# SketchBox Help

Welcome
Getting started
- Drawing
- Text
- Alarm
Stickies and the Action Menu
Preferences
More information

## Welcome

SketchBox is a sophisticated Sticky Notes Manager for your Mac. Besides entering text notes, you can make drawings with your tablet or mouse, easily set reminders for each note and much more.
Whether you use it as a fancy egg timer, your personal notebook or to quickly create drafts – SketchBox gives your stickies more power without the clutter. This guide helps you to make the most out of its functionality.
Have fun!

## Getting started

Create your first sticky by clicking the "New Sticky" item in the toolbar. All stickies are available as thumbnail previews in the main area of the SketchBox window where you can rearrange or delete them.
When you close a sticky, it remembers its position on screen so that it's exactly where you left it when you double-click its preview image to open it again.
By default your new stickies get a random color upon creation (you can change the color of each sticky later). But you can also choose to set a default color that is always used if you prefer your stickies to be of a single color.
Your collection is automatically saved in a database when you quit SketchBox, so you'll never have to worry about forgetting to save your work.
You can organize your stickies with categories. Click the "+" in the bottom left corner of the main window to create a new one and drag stickies on its list entry to assign them to that category. Each sticky can be in multiple categories.
Each sticky basically consists of three layers – each of which providing a specific functionality. Select the layer you want to use by clicking the respective tab on the right side of the sticky's window.
Drawing – This is where you can use your tablet or mouse to create hand drawings. If you use a tablet, SketchBox recognizes the pressure you apply and you can also use the backside of your pen as an eraser. You can also hold a modifier key (Command, Alt, ...) to use the eraser. You can select the color to draw with and the stroke width (maximum stroke width in case you use a tablet) in the toolbar at the bottom.
The drawing layer can be resized both from the bottom right corner (like every normal window) and from the top left corner, so you can easily adjust the canvas' size and clipping.
You can also take a screenshot with this layer. Activate the screenshot mode by clicking the camera icon, move and resize the window to frame the portion of the screen you'd like to capture, then simply click inside the window. Done.
Text – Entering text in this layer makes your notes searchable through the search field in the main toolbar. The text is also visible through the semi-transparent background when you make drawings (and vice-versa) so you can easily combine text and graphical notes.
The toolbar at the bottom provides you with the most basic formatting actions – more are available through the Format menu. You can also paste formatted text (including links and images) from the pasteboard or drag it in.
The first line of the text area is used as a title when you roll up your sticky to save space on your screen (double-click the title bar).
Alarm – You can set an individual reminder for each sticky here. Drag the days, hours and minutes columns or use the scroll wheel to set the time interval after which you hear an alarm and this sticky is displayed to you. If an alarm is set, its absolute time is displayed at the top of the view.
Stickies with an alarm show an indicator in the thumbnail preview.

## Stickies and the Action Menu

Using the colored square in the title bar of a sticky, you can set its background color. By double-clicking the title bar, you can roll it up, so that it only displays the title bar, using the first line of text in the text layer.
You'll also find a little gear symbol there which displays a menu of actions you can apply to the sticky. These are:
Clear Canvas – Deletes everything on the drawing layer. Can be undone.
Crop Image – Deletes everything of your drawing that is outside of the window's bounds.
Save image to Desktop – Saves a copy of your drawing to the Desktop. The filename is automatically chosen to be unique.
Window Level – Sets a window level for this sticky. You can set it to be displayed on top of any other windows, on the Desktop or as a normal window.

## Preferences

You can customize various parameters of SketchBox's appearance and behavior through the Preferences dialog. It is divided into several sections:
General – Defines the general parameters of newly created stickies. You can set their size, whether to insert them at the top or bottom of the list and the layer they should display at first.
Colors – Defines the appearance of the application and stickies. You can set a default color for new stickies and change the background color of the preview area.
By default, the background of drawings that are copied to the clipboard is transparent. However, as some applications (most notably NeoOffice) do not support that properly, you can set a background color for the clipboard.
Text – You can select a default font for the text layer here.
Timers – Choose between two different sounds and set whether the alarm sound should be repeated until you activate the respective sticky.
Tablet – Activate or deactivate your tablet's pressure sensitivity. By default, lines that you draw are smoothed to make them look less angled. (regardless of whether you use a tablet or a mouse). To use less pretty but more precise lines you can disable this feature.
Update – You can check for new versions of SketchBox here and activate the automatic check when you launch SketchBox (recommended).

## More information

If you have any additional questions and/or comments on SketchBox, please feel free to get in touch. You are also invited to visit the omz:software website for recent information about SketchBox and other fine Mac software.

- SketchBox Help