What is Freeform and what can you do with it on the iPad?

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In this video, we’re going to take a look at the free format on the iPad. What is the free format? Well, it’s a new app that Apple introduced with iPad os 16.2. It’s also available on the Mac and iPhone. With this free format, what you’re able to do his brainstorm your different ideas, you basically have a board and you can go and add all your different objects to that board, it could be a seating chart, it could be the layout of your house, it could be a logo idea, what you’re able to do is put this onto a board and brainstorm. You can even collaborate with other people. Let’s take a look at the free format on the iPad.

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So what is this free format? What does it look like? Well, if you’re using an iPad os 16.2, or later, what you’re going to see on your iPad is an app that looks like this, this is free form. Now it is installed by default, once you update to iPad or 16.2. If you don’t see it, or you inadvertently deleted it, what you can do is go to the App Store, I’m going to go to my app store here, and then you just search for free form.

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I’m gonna hit return. And now we can see we have free form here, all you’d have to do is just download it, and it’ll install it on your iPad.

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So now, let’s take a look at what we can do with this free form app. What I’m going to do is open up my free form app here. When you first open it up, what you’re looking at are all of your boards, the way that free form works is you create a board, when you create a board, let’s go ahead and take a look at my board here. When you create a board, what you can do is then drawn, you can place objects, you’re gonna see that this is a layout of my living room.

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I have my couch here, I have my TV, I have my speakers in here. And then if I wanted to collaborate with someone, maybe I want to collaborate with my wife where she can work on at the same time, maybe we’re going to move some things around, what I’m able to do is go up to the share icon, and then share it with her and then we could collaborate on it. So that’s the basics of what freeform is, it’s a place where you can go and brainstorm all of your different ideas. Let’s take a closer look at a freeform board. So I’m looking at my living room here, we have all these different objects, if you want to move an object around, all you have to do is just tap on it, I’m going to tap on my couch here. And when I tap on it, it selects it. And now what I’m able to do is just drag this around where I want. If I use two fingers, I’m able to rotate it.

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To resize it, I just go to any one of these corners here where we have the blue dot, and I’m able to resize it. If you want to change the color of it or to add an outline to it, when you have an object selected, where you’re going to get us a little menu that pops up below it. And from here, I’m able to change the color. I can also outline it,

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I can go in add text to it.

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And then I can duplicate it, delete it. And when we tap on the More button, we also do have more options. This is where I can go and layer it think of a deck of cards. Each one of these objects has a specific position on my board. I have an area rug here. This is the yellow color here. I want that and back of everything else. Well, the way that I did that was I went to my more button here and I moved it to the back.

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I can also cut copy and duplicate it, I can lock it. If you don’t want it to move, you may want to lock it I did this with my walls here these walls I can’t move. So I can’t select them, I can’t accidentally move it. So if you have a permanent structure or permanent object and you’re bored, you can’t move it, you don’t want to move it. All you have to do is just go and lock it. You can also auto size the text, I can apply styles, copy the style apply to other objects, I can constrain the proportions as well as add a description and delete it.

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I do this with any object that I have selected. So if I go to my plant here, you’re gonna see I have the same tools available to me. When I go up to the top, what I’m able to do is add a comment, click on this, drag it around, and I can put a comment in there.

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We can also add text just click on the ad here and we can add text to format the text. All we have to do is start typing

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and you’re gonna see my formatting tools show up at the bottom. So in addition to formatting our objects, such as our shapes, we can also format our text and then if you want to add images with the camera or maybe from your phone

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As app or even the files app, you can do that as well. Just select where you want to add your image from or your file from. Now, when we’re working on our boards, what we’re able to do is change the view, you’re gonna see that this view here is 105%, these boards will grow as you add more objects to them. So what I’m able to do is pinch. And we can see that that board is getting smaller. And we’re now looking at 50%.

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So what I’m able to do is actually build out my house here, let’s go and move my comment over to the side, I’m going to go and add another shape, we’re going to add my dining room. So I just click on the shape, I’m just going to have a simple square here, we’ll add it,

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I just dragged to get to the size here. Now what I want to do is remove the fill and add a border around, how do I do that,

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all I have to do is just select it, you’re gonna see that I have my fill, we’re gonna go with no fill, and I go to

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my border, I can select the thickness, and then I can select the color, we’re just going to leave it at black. And now I have my dining room there.

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If I wanted to add a table to it, I can search my shapes, I’m gonna go to my shape here. Let’s go to the magnifying glass, I type in table,

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we have table here, click on it, drag it out,

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I add it to my dining room, I’m gonna rotate it

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and I place it where it is in my dining room, I want to change the color.

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Click on it. Let’s go and change it to black. And now I have my table in there.

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We’re going to do one more thing here, you’re going to see that I actually have an opening between. Let’s go ahead and zoom in here a little bit. Oops, did you notice what happened there? My dining room moved. How can I prevent that from moving, if I want to pinch to zoom in, you lock it. So now what I’m going to do is undo that. So now it’s back where it was, I click on it, we go over to my more button, and I lock it. So now that dining room cannot move. So now what I’m able to do is go in here and pinch and I don’t have to worry about moving that dining room, you’re gonna see that I have a little bit of an opening here, what I would like to do is move this line behind that opening, that’s a white square. So let’s go ahead and click on it, we do have to unlock it to move it, I’m just going to move it back. So I click on it again.

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We unlock it. And now what I do is move it to the back, we can see that it’s behind my white square. And now what I want to do is lock it again. So I don’t accidentally move it. And now when I zoom out,

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we can see we have my opening there. I would like to hide this grid, the dots that are behind there. To do that, what we do is we go down to our view here and I’m able to hide the grid, select that. And now those dots are no longer there. Let’s go and zoom in to what I have drawn here. To do that, I just click on my view again. And we’re going to zoom to fit content.

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And now that does fit in my iPad there, the content is fitting within the display of my iPad. So those are the basics of how we create a board and how we can add different objects to it. If we want to create a new board, all I have to do is just go to the upper right hand corner and click on the new board and I can create a new board. We can also duplicate our boards. So let’s say I wanted to duplicate this board here. I want to create different versions of this. So what I need to do is duplicate it. Well. To do that what we’ll do is go to the left, we go to our little caret here, and what I’m able to do is duplicate it. I can also rename it, and I can go and unfavored it, this board is favorited. What does that mean? Well, when we go to all of my boards, we’re going to look at how we manage our boards. Next, you’re going to see I have favorites. When I selected this, it’s going to show me all of my favorite boards.

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If I want to see all of my boards, not just the favorited ones, I go up to all boards and I can see all of those boards.

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So this is all of my boards in a list view if you want to see him in icon view, you select this and you can go to icon. We can also select how they are sorted. We have sorted by date and we can select if they are ascending or descending. And I can sort them by name. You’re also going to notice that they are grouped together by day. So these are all the boards are created today. This is where use groups comes in. If I turn this off, they are no longer going to be sorted by day.

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And then we also have select, I can click on this and select my different boards. And then from here, what I’m able to do is delete them.

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And we can also search our boards. Now, the search does not only search the name, what it also does is it searches the content. If we look at the seating chart here,

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I have my table here with all the chairs. If we look at the text, you’re gonna see a seating arrangement.

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Well, let’s say that I’m looking at all of my boards, and I forgot what the name of that board was, I know the word arrangement is in there, watch what happens when I type in arrangement, you’re gonna see that seating chart comes up. So when you do a search here, not only does it search the name of the board, but it also searches within the bar text within the board.

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The last thing we’re going to look at is collaboration, what we’re able to do is work on these boards with other people at the same time. And we have a few options for that, I’m going to go back over to my living room, let’s just say that I wanted to work on this with someone, how can I do that I want to collaborate with Abigail. To do that, what we’ll do is we go up to the share icon here, click on it. And then from here, we set how we want to share this, by default, only invited people are going to be able to edit it, and they are going to be able to make changes to it. They can also ask others to collaboration. So if I invite Abigail Appleseed to this, what she’s going to be able to do is make changes and she is going to be able to invite others. If I want to change it to her, she can only view only I can select this. And now she can only view the board, I’m going to leave it at can make changes. And we’re going to leave it with allow others to invite so she can invite other people. You can change this after you share the board. So I’m going to go back here I have everything all set how I want to share it. Now what I need to do is I need to invite people that I want to share this board with. So I select messages, I start typing her name.

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And

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when I click on the blue arrow here, she’s going to get a message. And her message is that and what she’s going to be able to do is open up this board and the free format on her iPad on her Mac on her iPhone. And then we can work on it at the same time. If she selects something, I’m going to be able to see that she is selecting it. When she moves to the couch, I’m going to see that couch move on my board, we can work on it at the same time. Now I mentioned what we’re able to do is manage our settings for collaboration even after we share the board. To do that, what we’ll do is go up to our collaboration icon here. And then from here, we go to Manage shared board. So let’s say I wanted to change it to view only or what I would like to do is just make it to where I can invite people. To do that, we just select it, I can go and click on share options. And then from here, I’m able to make any changes to it. So I can make a view only and I can make a tour only I can invite people, I can also invite other people here. And I can select what the person can do what the individual can do. So let’s say I wanted Abigail to only be able to view it. But I would like other people to be able to make changes, I could do that I can make changes to individual people what they are able to do on that board.

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And then if I want to stop sharing, I can do that as well. So that’s a look at the free form app on the iPad. And of course if you’re using the same iCloud account on your different devices, you are able to create these boards and work with these boards on your other devices such as your Mac and your iPhone. And then if you want to work with someone, all you have to do is just select your board and then share it with that other person and as long as they have an Apple device a Mac, iPad or iPhone, what they’re going to be able to do is work on that board along with you at the same time. So that’s a look at the free format on the iPad.