icon, or V).

For a quick pan without changing tools, hold the spacebar and drag. While the spacebar is held, dragging pans the view instead of moving elements; release it and you are back in whatever tool was already active, with nothing selected or moved. Holding Ctrl/Cmd and dragging, or dragging with the middle mouse button, pans the same way.

Spacebar panning is deliberately ignored mid-gesture — if you are already dragging, resizing, rotating, drawing a selection box, or placing a new element, holding the spacebar will not interrupt it.

Hiding Pages

Pages can be hidden from playback without being deleted, matching the show/hide behavior that layers have in the same pages and layers panel. Use it to park a work-in-progress page, or to keep a variant of a slide in the design without showing it to an audience.

1. Open the Design panel on the left of the editor, where pages and their layers are listed together.
2. Hover the page you want to hide and click the eye icon on its row (labelled Hide page), or open the page's ⋯ overflow menu and choose Hide Page.
3. A hidden page keeps a visible eye-off icon on its row. To bring it back, click that icon again or choose Show Page from the same menu.

Hidden pages are styled so they stand out from the pages that play: the page name is dimmed, the page number turns amber, the row carries a Hidden badge and a faint striped background, and the Active label is not shown on it. The panel footer also counts hidden pages (for example 2 hidden).

What hiding does:

• Hidden pages are skipped in Preview, in the published Present view, and when the design is cast to a wall. They stay fully editable in the editor.
• If you open a hidden page in the editor, a This page is hidden notice appears in the top bar with a Show button to unhide it immediately.
• If the page you are hiding is the target of a navigation or timeout action elsewhere in the design, Vū Studio asks Hide page? and tells you how many places reference it, so you can cancel rather than break a link. Unhiding never prompts.
• Pages that are hidden are marked (hidden) wherever you pick a target page, such as a button's navigate action or the canvas default timeout, so you can see that a link points at a page nobody will reach.
• If every page in a design is hidden there is nothing to show: Preview and Cast are disabled and explain why (No visible pages to present).

Layer Drag-and-Drop Reordering

Reordering and re-nesting in the pages and layers tree (the Design panel on the left) is drag-and-drop, and the interaction is built to stay predictable in deep or crowded designs:

1. Point at the layer you want to move and grab its drag handle — the grip of dots at the left of the row. Only the handle starts a drag, so clicking a row still selects it, double-clicking still renames it, and the visibility, lock, and delete controls keep working.
2. Drag up or down. The other rows slide out of the way as you move, previewing the order you'll get when you release — what you see while dragging is the result.
3. To change nesting, move right while dragging to nest the layer into the container above it, or left to pull it back out. The dragged row's indentation shows the level it will land at.
4. Release to commit. Each drop is a single undo step, so one Ctrl/Cmd+Z puts it back.

Notes:

• Dragging a container carries its children with it; the group moves as one unit and keeps its internal order.
• Locked layers can't be dragged, and locked containers refuse drops.
• A scroll box can't be nested inside another scroll box, so that drop is rejected.
• Pages use the same drag-handle interaction in the same tree for reordering (pages don't nest). Dragging a page carries all of its layers with it.
• To move a layer to a different page, drag it up or down until it sits under that page's row and release. The move is a single undo step.
• A page's Background row and a Live Video zone (All pages) can't be dragged. If a drop isn't allowed, a short message explains why instead of the row silently snapping back.

Proportional Resizing from Width and Height

The W and H fields in the Properties panel resize the selected element numerically. With Constrain proportions (the checkbox under those fields, on by default) enabled, typing a new Width scales the element proportionally — the height follows so the image keeps its aspect ratio, and the same applies when you type a height.

• Clear the Constrain proportions checkbox to set width and height independently and stretch an element on purpose.
• If an image or video has been stretched away from its natural aspect ratio, a Reset to natural size button (the restore arrow) appears next to the H field. Click it to snap the element back to the source file's own proportions.
• Elements have a minimum size, so a value below it is clamped rather than accepted.

Push Transition

The push transition is a new page exit transition type. Unlike a plain slide (where only the outgoing page moves), a push moves both the outgoing and incoming pages together — they travel edge-to-edge like a filmstrip, with the new page pushing the old one off-screen. Push supports a direction (left, right, up, or down) and a duration.

You can apply push as a page's exit transition in its Actions panel, or set it as the design-wide default in Canvas Settings (see below).

Global Canvas Settings

The Canvas Settings panel provides one centralized place for settings that affect the entire canvas, rather than editing them piecemeal. Open it from the top menu bar. The panel is labeled "Applies to the whole canvas, across every page" and includes:

Setting	What it controls
Canvas Size	The canvas width (W) and height (H)
Default Background Color	The background color used by every page, unless a page sets its own in its Properties
Default Exit Transition	The transition used for new pages; any page can override it in its own Actions panel
Default Timeout to Page	An automatic "go to page after a delay" applied to any page that doesn't set its own Timeout to Page action; choose a target page and a delay, or turn it off
Slideshow	Advances pages automatically on a timer; see Auto-Advancing Slides on a Timer
Preview Navigation	A toggle — "Move between pages with Left/Right arrow keys" — that applies in both Preview and the published Present view

Global settings (dimensions, background color) can be reached from any page, while per-page settings (such as a page's own exit transition or timeout) remain editable on that page.