What collaborative whiteboard are you using?

Here's the best set up I've used so far:

1) Get the cheapest iPad that supports the Apple Pencil. The 2018 non-Pro was this for me last I looked.

2) Get the Google Jamboard app (not the Jamboard hardware, it is not at all worth it).

3) Share the "jam" with yourself on a different device (a nearby laptop)

4) Screenshare the laptop.

Things I think any virtual whiteboard scheme needs to have:

1) You need to be able to see people's faces! If you can't see the people in the video call, good luck having anything feel natural.

2) See #1 again. Having the laptop drive the video call is important so you can configure it to see everyone's face while you present.

3) being able to use a pen to write and a finger to erase (if you have to open a menu, fail. sadly the jamboard app also gets this wrong though their way overpriced hardware gets it right)

4) ideally you have the ability to have an infinitely scrolling whiteboard. Jamboard doesn't do this, but it's close.

The Jamboard app also works on phones so other people can fairly easily join in and contribute. This scheme has its problems, but holy crap, so many whiteboard apps focus way too much on fancy new widgets and shapes and text and whatever and not enough on getting out of the way.

I love https://excalidraw.com

Christopher Chedeau did a recent talk on nice challenges they had building it in the open https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fix2-SynPGE

I want to build a plugin for Figma to embed Excalidraw inside Figma as I use Figma for all my design work already.

Our team's have been using Miro for this kind of collaboration. I was surprised that it felt better than using a whiteboard in person, because the cost of changing the already drawn boxes and arrows went way down.

For more technical whiteboards, I've been using excalidraw. I like presenting the "drawn" look to help imply that this is an unfinished idea and we're sketching the concepts out.

An engineer has a problem. So he says to himself, "I'll use a remote-enabled auto-capturing whiteboard."

Now he has two problems.

https://miro.com/ (previously realtimeboard.com)

This seems very good: https://awwapp.com/

Figma. It's not all that useful for actually mimicking a whiteboard, in the sense of drawing arbitrary shapes with a pen. It has a pencil tool, but it's not great. Fortunately, most of what we do is drawing rectangles with text in them and lines between them, and it's pretty good at that. Plus, it supports undo with cmd-z, which most whiteboard apps don't seem to.

I recommend WBO : https://wbo.ophir.dev/

I am the main developer, and I have been maintaining and using it for several years now. Some of its advantages :

- It is fully open-source, free, and without advertisement. You can easily deploy it to your own server.

- All the whiteboards have an infinite size.

- It is fully web-based, you can use it without installing anything, even on relatively old browsers.

- It's translated in several languages.

- It's actively developed. In-development features include image upload, element resizing, new tools, and others...

Mural.co - other than miro, it allows unlimited anonymous co-editing without a need to sihn on. Since we use it only occasionally, we just have a single facilitator account for the team

Google Jamboard + Wacom Intuos tablet with stylus [1]

[1] https://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-tablets/wacom-intuo...

Osmo "base + reflector" for iPad, a document camera "whiteboard" for video conference.

>> I don’t want to look like promotional, but recently a professor used an Osmo reflector (https://twitter.com/romps/status/1237617042338897921?s=12) to project class notes and it caught on with teachers.

>> A team worked through the weekend and released a free app to make this super easy (https://twitter.com/PlayOsmo/status/1241152565083090947).

>> While the base + reflector is not free, if you already have an Osmo game at home, you can reuse that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22660301

Hands down Miro has been a great tool for.What I really liked about Miro is that it has a desktop app which makes it really snappy, its simple and intuitive to use and has great collaboration features (stickies, comments, notes etc.)

hope that helps

Freehand by InVision is great! Very simple and intuitive.

http://freehand.new

I love excalidraw.com A quick shoutout to our service, we embedded excalidraw in our pair programming solution that helps you do system design interviews effectively: https://www.hackerrank.com/products/codepair/

Its still very much in development, but we're building https://whiteboard.systems/

Its based on the idea that for most system diagrams, you just need boxes, text and arrows. everything else is superfluous. Its collaborative by default so you can invite someone to join you with the URL. The tools aren't discoverable yet, so to use it:

- option(⌥) + click to create a box

- option(⌥) + drag to create a grouping box

- select a box and option(⌥) + click another to draw an arrow

- select a box and type to edit text

would very much appreciate feedback! (email in profile)

I’d love to hear what hardware people are using. I’m looking at buying hardware for some of our team, but obviously woild like to find the right cost/quality ratio.

If you have an Apple Pencil, I made https://whiteboard.zjm.me/ as a collaborative whiteboard tool. (It also supports mouse, but a stylus is way better.)

We've been trying different tools, and we've found Excalidraw (https://excalidraw.com/) to be satisfying our needs. It's relatively new and albeit it's lacking a few features, it has proven really good for drawing diagrams and designing new solutions like ui mockups and stuff like that.

I've been following the progress of https://room.sh and it looks really promising. Haven't used it much yet though.

For whiteboarding, I prefer Whimsical (whimical.co) over Figma or Mural. It's focused on digramming, wireframing, and mind-mapping; it's an absolute joy to use. Blazing fast, simple, and stays out of your way.

For context, I spend much of my day designing in Figma, which I love as well, but not for whiteboard-style collaboration.

I have a team using IdeaBoardz (https://ideaboardz.com). Our Scrum of Scrums is using Miro (https://miro.com). Miro is more full-featured, but IdeaBoardz is easier to use.

I use MSFT whiteboard with my surface pro 7 and share it over teams. (teams also has a whiteboard tool, but for some reason it is very clunky)

If it doesn't have to be collaborative, then I use Onenote, because the scribbles can be saved as meeting notes.

It helps that I work at MSFT and everyone uses Windows + has whiteboard installed.

We use MIRO and it has changed the entire company culture. We have 5 international offices, and with micro, it allows everyone to have full transparency with what other offices and teams are working. It is now the 2nd most important tool beside Slack. (400+ Employees)

Shared whiteboards and a good audio connection are FAR more important than most videoconferencing solutions. Microsoft's Surface line kicks Apple's iPads around the block here, at least partly because the Surface "pen" has a built-in "eraser", but Apple's "pencil" doesn't. Windows Whiteboard is a pretty decent starter solution here, and runs on both Windows and iOS. Run in conjunction with Zoom or Teams, it's a pretty darn usable setup.

Prior HN on shared whiteboards: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22675247

I started building my own with a friend because nothing else had what I wanted (great freehand drawing and text tools) and was cheap. We've only just finished the MVP, so feedback would be very helpful!

https://browserboard.com/

I have no idea if it'll hold up under load, I guess let's see. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ You can share the URL to collaborate with someone else.

We noticed that most whiteboarding apps out there over-focused on perfect diagrams, so a lot of time in meetings is lost due to rearranging boxes and arrows. Hence, we built https://letsboard.co - a very simple collaborative whiteboarding tool and are using it daily now.

Miro.com is great. It is so much more than a whiteboard. We use it for brainstorm sessions, retros and all sort of things.

InVision's Freehand has developed leaps and bounds over the last month - it integrates with our MS Teams so it was easy to use and jump into.

Also comes with a presentation mode so you can walk through designs and have others on it follow along.

Compatible with iPad and Apple Pencil, which I recommend over the browser for markups.

Microsoft Whiteboard is pretty phenomenal for collaborative white boarding

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-whit...

Any video conferencing tool + cheap wacom + Figma is quite powerful. Works on MacOS/Linux/Windows.

There are some things Figma isn't intended (and as such very good fit) for though, like diagramming/flowcharts, or marking up PDF's - haven't found great multiplayer web apps for those.

Feels like concurrent multiuser editing is something that a lot of software would benefit from - maybe something we will look back in 5 years as being weird it didn't exist and we had to send files back and forth to work on something together. Would make working together on almost anything easier remotely.

Miro and Mural are also quite nice collab tools, more limited than Figma but some nice things out of the box.

Remote training

I've found Google Jamboard has the right mix of features and ease of use for collaborative exercises during training.

Everything else

I've introduced a few enterprise clients to Miro and they're running with it. I've been impressed with how they've employed it.

OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) - Provides the screens/windows to the conf call as well as your camera shot.

Gromit-MPX - Allows drawing overtop whatever screen/window you'd like.

Wacom Intuous - Much nicer to draw with than a mouse or finger.

https://obsproject.com/

https://github.com/bk138/gromit-mpx

https://www.wacom.com/en-us/products/pen-tablets/wacom-intuo...

I've been using MURAL, Miro and Figma. MURAL and Miro are pretty close, and each has it's strengths, but I prefer MURAL. For a team that doesn't need the bells and whistles, Figma is a great choice.

While I don't use it daily, I built https://collabuml.com (launched on HN a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22955971) which has been helpful for me, I made it this way as lots of time you mostly care about writing system diagrams instead of freestyle whiteboard.

One of the main criteria for a whiteboard is to use it with a stylus - so I purchased https://air.bar/ to turn my non-touch-screen laptop into a touch-screen-one. However, its latency is not low enough to provide a smooth experience. Does anyone know of a good digital pen that plays well with Win 10. I suspect our company policies won't allow me to share screen via an iPad.

Miro! Its a company changing tool!

I use a real whiteboard on my wall in shot of the camera

I have tried few of them, but what I find most infuriating is the lack of keyboard shortcuts.

Usually they support only C+z for undo.

Switching between pen and eraser by having to actually click an icon is fine on iPad but it drives me up the wall when I am using wacom tablet and keyboard.

Does anyone know application that supports keyboard shortcuts?

Our company was stuggling to conduct remote interviews, so I made a shared whiteboard tool to help out. Great for team collaboration as well.

You can generate as many unique boards for free as you want here: https://interviewboard.io

We've been LOVING Sprink (trysprink.com) and it's free! Compared to Miro which we previously used, the interface was much easier for our team. Plus there's no setup required which is a huge bonus when you want to quickly share a board and still video/audio call.

If you're into Obeya and/or Agile:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obeya

Then check out Iobeya:

https://www.iobeya.com/

Does one thing and does it very well.

Recently I've been using Openboard (http://openboard.ch/) while screensharing. Yes its not a team board, but at least it's local. It helps me explain concepts to others easily.

Google Slides and share desktop on Zoom. No need to complicate it with yet another piece of software.

Powerpoint and Slides are perfectly capable for drawing diagrams, or whiteboarding. Zoom screen share is low enough latency and you're already using it for voice comm.

https://app.scratchwork.io/ is a simple collaborative dashboard and support writing math equations by hand or with latex. Nice for researchers or engineers.

https://www.ideaflip.com - it's nice and simple compared to e.g. Miro, and nicely recreates the offline collaboration feeling of working around a whiteboard

I use a Wacom tablet (the cheapest one works well). I can use sketchbook (came with the Wacom tablet) when I want to diagram spontaneously in meetings. But having people edit my sketches is a challenge since no one has the same setup.

We recently moved from Miro to https://beta.plectica.com and have been loving it.

So much better than anything else we tried at handling hierarchy (nested lists, sections, etc)

I've added shared whiteboarding to my handwriting app: http://styluslabs.com/share It is possible to deploy your own server.

One by Wacom, with Autodesk sketch express. You can zoom share screen into the app, and it's much better than Zoom's native whiteboard function. Pressure sensitivity and functional pen buttons are so key.

Very honorable mention to this topic would be https://www.ryeboard.com/.

They're moving quite fast and seemingly in the right direction.

I am using small (A4) physical whiteboards with an Ipevo v4k camera pointing at them. Its not quite the same, but I do like having a physical board. And its cheap compared to an ipad+pencil.

Lucidchart is amazing - love the simultaneous editing. Its the best thing that I have come across for collaborative whiteboarding. It also has great integration with Confluence.

Which whiteboard apps have the best integrations? I've been trying to find one that can 2-way sync with fields in airtable so that i can build a dynamic org chart.

Among the free ones there’s https://drawpile.net/ but I haven’t tried it yet…

I heard about a whiteboard app that has fading gestures that were highly reviewed. Does anyone know which app has these?

This is good: https://app.mural.co/

Another +1 for Miro. Super simple & intuitive. For my needs, I can get by on the free version which is great.

Wacom tablet and any shared canvas, usually Zoom’s. A colleague uses an ipad pro with a stylus.

Mural, jam board and lucid charts

Didn't know there were so many options!

I've been using excalidraw.com

Mural

+1 for Miro

My mom is a retired teacher, and she's been doing remote preK for my 5yo and my niece for a couple of hours a day so the grownups can get work done. Evaluating whiteboards for a 60-year-old and two 5-year-olds to use together with video chat was.... not super fun.

What we've settled on:

We do the video chat on an old fullscreen iMac we had lying around. My mom and each kid all have their own iPads. For the first couple of weeks we used a webwhiteboard, but the littles were having a LOT of trouble with it. It's not optimized for iPads. It's easy to click on links in the nav. Different size screens see different regions of the whiteboard. My niece and son kept clearing each other's work and causing fights.

I ended up building a little prototype for them with rails/websockets that tried to solve all the dumb stuff that makes it hard to use it on iPads. Apple really doesn't make it easy, though. You can bookmark a page to your homescreen to get rid of the Safari chrome (URL bar is the worst for 5yos), but then you can't have cookies and regular usage (maybe just while fullscreen?) will prompt you that the webpage is trying to steal your passwords (fake keyboard warning). Guided access gets rid of most of the obnoxious gestures they were triggering by accident. I disabled most of the multi-touch events in javascript.

I fixed the board size with selectable orientation (portrait/landscape) and set it to scale + aspect-fits to everyone's device. I added a simple host/guest permission model so my mom has a few teacher permissions that the kids don't have. She can either be in teacher mode (she can draw/clear, they can't), class mode (anyone can draw/clear), or student mode where each kid gets their own private board that she can swap between (she can still draw/clear on student boards).

I was starting to work on more teaching features -- the ability for her to save/load sketches so she could do lesson plans ahead of time, the ability for her to "broadcast" saved boards to the student boards so she could make assignments for each 5yo to fill out. We had kind of a rough stretch where one of the kids or the other would forget their tablet for about a week, though, and my mom got fed up and just ordered them workbooks for all 3 of them that they could do together.

It's still running on Heroku, but I haven't been working on it much lately.

http://yiayiaboard.herokuapp.com/rooms/sLZqbw2KHWi

I think this is the right model for small-class whiteboards, but I think you'd have to build a native solution to make it usable for kids that small.

When it worked, it was pretty magical!