Release Notes: Freehand

Export to image: Click this option to export the entire freehand document as a still image—complete with sticky notes.

August 3rd, 2020

What's new in Freehand?

Create a still life.

• Exporting to an image: You can now export an entire freehand as a still image—as a PNG file, specifically—by clicking the More menu icon (•••) and then clicking Export to image.

July 14th, 2020

What's new in Freehand?

This will go down in history.

• Version history: With the new version history feature in Freehand, now you can collaborate with other editors in real time without the fear of making unintended changes or deleting content. Read this article for details and instructions on reverting to a previous version: Version history in Freehand documents
• Pan the canvas: There's a new way to pan your Freehand canvas! Click the Pan icon () in the lower-right corner of the canvas to trigger panning. You can also still pan by holding the Spacebar while you click and drag in any direction.

June 29th, 2020

What's new in Freehand?

Why weight in line? Because you can! [Side note: We got Dad jokes for days!]

• Change your line weight: Now when you're working with the pencil tool (), you can choose from one of 3 line weights in the secondary toolbar that appears at the top of the canvas.

With the pencil tool selected, you can also use shortcuts to change line weight: Thin: ⌥1, Medium: ⌥2, Thick: ⌥3

May 12th, 2020

What's new in Freehand?

In answer to one of our most popular feature requests, Sticky Notes are here!

• Easy to use: Simply click the Sticky Notes tool icon () and then drop a note anywhere on your freehand. To move a previously placed sticky note, select and drag it.
• Friendly formatting: With a sticky note selected, click any of the formatting options that appear just below the URL bar:
  • Switch to text box: Click the Sticky Notes dropdown () to convert the sticky note to a regular text box.
  • Color dropdown: Change the given sticky note's color.
  • Note width: Select a previously placed sticky note and drag the selection box (on either side) left or right to adjust its width.
  • Texting 101: Your text formatting options include bold, italic, and highlighted font as well as left, center, and right alignment.

April 2020

What's improved in Freehand?

Big improvements to Freehand tools during April make it even easier to draw, write, and collaborate in real-time with your colleagues online:

• Drawing attention: Use the improved shape tool to wow your fellow Freehand-ers with cleanly drawn squares, rectangles, circles, and lines.
• Gift wrapping: Alright, it may not be first on your birthday list, but we can all agree a great line of text can be a gift. The new auto text wrapping feature lets you wrap that little text gem by selecting and resizing the text box.
• Bulk alignment: Now you can align multiple objects in a freehand at once. Select the objects you want to align, and then click one of the three alignment icons that appear at the top of the screen.
• Get colorful: Now it's easier to change and fine-tune your color choices. Select an object to reveal options at the top of the screen, and then use the dropdown arrows to adjust its color or the opacity of its fill and outline.

April 5th, 2019

What's New

The following release notes apply strictly to Freehand in InVision V7, and they are not applicable to InVision V6:

• Your You're correct: Freehand text in InVision V7 now features autocorrection.
• Let's wrap it up: Working with text in Freehand for InVision V7 is better than ever:
  • Now you can click and drag to draw a text bounding box, complete automatically wrapping text.
  • When you create a text area by clicking to type, now the text will wrap at a predefined width.
  • When hovering over a text area, you can now use the side handles to resize the area and change the wrapping of the text. It's worth noting that you can still drag the corner handles of a text area to change change the font size.

December 7th, 2018

What's New

• Shape Menu in Freehand: Now you can easily draw rectangles, circles, and straight lines.
  Pro tip: To draw perfect squares, circles, and lines at 30° increments, hold the Shift key while drawing.

September 7th, 2018

What's New

• Choose your line opacity: To change the level of transparency of the lines you draw, you can now use the opacity feature. (See the description of the pencil tool in the Freehand Tools table for more detail). 
• More-usable text entry in Freehand: 
  • You can now insert line breaks simply by pressing Enter / Return on your keyboard.
  • The type something prompt is now a placeholder rather than actual text that needs to be overwritten.

May 2nd, 2018

What's New

• Freehand sign in through Craft Manager: The sign-in flow for the Craft Freehand plugin with Sketch is now part of Craft Manager. This should streamline authentication and make it more intuitive.

Bug Fixes

• Share link unfurling: Share links for prototypes, boards, and Freehands are now unfurled correctly in Facebook and Twitter.
• Freehand sign out issue: InVision Private Cloud users are no longer signed out of their accounts when they click InVision icon in Freehand.
• Freehand save location: InVision Private Cloud users are now automatically prompted to save freehands inside their respective Private Cloud accounts instead of their personal accounts.
• Improved resizing for straight lines in Freehand: The behavior of the resizing handles used to resize relatively straight lines you've drawn has improved, making it easier to change the length of your line (or a thin shape) without changing the proportions of the line.
  Pro tip: Hold Shift while drawing a new line for a perfect straight angle!

March 6th, 2018

What's New

• Create only one document at a time in Freehand: If you accidentally click “Create” several times when starting a new Freehand, you can now be sure that only one document will be created.
• “Type something” faster with text in Freehand: When you create a new text layer, the default “type something” text will now be selected. Just start typing to overwrite it.

December 11th, 2017

What's Fixed

• Selection resize functionality: Resizing any selection in a freehand document that contains empty text layers is now working without any scaling problems. 
• Multi-line text: Issue where occasional empty text lines were created after pressing Shift+Enter is no longer happening.

November 29th, 2017

What's New

• Switch to Pencil tool: Double click with the pointer tool anywhere on canvas now quickly switches to the pencil tool.
• Shadow rendering: New faster and smoother rendering for drop shadows on artboards imported from Sketch/Photoshop.
• “Who draw this” functionality improved: Name of the author for lines/text/images now displays different text based on the item type: drawn by, added by, written by.

What's Fixed

• Close video modal: The issue of the escape button not responding next to the video player is now fixed and fully functional.
• Zoom Numeric keypad: Cmd + shortcut to zoom now works on Numeric keypad.

November 14th, 2017

What's New

• Freehand from Prototype: Users can now create new Freehand documents from any of their prototypes by simply pressing the Freehand icon next to Liveshare in Project’s view.
  
  

November 10th, 2017

What's New

• Freehand Plugin (Sketch/PS): Completely new Freehand plugin that allows users to sign in with their InVision accounts and create new freehand or update already existing ones. 
• Archive functionality: When freehand is archived, the URL will not be accessible anymore (same behavior as all other InVision project types).
• Keyboard shortcut help: Improved shortcuts helper now with all Freehand shortcuts categoried by their purpose. 

October 30th, 2017

What's New

• Shape fill functionality: Users are able to select a shape. By pressing “cmd+e” they will add a fill color to that selected shape.
• Pencil color picker: Users are able to change the pencil color by clicking the ••• menu at the top left, then clicking Change my default color.
• Get started video: New walkthrough video tutorial is now available through the Freehand Guide.
• Rich text editing: Users are now able to format text in Freehand. Allowed formatting functionality such as:
  - Bold (cmd+b)
  - Highlight (cmd+e)
  - Align center (cmd+shift+c)
  - Align left (cmd+shift+l)

What's Fixed

• Emoji import issue: Fixed issue with importing emojis for retina displays
• Mobile and tablet onboarding: Improved onboarding for mobile and tablet in landscape mode.

October 24th, 2017

What's New

• Who’s drawn this: New feature to show who has drawn a particular in the bottom left of the screen,  rather than depending on just your color.
• Duplicate for mobile/tablet: New feature that allows users to simply duplicate any selected content with a button that shows under the selection.

What's Fixed

• Emoji resize issue: Fixed issue where you wouldn’t be able to resize emojis consistently without them disappearing.
• Scaling issues: Fixed issue where invisible artifacts would sometimes appear preventing you from scaling properly.
• Mobile redirect issues: Fixed Issue where you can’t access a Freehand directly from a mobile device without being promoted to download or use the Invision app.  

October 9th, 2017

What's New

• Pointer Tool for Mobile: Users will have “pointer” tool as a default option when launching Freehand instead of “pencil.”
• Create New Freehand: New feature that allows users to create new Freehands directly from already opened documents. Open the overflow menu (•••) menu on top right to see an option to create new document.

October 2nd, 2017

What's New

• Mobile/Tablet onboarding: Specific onboarding for mobile and tablet devices showcasing features and tips how to work and navigate through Freehand documents.
• Duplicate for Mobile/Tablet: New feature that allows users to simply duplicate any selected content with a button that shows under the selection.

What's Fixed

• Slack integration: Fixed issues with thumbnails not generating properly. 

September 18th, 2017

What's Fixed

• “Z” key shortcut: Fixed issue when pressing Z key returns to previously used tool in Freehand
• Quick selection: Fixed bug pressing the command key when the selection option is enabled will change the cursor function to pencil mode

September 4th, 2017

What's New

• Send Feedback: Users are now able to send feedback directly from Freehand documents
• Become a Pro Tutorial: Interactive onboarding tutorial is now available to start again anytime from the Help dropdown 
• What’s New: Users will see a notification dot directly in Freehand documents notifying about any new updates and releases

August 28th, 2017

What's New

• Zoom reset for empty freehands: When there are no entities in the Freehand document, zoom is reset to 100%

What's Fixed

• Custom minimum font sizes: Fixed issue where custom minimum font sizes in Chrome / Safari are causing text resizing in Freehand to not work
• Old avatar placeholders: Fixed issue where avatar placeholders were showing old placeholders and not color + initials
• Sketch Freehand update artboard resizing: Fixed issue where updating artboards from Sketch doesn't respect resized artboards in Freehand.

August 21st, 2017

What's New

• Mobile smart shapes detection: Users are able to use smart shapes detection by holding pencil for additional 1-2s at the end of drawing to detect rectangle/circle or line.

What's Fixed

• Image url copied as text layer: Fixed issue where copying an image from url and paste it into Freehand, it would paste the image’s link as text too
• Same color for two or more users: Fixed issue where two users could have the same color
• Enterprise SSO sign in: Fixed issue where for some Enterprise Freehand sessions with SSO it was not possible to sign in as a guest
• “Esc” for closing all modal: Fixed issue when "Esc” wasn’t closing certain modals
• Sideguide Scroll: Fixed issue where scrolling down in the side guide and then clicking a tip would not scroll to the top.

August 14th, 2017

What's New

• No more dimming images in present mode: We removed dimming on images in present mode so it's easier to see what you're presenting.
• Upload or drag and drop multiple images: You can upload or drag and drop multiple images at once!
• New keyboard shortcut: You can now use the “A” keyboard shortcut as an alternate for the selection tool. Ctrl-A/CMD-A selects all objects.
• Rename your Freehands: You can now rename your Freehands by clicking the Freehand name and typing to edit.
• InVision logo takes you back to your Projects Dashboard: Previously, the InVision logo wouldn't do anything. Now, the home action works for all environments.
• New keyboard shortcut: You can now use the “A” keyboard shortcut as an alternate for the selection tool. Ctrl-A/CMD-A selects all objects.
• Improved, simplified clear drawing options with pointer tool optimizations

What's Fixed

• Enterprise Freehands redirecting: Certain enterprise share links would redirect forever
• Thumbnails updating: Freehand thumbs weren’t updating
• Uppercase domain names redirect: Upper case domain names would cause redirect issues
• Image path showing up as text object: Image path would paste as a text object in addition to the image

August 3rd, 2017

• Freehand was released! It allows users to collaborate in real-time with designs in an infinite whiteboard experience. See more here.