You can now receive notifications in Slack about comments on files you’re watching, @-mentions in comments, reactions to your comments, and file invitations. If you’re a workspace admin, you can also receive notifications about new members in your workspace and requests from viewers to become editors.

To get started, connect the Slack app to your Whimsical account by going to https://whimsical.com/install/slack, or learn more about the Whimsical Slack app.

Do you get too much email? Whimsical now lets you choose how you want to receive notifications. For each notification type, you can choose if you want to be notified by email, Slack, or just in the notification inbox.

Configure your notifications at https://whimsical.com/account.

We’ve released the notification inbox, a centralized space for all your Whimsical workspace activity. You’ll receive alerts for comments, mentions, reactions, file invites, and access requests. You can also customize your email settings to stay focused and minimize distractions. We hope this feature helps you manage your work both efficiently and calmly in Whimsical.

Users logging in with SAML will now see a notice before their session expires. This lets them re-authenticate at a convenient time, instead of being interrupted in the middle of their work.

The warning will show 2 hours, 1 hour, and 10 minutes before your session expires.

This feature is available for all workspaces with a timed SAML session expiration policy. Learn more about SAML session expiration.

We now support AVIF image files in Whimsical boards and docs. AVIF, a next-generation image format, offers better compression and quality, wide color gamut, and high dynamic range (HDR), meaning your pictures will look sharper while taking up less space. This ensures that your images load faster without sacrificing quality.

AVIF support is available for all users. You can add an AVIF image by selecting “Upload image” from the toolbar, or by dragging it from your computer onto a board or doc.

This visual refresh of the sidebar enhances focus on the file you’re working on while allowing the sidebar to visually recede. This update also hints at upcoming UI changes planned for the near future.

We added four new endpoints to make your next database model even nicer in boards. To customize an endpoint, select the connector and click on the three dots next to it.

We’ve released a desktop app for macOS. Enjoy everything you love about Whimsical in the browser plus a more permanent home for your Whimsical work, tabs for better organization, keyboard shortcuts for moving between tabs, and a beautiful icon for your dock.

Download it here

Now you can add code blocks in boards, similar to docs. Simply highlight your code snippet in a text object, choose the code block type and you’re good to go.

If you open a Whimsical link you don’t have permission to view, you can now easily request access from within Whimsical. To request access, simply click on the file link, and you’ll see the option to “Request Access” on the access denied page. You can also include an optional note to accompany your access request. The owner will receive an email notification and can grant access with just a click.

If you have the Whimsical integration for Slack installed, you can also approve the access request from within Slack.

Note that you must be a member of the same workspace as the file’s owner to request access to the file. This ensures that sensitive information remains secure within your team’s environment. Learn more about requesting access to files.

Managing the departure of users from your workspace just got easier with our new user offboarding feature. Now, you can automatically set a departing user’s “My files” to be transferred to a designated folder after a default waiting period of 72 hours. This allows for a grace period before file relocation, ensuring that files aren’t accidentally moved. Additionally, when manually offboarding a user, you have the flexibility to move their files immediately, after the 72-hour window, or opt to leave the files in their current location.

You can set a user offboarding folder at https://whimsical.com/workspace/settings or read the documentation on user offboarding.

It’s easy to get lost if you're a member of multiple workspaces, so you can now see more details about each one—including the subscription plan and the total number of members.

Sometimes workspace viewers need more access so they can edit or create files in Whimsical. Now workspace admins can provide custom instructions to their users on how to request an upgrade to the editor role in Whimsical. This is often helpful in larger organizations that have an existing process or ticketing system for requesting software licenses.

This feature is available for paid workspaces. Workspace admins can configure custom editor upgrade instructions at https://whimsical.com/workspace/settings or read the documentation on requesting workspace editor access.

You’ll now see the names of all teammates who will be notified when you leave a comment. If your comment notifies more than three people, a simple hover will reveal all their names.

Here’s when teammates will get notified:

• They created the file you’re commenting on
• They added the sticky note you’re commenting on
• They added the annotation you’re commenting on
• They’ve already commented on the thread
• They chose to be notified of all comments in the file
• You mention them in a comment

Workspace admins can now set how long SAML authenticated sessions last for. Organizations have different policies around how frequently users should be asked to re-authenticate. Now you can apply those policies to your Whimsical workspace.

This is available to Org plan customers who have enabled SAML.

You can get set up at https://whimsical.com/workspace/settings, or learn more here.

Right-click anywhere on a board and select Add comment to place a comment wherever you like. You can also move comments around freely by dragging and dropping them.

You can now create Whimsical files right from within your Google Docs. If you haven’t added our Google add-on yet, you can install it from Google’s Marketplace right here.

Tooltips no longer have to be grey—you now have the option to change their color.

When a Whimsical file is mentioned in your Linear issues, comments, or projects, we’ll add a backlink to them in Whimsical. Also, you’ll now see the status and title of Linear issues referenced in Whimsical.

Learn more here.

We’ve rolled out a handful of annoteworthy updates to annotations:

• Annotation connectors will now attach to the objects they’re pointing at, and will keep their position even if you move things around.
• You can show or hide author names in annotations.
• Newly created annotations will inherit the color of the previous annotation.
• For easier access, we’ve added the annotation element to the diagram shapes menu.
• Or, you can just use the keyboard shortcut A to quickly create a new annotation.

You'll find HashiCorp stack icons in the Design/Development category of our Icon library.

We’re bringing three new features to the table. Tables in docs now support:

• Uniform styling with new rows or columns matching the style of previously added rows and columns
• Horizontal text aligment
• Icons

Diagram shapes now preserve your last saved color. Any shape added from the toolbar or with a shortcut will match the look of the last one you added to the board.

Product updates now has an RSS feed. This lets you read product updates in your RSS reader, and stay up to date on all of the latest Whimsical feature releases.

You can subscribe with your RSS reader of choice at https://whimsical.com/product-updates/feeds/main.

Turn captions on if you want to add more context to your visuals, or hide them if your image is worth a thousand words.

Pasted GitHub issue and pull request links will automatically transform into dynamic references displaying their title and current status.

Just make sure you have our GitHub integration installed.

You can now turn your wireframes into a presentation. Click the present icon at the top-right corner, select and arrange the frames you want to present and hit Present to start a full-screen slideshow you can easily click through.

Note: you will have to navigate between the slides using your keyboard arrow keys.

You can now display embedded boards in a presentation format! Paste a board link into a doc and select presentation to view its content in a click-through deck.

We’ve given product updates...an update! You can now explore our latest releases without leaving the Whimsical web app. Find something you like? Celebrate it with the Whimsicians who made it happen.

Now you can find your 10 most recent prompts in the AI modal to edit and reuse.

Grammarly’s browser extensions are now compatible with Whimsical to help you identify typos, write clearly, and convey the right tone, whatever you’re writing. For those using the Grammarly desktop app with Whimsical, we fixed the bug that put accepted suggestions in the wrong place.

Brighten any doc or board by typing : to search and add emojis.

You can now rotate images on Whimsical boards. If an image gets accidentally uploaded upside down, give this feature a spin.

Whimsical now has a native tool for creating sequence diagrams. To get started, click the diagram shapes menu, then select sequence diagram actor. Combine sequence diagram actors with connectors to build and scale any sequence diagram.

If you're a ChatGPT Plus user, you can now generate flowcharts, mind maps and sequence diagrams in ChatGPT with the Whimsical Diagrams GPT.

Need to create a technical or process diagram? Consider it done. You can now create sequence diagrams instantly with Whimsical AI. To get started, select generate with AI from the toolbar, enter a text prompt, select sequence diagram, then create. Checkout this demo video for more info.

Decide how pasted content comes to life with new pasting options for docs and boards. Just copy content, then right-click and paste as a mind map, sticky note(s), card(s), table or bulleted list.

We’ve made it easier to create and share links to files across your Whimsical workspace. The ‘Add link’ menu will now allow you to search files, as well as suggest files based on highlighted text. No more tab switching needed!

You can now filter a selection of items down to just the ones you want. Select items on a board, click the filter menu, and choose a shape or color. Presto: the matching items are selected! Try it out the next time you need to move or style items in bulk.

You can paste mermaid flowcharts as Whimsical flowcharts.

Mermaid is a diagram format written in plain text. It is often stored alongside source code or other technical documentation.Once pasted, you can immediately start editing and customizing your flowchart. Add new steps, change texts, or adjust the design to make it fit your needs. This feature makes it simple to bring in diagrams from other tools or documents and continue working on them in Whimsical.

Get started by pasting this example flowchart into a board:

graph LR
A[User requests password reset]
B{Is the user registered?}
A --> B
B -- Yes --> C[Send password reset link to user's email]
C --> D[User receives password reset link]
B -- No --> E[Inform user that they are not registered]

Mentions for files have been improved. When you paste a Whimsical link into another Whimsical file, the link will now automatically convert to a mention, removing the bloat of raw URLs. You can also preview the file in a thumbnail on hover.

Customers that use JumpCloud for identity management can now add and remove workspace members with SCIM. Using SCIM lets your organisation centralize user management, and streamline onboarding and offboarding of users to Whimsical. This feature is available to customers on our Org plan.

Learn more about enabling SCIM for JumpCloud, or contact sales to upgrade to an Org plan.

Now you can add headers, assign paragraph styles and create lists in flowcharts, mind maps, and sticky notes right from the toolbar—or using the same keyboard shortcuts available in docs.

Type @ followed by a teammate's name to easily reference them in-line in docs and boards. Only mentions used inside comment threads will send notifications.

Text editing is now twice as fast and load times have been cut in half. Most notable for longer documents like recurring 1:1 agendas, blog posts, and project plans.

When typing accented characters:

• Characters are now inserted correctly using the Apple accent menu. Previously, two characters were inserted instead of one.

When typing in Korean:

• Hitting enter now ends the composition and inserts a new line. Before, users had to hit enter twice to enter a new line.
• Extra characters are no longer inserted at the beginning of an entry.

When composing characters: (e.g., Japanese)

• The first character no longer disappears.
• The cursor no longer jumps to the beginning of a line entry.
• Text no longer duplicates or submits accidentally before confirming the selection.

Discover solutions faster with AI-generated sticky notes. Enter a topic or problem and Whimsical AI will instantly generate a series of ideas or solutions on sticky notes.

If you're not fond of your current profile photo and don't want to upload a new one, you can now just remove it.

Text formatted as code now supports HashiCorp Config Language (HCL) for syntax highlighting.

Create concise summaries of public web pages and Whimsical workspace files with Whimsical AI. Just paste a URL to visualize its content in a flowchart, mind map, or series of sticky notes.

Here's a quick round-up of our latest bug fixes, focusing mainly on improvements in object layering:

• Right-clicking in a selected frame and section now opens the context menu instead of selecting an inner object.
• Clicking outside a comment on a view-only board now closes the comment.
• You can now resize a shape all the way down to its minimum height in one go.
• Shapes with multiple lines of text sized to the minimum height no longer get resized the next time you select them.
• Objects inside sections can now be consistently moved to the front or to the back.
• Once placed inside a section, objects now maintain their previous layer order.
• When duplicating connected objects, the connectors now keep the same position as in the original, rather than moving to the front.
• We've fixed a bug where the first character typed in some languages was not always displayed.

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Org plan admins can secure and consolidate company data by preventing new workspace creation on their domain. Learn more here.

Flowchart shapes, when resized or expanded, will now expand vertically, in a downward direction.

Navigating comments is now so much better. Clicking a link to a comment will scroll you to threads, discussions and other inline comments. Searching comments within a board, doc, or even across files will bring you to the correct position in the discussion. Plus, we changed the comment highlight arrow from white to purple to make it more visible.

Download a .csv file of all your workspace members.

We've added Notion's logo to our icon library.

We now support object embedding so you can select an object on your board and ensure it's the sole focus in the embedded window.

We've added a collection of cloud architecture icons from AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure.

For more information on how to use cloud architecture icons, please see the documentation.

Wireframes, cards, and stacks of cards can now all be found under the file type Board.

Keep track of when a file was created and who last modified it by hovering over the file status indicator.

We’ve added two new comment reactions:

• ➕
• 🙏

When resizing images in docs, you may notice that the images will now snap to the width of the doc.

You can now right-click on file or folder names to rename them.

Blank canvas anxiety? No more! ✨ Whimsical AI ✨ allows you to create flowcharts and mind maps in seconds.

You can now embed and preview your Whimsical files in Google Docs as smart chips.

Learn more about previewing Whimsical files in Google Docs.

You can now change and customize the colors of connector text.

You can now easily add and remove multiple rows and columns at once in Whimsical Docs tables.

Tables in Whimsical Docs have got some TLC. You now have the ability to comment on individual cells and we've also improved search functionality for cell content.

You can now edit your Whimsical Docs on mobile phones and tablets.

We've just released our Jira integration so you can easily add your Whimsical boards to Jira issues.

We’ve made it easier for your to browse through our templates so you can view, discover and choose templates that work for you and your needs!

Say hi to your new sidebar and better workspace organization with teams.

Right-click on any object on the board to copy it as an image. Magic!

You can now set any object as the board thumbnail by right-clicking on it and selecting "Set as Board Thumbnail".

Preview your Whimsical files in Slack by just pasting their URLs.

We've added three different connector modes so you can have more consistency over their appearance and style across the board.

Get ready to have your mAInd blown - try out AI-assisted mind mapping.

Deleting a section will no longer delete its contents and the contents will remain in your board.

Workspace viewers can now request editor access to create and edit files.

If you believe somebody is using Whimsical to spread malicious, fraudulent, harmful, or suspicious content, please report it to us. You can report it using the help menu.