LocalCanvas

A local-first Excalidraw workspace for macOS.

Organize portable canvases, connect ideas, and search everything—without an account or a cloud workspace.

LocalCanvas wraps the upstream Excalidraw editor in a native-feeling desktop library. Every drawing remains a standard .excalidraw file in a folder you choose; LocalCanvas adds organization, search, graph navigation, history, and macOS integrations around those files.

Why LocalCanvas

• Your files stay yours. One portable .excalidraw file per canvas, stored in a library folder you control.
• A real canvas library. Browse nested folders, generated previews, recent files, pinned drawings, and Finder tags.
• Search beyond filenames. Find titles, paths, canvas text, OCR metadata, and saved voice-note transcripts from the command palette.
• Connect your thinking. Link canvases with portable portal metadata, follow backlinks, and navigate the resulting knowledge graph.
• Recover confidently. Autosaves use atomic Rust writes, while bounded local history supports preview and non-destructive restore.
• Work offline. Core drawing, organization, search, OCR, voice transcription, and history do not require a LocalCanvas account or hosted workspace.

Features

Canvas and media

• The upstream Excalidraw editor: shapes, arrows, text, freedraw, images, frames, and standard editing tools.
• Native image picker and macOS drag-and-drop support.
• Frame-based presentation mode.
• Layers panel with ordering, visibility, locking, and selection controls.
• OCR for pasted images using macOS Vision; extracted text becomes searchable metadata.
• Voice notes attached to canvas locations, with local playback and macOS on-device transcription.

Library and navigation

• User-selected library root with nested, filesystem-backed folders.
• Create, import, rename, move, tag, pin, and delete drawings from the desktop shell.
• Cached SVG previews that regenerate when source drawings change.
• Full-text SQLite index rebuilt from the files on disk.
• ⌘K command palette for drawings, folders, tags, graph navigation, and common actions.
• Portable canvas links, backlinks, and a force-directed graph view.
• Menu-bar quick capture.
• A New Quick Canvas App Shortcut for Spotlight on macOS 26 or later.

Storage and safety

• 800 ms debounced autosave through the Rust core.
• Temporary file, fsync, and atomic rename instead of in-place writes.
• Local version snapshots with bounded retention and non-destructive restore.
• Filesystem watching keeps the library in sync with Finder changes.
• No direct frontend filesystem access; React communicates with Rust through typed Tauri commands.

File format

The library folder is the source of truth:

~/LocalCanvas/
├── Architecture/
│   ├── auth-flow.excalidraw
│   └── data-model.excalidraw
├── Ideas/
│   └── launch-plan.excalidraw
└── .localcanvas/
    ├── index.sqlite          # rebuildable search/graph index
    ├── thumbnails/          # rebuildable preview cache
    ├── versions/            # bounded local recovery history
    └── voice-notes/         # local audio attachments

LocalCanvas-specific identities, portals, OCR text, and voice-note references live in element customData. Upstream Excalidraw preserves this field, so the drawing remains valid in other Excalidraw-compatible tools. The SQLite index and thumbnails are caches—not the authoritative copy of a canvas.

Build from source

Note

LocalCanvas is under active development and does not currently publish a signed public release. Build it locally to try it.

Requirements

• macOS
• Node.js and npm
• Rust toolchain
• Xcode and the macOS SDK

Run in development

git clone https://github.com/PratikRai0101/LocalCanvas.git
cd LocalCanvas
npm ci
npm run tauri dev

Build the macOS app

npm run build:macos
open src-tauri/target/release/bundle/macos/LocalCanvas.app

The build script creates src-tauri/target/release/bundle/macos/LocalCanvas.app, embeds the macOS 26 App Intents extension, and uses ad-hoc signing by default. Set APPLE_SIGNING_IDENTITY when preparing a properly signed distribution build.

Architecture

React library UI + upstream Excalidraw
                 │
          Tauri invoke commands
                 │
     Rust filesystem and native core
        ├── atomic scene storage
        ├── SQLite search/graph index
        ├── filesystem watcher
        ├── Finder tags and image I/O
        └── macOS Vision/Speech bridges

The filesystem is authoritative. Derived indexes can be rebuilt by walking the library, and LocalCanvas never requires drawing content to exist only in SQLite. See ARCHITECTURE.md and DECISIONS.md for the detailed design and architectural decisions.

Verify

npm run build
npm test
npm run test:compat
cargo test --manifest-path src-tauri/Cargo.toml

The compatibility suite exercises upstream Excalidraw import, serialization, SVG embedding, and LocalCanvas metadata round trips.

Contributing

Issues and focused pull requests are welcome. Before changing storage, serialization, portals, or indexing, read AGENTS.md, ARCHITECTURE.md, and DECISIONS.md, then run the full verification suite above.