Everything Inklet does

Inklet is a notebook that turns what you write into visuals. This guide covers the Inklet web app.

Getting started

Open Inklet, press New Inklet, and write or paste anything: notes, a list, figures, a table. Or import a document. Each paragraph is a block; visuals are blocks too, and they sit under the text they came from.

Write and visualize

1. Hover a paragraph and press the quill button in the margin, or select some text and choose Visualize.
2. Inklet reads the structure of the text (steps, dates, comparisons, hierarchies, numbers) and offers the kinds of visuals that fit, each already in a style.
3. Pick one. It appears as a block under the paragraph. Press the quill again for more ideas, or use Change visual type on the visual to switch to any of the 71 kinds; your edits are kept.

Good inputs: a title line followed by items, one per line, like Research: talk to users. Numbered or bulleted lists become steps; 2004: social networks becomes a timeline; Pros: … / Cons: … becomes a comparison; a short question as the first line becomes the title.

Numbers into charts

Lines like Q1: $1.2M or 72% would recommend us, comma-separated rows, or cells copied from Excel, Numbers or Google Sheets turn into charts. Inklet reads $ € £ ¥, %, k, M and bn, and European formats like 1.200,50. Mixed units ($1.2M and $950K) land on one scale.

• A table with several columns becomes grouped bars, a line per column, or a data table.
• Plus and minus amounts (Salaries: -2.1M) become a waterfall.
• Date ranges (Research: Jan–Mar) become a Gantt chart.
• Chart data (the sheet icon on a chart) opens a small spreadsheet beside it: type, paste cells, add rows and series.

Styles and looks

Open Brand Studio in the top bar to see the 31 styles: 17 flat, 5 hand-drawn (Notebook, Whiteboard, Lagoon Ink, Blueprint, Sticky Notes) and 9 3D (Clay Studio, Glossy Pop, Chrome & Steel and more). With a visual selected, click a style to apply it; use the ⋯ menu to apply it to every visual in the document or make it the default. Checked styles appear in suggestions.

Looks (hexagons, squares, numbered, filled, outline, sharp cards, cut corners) are offered wherever they fit a visual, on its toolbar. Effects (sketchy lines, 3D lighting, paper grain) belong to the style; the Effects pill on a selected visual turns them off or on.

Editing

• Click any text to edit it; double-click an empty description to add one.
• The toolbar beside a selected visual has Colors, Fonts (76 fonts), Effects, Change visual type, Chart data, Add (over 1,800 icons, 31 shapes, your own pictures, free sketching), Sizes and Export.
• Drag elements to move them; corner handles resize; the element bar offers color, line thickness, duplicate and delete.
• ⌘/Ctrl+Z undoes structural and visual edits.

Selecting several elements

Shift-click elements, drag a box on empty space, or press ⌘/Ctrl+A to select all. Move, resize, duplicate (⌘+D) or delete them together, or copy and paste them into another visual (⌘+C, ⌘+V). With everything selected, the corner handles resize the whole drawing on the page.

Export

Export goes to your Downloads folder. Copy puts a picture on the clipboard, ready to paste into any app. You can export a dragged area of a visual instead of the whole thing.

Present and animate

Present shows a document as slides, one visual per slide. Each visual builds up piece by piece: bars grow, steps appear one at a time, lines draw themselves. The presenter bar switches the build-up between Off, Click (one step per click or arrow key) and Auto. The same build-up is what GIF and MP4 export record; the Length slider in the export dialog sets the clip to 2–20 seconds.

Gallery and brands

Save to gallery (bookmark icon) keeps a visual for reuse in any document. Brand Studio → New brand makes your own style from any built-in one: colors, fonts, effect. Brands are part of the Plus tier in the hosted service.

Import

Word, PDF, PowerPoint, Excel, CSV, Markdown, HTML and plain text. Spreadsheets open a picker so you choose which sheet or range becomes a chart. Settings → Download backup saves everything as one file you can restore later.

Account and plans

• Account: sign up with an email and password; verify the address from the email we send. The link only confirms the address; if you open it in a browser where you aren't logged in, log in afterwards. The avatar button in the top bar opens your account. Inklet needs an account; a free one is enough.
• Plans: Free, Plus and Pro, per account (see pricing). Upgrades take effect immediately and the difference for the rest of the month is charged right away. Downgrades and cancellations take effect at the renewal date; until then everything stays as it is, and you can change your mind. Every payment, refund and plan change is listed under Billing history, with links to Stripe invoices.
• Limits: each plan has daily caps against abuse (Free 5 exports a day; Plus 50 exports; Pro 200 exports and 25 animated clips). They reset at midnight UTC.
• Offer codes and free trials: an offer code goes into the Offer code box when you create the account (a link you were given fills it in). Each code works once and starts the account on the plan it names, free for the days it names, for example Pro for seven days. The account menu shows the trial end date. For trials of two days or more, a day before the end you get one email with a link to the pricing page; signing in on the last day shows the plans first. Choose a plan before the end to keep cloud storage and the Pro exports; otherwise the account returns to Free with nothing charged. Your work stays in your browser; the cloud copies are kept but no longer synced, so export or download a backup (Settings) of anything you want elsewhere. After the end, signing in shows a notice with Sign up for a plan and Exit until the account has a plan.

Shortcuts

Your data

Free: your documents live in this browser's storage only; your account holds your profile and billing. They do not follow you to another device, and logging out leaves them in that browser, so download a backup (Settings) before you log out or change devices, and on a shared computer delete what others should not see. Plus and Pro: documents, brand styles, gallery and settings are kept in cloud storage under your account (1 GB on Plus, 5 GB on Pro) and load on any device you sign in on; the browser is only a cache, cleared when you log out, so shared computers are safe. Edits made offline are sent when you are back online; if the same document was edited on two devices, the newest edit wins. See the Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.