Excalidraw drawings in notes that save as you draw

If you want diagrams and sketches to live with the notes they explain, Barside gives you Excalidraw drawings in notes. The full Excalidraw editor opens right inside a note, and every stroke saves into that note as you draw. Barside is a free, local-first note-taking app, so your drawings stay on your own computer, work offline, and turn up in search by the words inside them. It runs on Windows, Linux and Mac.

This guide covers what you can draw, how to add and find drawings, the AI and Mermaid shortcuts, exporting, and the honest limits.

What you can draw

Barside uses the real Excalidraw editor, not a lookalike. You get its hand-drawn look and its whole toolbox:

• Shapes, arrows, lines and freehand, with text on any shape.
• Images you paste or drop onto the canvas.
• Frames to group part of a drawing, like one screen of a wireframe.
• The laser pointer for pointing things out while you present, and the eraser.
• Grid and snapping, so boxes and arrows line up.
• The shapes library, for icons and parts you reuse.
• Command palette and Find on canvas, Excalidraw's own tools for reaching any action or any word in a big drawing.

That makes it a good fit for flowcharts, system diagrams, mind maps, wireframes, floor plans, and the quick sketch you would otherwise draw on paper and lose.

How Excalidraw drawings in notes work in Barside

A drawing always belongs to a note. In the note, it shows as a picture of the drawing. Double-click the picture, or click Open drawing, and the editor fills the window. Its top bar shows the drawing's name, the words Saves as you draw, and a Done button that takes you back to the note.

Behind the picture, Barside keeps two files in its media folder: the drawing itself, as an .excalidraw file, and a PNG preview for the note. Both travel in your ZIP backups like any image in a note. A few details make this dependable:

• Nothing to save by hand. Barside saves a moment after each change, when you choose Done, and when the window loses focus.
• Nothing is lost when Barside needs the screen. If a reminder, the search bar or a note from the tray opens while you draw, the drawing saves and closes first.
• Copies are real copies. Duplicating a note, or making a note from a template that holds a drawing, copies the drawing too, so each copy can change on its own.
• Dark themes fit. In dark themes, previews use Excalidraw's own dark colors, so a drawing never glares out of the page.

How to add a drawing to a note

1. Open a note and click Insert a drawing (Excalidraw) in the note toolbar, the pen icon. The drawing is added where your cursor is, and the editor opens.
2. Pick a tool from Excalidraw's toolbar and draw on the canvas.
3. Choose Done. The note now shows a picture of your drawing.

To start a drawing in a new note of its own, use Create → New drawing above your notes, or open the search bar (Alt+Shift+Space from any app, Ctrl+K in Barside), type draw and choose New drawing.

The Drawings tab: every drawing in one place

Drawings live inside notes, so Barside also gathers them for you. The Drawings tab in the sidebar lists every drawing from every note as picture cards, the most recently drawn first. Each card shows the drawing's name and the note it lives in.

• Search drawings, their text or their notes with the box at the top. It matches the drawing's name, the words written inside it, and the note's title.
• Click a picture to open the drawing, or click the note's name to open the note.
• New drawing starts a drawing in a new note. With more than one workspace, Save in picks the workspace for that note.

The search bar finds drawings too, in its own Drawings section, and you can star a drawing as a favorite there. Default Mode, Writer Mode and Team Mode show the Drawings tab in the sidebar, and so does Creator Mode, which keeps recordings, clips, drawings, your notes and Spaces and puts Drawings right next to Clips. Reader Mode keeps it on the More tab. See app modes that show only the tools you need.

Turn words or Mermaid code into a diagram

Two shortcuts save you from drawing boxes one by one:

• Text to diagram. Open More tools → Text to diagram and describe what you need, like "the steps from sign-up to the first invoice". Barside asks the AI you connected in Settings → AI for a Mermaid diagram, and Excalidraw turns it into shapes you can move, restyle and extend. It suits flowcharts, step-by-step exchanges between people or systems, and data models. Keep the description under 4,000 characters.
• Mermaid to Excalidraw. If you already have Mermaid code, from documentation or from a chat with an AI app, open More tools → Mermaid to Excalidraw and paste it, and it becomes shapes. This one needs no AI at all.

Barside has no AI model of its own. Text to diagram uses your own Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or OpenRouter account, and without one it tells you how to connect. See the AI assistant for your computer and notes for what else your connected AI can do.

Export, import and share drawings

The drawing's menu has everything for files:

• Save to... saves the drawing as an .excalidraw file.
• Export image... saves a PNG or SVG picture.
• Shift+Alt+C copies the selected shapes as a PNG, ready to paste into an email, a slide or a chat.
• Open loads an .excalidraw file into the drawing you have open.

Dropping an .excalidraw file into a note adds it as a new drawing, which is the quickest way to bring in drawings you made elsewhere. When you share a note to a Space for your team or community, each drawing in it shows as its preview picture. And because drawings are ordinary files in your library, ZIP backups carry them, and so do cloud backup and sync with Barside Plus. See local-first storage and backups.

Shape libraries and live embeds

Shape libraries give you sets of ready-made shapes. In a drawing, choose Library → Browse libraries. It opens libraries.excalidraw.com in your web browser. Pick a library there and choose Add to Excalidraw: the library comes back to Barside, and a notice tells you how many shapes were added. Barside accepts libraries only from libraries.excalidraw.com, keeps your library with your media, and includes it in backups.

Web embeds show a live page inside a drawing. Paste a link, or use More tools → Web Embed. Embeds work for YouTube, Vimeo, Figma, StackBlitz, Val Town, Giphy and SimplePDF, and each loads from its own site. That is handy for a design review board with the Figma file beside your arrows, or a lesson with the video in the middle of the diagram.

Ideas: who draws in notes

• Product managers sketch a user flow right under the spec it belongs to, then point to it from the roadmap with linked notes and backlinks.
• Developers turn "how a request moves through our services" into a sequence diagram with Text to diagram, then fix the arrows by hand.
• Teachers and tutors prepare a diagram before class and point at it with the laser pointer while they present.
• Designers rough out wireframes with one frame per screen, and export PNGs for feedback.
• Anyone explaining something can record the screen into the note while drawing and talking, so the video and the finished drawing sit in the same note.
• Teams can sketch during a video meeting: share your screen, open the drawing, and everyone watches it take shape as you draw.

Limits worth knowing

• One person draws at a time. Live collaboration is not included, and meetings have no shared whiteboard. Others watch through screen sharing.
• Wireframe to code is not included.
• Embeds work only for the seven sites listed above.
• Size. One drawing can be up to 150 MB and your shape library up to 50 MB, which leaves room for plenty of pasted images.
• Text to diagram needs an AI connected in Settings → AI. Everything else works without one.
• Systems. Drawings work the same on Windows 10 and 11, on Linux and on Mac.

Privacy: drawings stay with your notes

Each drawing is saved on your computer with its note, as a drawing file and a preview picture. Barside does not upload drawings unless you turn on cloud backup or cloud sync with Barside Plus, which carry the files in your notes. Barside ships Excalidraw's fonts, so drawing never loads fonts from the internet.

A few actions go online, and only when you choose them. Browse libraries opens libraries.excalidraw.com in your browser, and adding a library downloads that library file. A web embed loads from its own site. Text to diagram sends your description to the AI you connected. Sharing a note to a Space shares each drawing as its preview picture. Read how drawings are stored.

How it compares

A drawing made in a separate whiteboard app usually ends up in your notes as a screenshot, and a screenshot cannot be edited later. In Barside, the drawing is part of the note, so the diagram stays editable for as long as you keep the note, and search still finds its words.

In Obsidian, Excalidraw comes from a community plugin. Barside builds it in, next to tasks, recordings and meetings. Compare the two in the Obsidian alternative guide, read the Notion alternative guide, or browse the best note-taking apps and the best second brain apps.

Works well with