SketchCafe is a whiteboard for the diagrams you draw to explain something - the boxes, arrows and scribbles you would otherwise sketch on a napkin and then lose. Everything you draw comes out hand-drawn, so a rough idea still looks like a rough idea.
Your drawings are ordinary files on your own computer. The app works offline, and nothing you draw is uploaded anywhere.
Highlights
- Draws the way you think - shapes, arrows and freehand strokes come out with a hand-drawn wobble, so a half-finished diagram reads as a sketch rather than a document you owe someone a final version of.
- Your drawings stay with you - no cloud workspace and no syncing. Drawings are files on your disk, and the canvas works exactly the same with the Wi-Fi switched off.
- Several drawings at once - open them in tabs across the top and switch between them without losing your place - each one keeps its own scroll, zoom and undo history.
- Saves as you go - once a drawing has a home on disk, SketchCafe keeps it written down for you. The dot on a tab tells you when something is still unsaved.
- Export for wherever it's going - PNG for a chat message, SVG when it needs to scale, PDF when it needs to be printed or attached.
- Double-click to open - drawings open straight from your folders, or drag one onto the window - whether or not the app is already running.
- Light and dark - pick the one that suits the room, and SketchCafe remembers it.
How it works
Open SketchCafe and you get a blank canvas and a row of tools. Pick a rectangle, an arrow or the pencil and start drawing - the canvas runs on forever in every direction, so you never have to decide up front how big the picture will be.
Save once when you want to keep it, and from then on SketchCafe saves the drawing for you as you work. A new drawing opens in its own tab. When it is ready to leave the app, export it as a PNG, an SVG or a PDF.
Perfect for
- Anyone explaining a system - boxes, arrows and a few words beat a paragraph when you are describing how something fits together.
- Product and design work - wireframe a screen roughly enough that people comment on the idea instead of the pixel spacing.
- Teachers and students - work a problem out visually and hand the picture over as a PNG.
- Anyone who thinks on paper - an infinite canvas for the diagram you would otherwise draw on a napkin and lose.
