Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's look at Apple's new Freeform App.
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So Freeform is a new app from Apple that you can find in macOS Ventura 13.1, iOS and iPadOS
16.2. We're going to look at it on all 3 of those platforms starting with the Mac. Let's
launch Freeform here and when you first do you'll probably get a Welcome screen. After that you'll
see a blank canvas that is your first board. Documents in Freeform are called Boards. They
are basically a blank canvas with no edges and you can add various elements to them. If you go
up a level, by clicking the left arrow next to the name of the Board, you go to a screen that
will show you all of your Boards in a Grid or List View. You'll also see a left sidebar here
that allows you to view all your Boards, just the Recents, Shared Boards or Favorites. You can also
Search your Boards for text that is found in them. Just double click on any Board to go into it.
By default you get this Grid View with these grid dots. But you can go to View and you can Hide the
Grid if you'd rather not have those. Let's look at some of the elements you can add. From left to
right you start with Sticky Notes. These look like little post it notes that you can place wherever
you want on the Board and you can drag the corners to change the size. You can double click inside
and you write something there. Then you'll see Controls underneath while you have text selected
so you can, you know, make the text Bold or Italic. You could center it or left justify
it. You can create bullet lists. You can change the size. For more you can go to Format and then
you've got a full set of Font controls and Text controls. You even go to Show Fonts here and bring
up the regular Font Controls for the Mac so you could do things like, for instance, change the
color of the text. Without text selected I could just click to select the actual note
itself and then select from a variety of Sticky Note colors. You can't set any color you want,
only these. You can also drag this around and position it where you want. Resize of course
and you can rotate. If you hold the pointer over a corner and hold down the Command Key
you could grab it and rotate. You'll be able to do similar things with all the elements here.
Next you've got Shapes. You have a lot more than just the basic shapes here. In fact you have
all the shapes available in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote. So you can select from a whole
variety of different things. You could add a shape just by clicking on it. Drag it around,
resize it. Any shape can have text inside it. So you can double click it and there will be
a blinking text cursor in there. You could also select it just by itself and you can
click here to change the color. You can choose from some basic colors or No Fill
but you could also click here and choose any color from the Color Picker. This next
button here allows you to set a border. So you can set a border for the entire shape.
You can set the thickness for the border and you could set a color for the border as well.
Then, like with Stickies, you can grab a corner and resize. You could hold Command and Rotate. You
also have the ability to Copy and Paste styles. So I can create another shape here, let's do this,
and let's say I want to Copy this style right here. I can go to Format, Copy Style, select this
one and go to Format and Paste Style. You can also select a shape or other element and go to Format,
Save As Insert Style. When you do this style will be used the next time you create a new shape.
Note that under Shapes here you also have some lines and arrows that you can add.
So I can select this arrow here and I can change the end. I can change the thickness
and then drag the ends to wherever I want. On the Mac there is no way to simply draw shapes but you
can click here and then use the Pen tool and then you can draw a shape using straight lines or drag
to curve a line. This is the same tool that is available in Pages, Numbers, and Keynote.
Next we have Text. You can select text right there and it's just a text box and you could
put something in the text here. You have text controls here. You can select just
some of the text and change just that text right there. You can change colors as well.
You have the full Font controls if you want for text. You could also select the text.
Drag it around. Drag a corner to enlarge it and hold Command down to Rotate it as well.
Next we have Media. You can insert photos and videos. Photos from your library. Select a photo.
Click Add. You have the photo in here. Notice it has little rounded corners. You can turn that Off
under Format, Rounded Corners. Shadow as well. You can turn that Off. You can change the size.
Underneath you can click here to Crop and you have the same kind of cropping tools that you do in,
say, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote as well. You can also grab a corner here to resize. Command and
Drag will allow you to change the rotation. You can place it where you want. You can also mask
an image in a shape by going to Format, and then Image Mask With Shape. So I can Mask this inside
of an oval for instance. You also have other options in here. Like the ability to take a photo,
scan documents, or add a sketch from your iPhone or iPad if they are nearby or connected. You can
also add Links. So here you can just type a link to a website and insert and you get a link that
looks like this. You can resize it and it will try to adjust. When you select it you should get some
controls at the bottom. So you should be able to change the link if you want. You can click here to
actually go to that page. Note you can also go to Arrange, Constrain, Proportions and turn that Off.
This works for images and shapes as well. Now you can resize it as you want. You could also
add a link to a file here. Click there. Select say a regular file like this and it will add it
there just like a regular link to a webpage. But this will actually go to that document. You can
also select multiple items by dragging like that and change multiple items at the same time. So I
can add a border around all of these at the same time. You also have a lot of arrangement tools.
I can select all of those and go to Arrange and I could align objects, say, to the center
or distribute them vertically like that and then horizontally as well.
So on the iPad it looks very similar except that you have one additional tool and that is the
Drawing Tool. Tap on the Pen at the top and now you have all the Drawing Tools here. Now if you
have an Apple Pencil, of course, then it is ideal. You can draw with the Apple pencil as long as you
choose one of these drawing tools here and you can just draw whatever you want. It won't do the thing
where like a nose where you can draw a circle and then wait and it will make a perfect circle. It
doesn't have that feature unfortunately. But you can use a variety of different
tools like Highlighting Tool, an Erasing Tool, a Selection Tool, and it will select these objects.
You could also go to the Writing Mode with the Apple pencil and then write. If you'd rather draw
with your finger you've got the Option right here to turn On or Off Draw With Finger. You've got,
you know, keyboard font tools, dictation tools, and the like here at the bottom as well. The rest
works pretty much the same. For instance I can create a sticky note like this and I can drag
the corner to resize it. I can use two-fingers on the screen and rotate like that. I've got the
same Shape Tools here. I have the same tools for adding Text Boxes and for Inserting Pictures or
taking a picture with my camera or scanning from the camera or adding a link or a link to a file.
Of course whatever device you're using all of your Boards here at the top level,
and Freeform should sync with iCloud. Although note by default Freeform seems to be off an iCloud
settings. I'm not sure why that is. Maybe just for the first version here. So go into your iCloud
settings on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone to turn On iCloud syncing.Then you'll see all of your Boards
across all your devices is just like you see all your notes in the Notes App across all devices.
So on the iPhone, of course, you've got the smallest screen that you're going
to be able to use this on. So there are a lot of compromises to be made here. For instance,
when you add an element, like a sticky note, and you select it notice that your
menu items here appear at the bottom of the screen and not underneath it. You,
of course, have all the drawing tools but you're drawing with your finger, there's
no Apple pencil of course. But in general it is more or less very similar to the iPad version.
So Freeform is not meant to be a document creation app. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote will do all of
that better. You have more precision, more control over the elements and be able to create pdf's,
printed documents, images, all sorts of things in a much better way. Freeform is meant to be
simple with easy to use tools. It lacks a lot of advanced options. So use it maybe to gather ideas
and to share ideas rather than create a finished product of some sort. For instance say you were
going to go on a trip soon and wanted to get some ideas for places to visit where you're going. So
you could easily put some images and text into a document. Say let's go to a webpage here and
could drag images into the document very easily like that. Once they are in there you can easily
arrange these. You can see how they snap to a nice grid like that. You could add some text to it.
Place that where you want. Add a shape. Add some sticky notes. A big part of this is
collaboration. So the idea is that instead of working on this document by yourself you would
use the Share button right here and you would invite somebody else to work with you on this.
So now two people are working on the same document. If I were to add some more text
here then the other person would see that change. If I were to change something in this document
then I would see that change reflected over here as well. You can add multiple
other people. When you go into the Settings here you can go to Manage Shared Board and
you can actually change the permissions to Anybody with a Link. You could also
set it to View Only if you like. So you can make changes but they can just view.
There's also some Export options. You can go to File, and then Export as PDF and that's the only
direct option right there to create a pdf. Which is nice because it will keep all the nice curves,
all the shapes and lines and things that you add. Also you can go to Print if you
want and in addition to regular printing you can use the pdf option here to Open
in Preview. From Preview you can actually export as an image, say.
Now where Freeform falls on the spectrum of Apple Apps is really hard to say because it
overlaps quite a bit with Notes. You can do most of this with Notes. You can Share
a note. You can add just about the same elements in Notes and Notes, of course,
has this background body text that you can use. So Notes is better for things like taking notes
in meetings and in classes. You can still sketch on your iPhone and iPad and you can still add
images and all sorts of things. On the other hand Pages, Numbers and Keynote are better for creating
documents. You have more control over what you're adding and what elements look like and where they
are placed. Of course, you can collaborate with all of those. So Freeform really is all about
making it simple. After you tryout Freeform I'm interested to hear in the comments how
you like it and what things you may use it for. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.