
Draw.io: Online Diagramming Website - dan1234
https://github.com/jgraph/drawio
======
blakeburch
If you're looking for a fantastic diagramming site, I would recommend checking
out [Whimsical]([https://whimsical.com/](https://whimsical.com/)). I've tried
out a lot of solutions over the years (draw.io, LucidChart,Gliffy, etc.).
Whimsical is the first that really nails the UI/UX. You spend less time
fighting the system to make something that looks great and more time just
building out your diagram.

I'm not associated with the product at all, but it definitely needs more love
in the space.

~~~
andrei_says_
Love the interface and the fact that it's written in Clojure but it's worth
mentioning Whimsical is $10/month vs. draw.io being free forever, and the
Whimsical limited intro version is crippled in some quite annoying ways.

~~~
simas89
Just checked it out - it's incredibly stringent. It doesn't adjust your "free
board" limit even if you delete a board. Create a board, delete it just to try
out the interface? One of your free boards is gone forever.

Love the interface, hate the free plan.

~~~
andrei_says_
You can restore your deleted board, manually remove all content and reuse it —
but that’s them making it intentionally more painful than necessary.

So, draw.io it is.

------
MattConfluence
An incredibly useful tool. I started using it in university for coursework, I
used it to create figures for my master's thesis, and now I use it in my
industry job. I would give it the highest statement of praise you can give any
software: it just works.

------
jackschultz
Well no kidding. I used this a couple days ago with a coworker where we had to
make a quick diagram and didn't know what to use. I searched google, this came
up quickly, was able to get it on drive so he and I could each do work on it,
and then able to export to pdf pretty seamlessly. Figure if it shows up on HN
a few days after discovering and using it myself, I should write about the
positive experience.

------
bigwheeler
Without a doubt one of the most useful 100% free software tools a dev has at
their disposal.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Draw.io and Web Sequence Diagrams really improved my code documentation
because I actually want to use them.

Pretty rare for software imo.

~~~
reaperducer
WSD seems neat. I'd like to explore it further, but I'm not interested in
signing up for yet another account.

For me, the biggest advantage Draw.io has over many of its competitors is that
it can be self-hosted.

~~~
sverweij
If you like the text based ness of WSD, you might like
[https://mscgen.js.org](https://mscgen.js.org) \- which is 100% open source &
client side only.

------
mcntall
For those without MS Visio or other paid alternatives, Draw.io can pretty much
get you covered at zero cost, with the option of doing it client-side, online,
etc. Not sure if the founders have the option, but I would encourage folks to
donate a couple of bucks to encourage high quality free software such as this.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
I’ve found the draw.io experience to be so far above Visio that I just can’t
imagine going back. I put it up there with VLC and Handbrake as quality apps.

Even as a common dirty pirate; I donated to all of those.

~~~
mikepurvis
I'm a fan as well. My org ended up dropping our draw.io intergration in
Confluence in favour of Lucidchart; I'm still not really sure why as it
appears to be worse in functionality as well as slower and more tied to a
cloud backend.

~~~
thayne
In what ways is Lucidchart worse in functionality?

(disclaimer: employee of Lucid Software)

~~~
tverbeure
At some point, I actually paid for LucidChart for a year.

Last time I used it, before switching to draw.io, it became slow to the point
of being unusable once you had a few pages in a document. And I was making an
animation where each page showed the next step in a process, so there were a
lot of pages.

This was a couple of years ago, so things may have changed since.

My diagrams may have a bunch of elements on them, but I don't think I use any
advanced features (irrespective of whether it's Visio, LucidChart or draw.io).
From that perspective, these isn't much difference between any of these
programs, so there's just no reason to use a paid product.

~~~
thayne
> This was a couple of years ago, so things may have changed since.

Yes, Lucidchart's performance has improved in the past couple years. And we
now have resources dedicated to improving performance.

> From that perspective, these isn't much difference between any of these
> programs, so there's just no reason to use a paid product.

That's fair. I think Lucidchart's main advantage is more advanced
functionality. And if you don't need that functionality, why pay for it?

~~~
davidjgraph
You're allowed to describe that advanced functionality, I'm pretty curious,
myself.

~~~
10000100001010
Lucidchart is tiring complete :) we have a lot of data and automation
features, integrations, text based diagramming, advanced shape libraries,
dynamic shaped etc. Discoveravility of all the features can be lacking though
because there is so much stuff. I've worked on the product for years and I
still learn about new features all the time.

------
flanbiscuit
> draw.io is a client-side, static web application. There is no user
> authenication or data storage concept in this repo. The online version
> stores data in mainstream cloud storage options, currently Google Drive,
> OneDrive, Dropbox, Github, Gitlab or Trello.

I love this about Draw.io. This is how I want to build my applications. I
don't want to deal with storing any user data and rather let them handle it
how they see fit.

~~~
hanniabu
> mainstream cloud storage options, currently Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox,
> Github, Gitlab or Trello.

Anybody know of a library of service (preferably open source) that offers an
easy API to interact with all these in such a way?

~~~
breck
I would also love such a library. I currently follow the same pattern of
making web apps that only use local storage so I don’t have access to user
data, but would like to allow users to easily use their existing cloud
services for persistence.

~~~
narsil
Check out [https://kloudless.com](https://kloudless.com)! (Disclaimer: I'm a
co-founder)

Here's our open source file picker: [https://github.com/kloudless/file-
explorer/](https://github.com/kloudless/file-explorer/) (the server-side is
closed source and requires a paid subscription beyond a point)

------
criley2
I used to use Draw.io a lot more than I do now, and it is a wonderful tool,
the only reason I use it less now is because I've been using:

PlantUML ([http://plantuml.com/](http://plantuml.com/)) with demo at
([http://planttext.com](http://planttext.com)). Creating most diagrams through
a simple markup language that can be version controlled and rendered on demand
has been really nice for me, and sometimes I would spent SO MUCH TIME in
draw.io making sure my arrows were even, making the pixels line up, making
sure I used the right shape with the right font size, etc, that it was
liberating to just succinctly describe my data and have it automatically
render.

For more complex diagrams or to plan a diagram, I've also gone back to paper.
There really is nothing better than a notebook in front of you and a
collection of colored pens and stencils.

~~~
jessedhillon
Is there any way to change the rendering style? Or are you stuck with red and
yellow?

~~~
TuringTest
There's a styling engine[1], but appartently it's still in beta[2]

[1] [http://plantuml.com/en/skinparam](http://plantuml.com/en/skinparam)

[2] [http://plantuml.com/es/style-evolution](http://plantuml.com/es/style-
evolution)

------
kelseyr
I really like that you can export as PNGs and embed the diagram information
inside. Being able send around PNGs that everyone can view, but can still be
edited with draw.io makes sharing and updating much simpler.

~~~
nkrisc
This is really interesting, is this (or similar to) steganography? Poked
around the repo but haven't yet found where this is implemented (on either
end).

From a user perspective that sounds like a super useful feature, though
perhaps unexpected unless you were directly informed of it.

~~~
jgalentine007
I'm guessing you can just append arbitrary data to a png file since it has eof
markers in its file structure.

~~~
Liquid_Fire
PNG is structured in "chunks" of data of different types, and you can add your
own tool-specific types. IIRC there is even a way to indicate what other tools
should do with a chunk type they don't recognise (keep it untouched or throw
it away).

~~~
jgalentine007
I exported a draw.io png and they do encode the diagram information with
private data chunks.

------
Gravityloss
I've tried drawing diagrams with these tools and it seems so much harder for
quick drafting than just using pen and paper and also a lot of work to get
anything even remotely good looking (like aligning things or making boxes of
the same size, ie performing mass operations).

I would like to use a tool where I first describe the relations in text/code
and the layouting and formatting is done separately, and formatting should be
hierarchical.

~~~
gatherhunterer
> it seems so much harder for quick drafting than just using pen and paper

I don’t consider that a reasonable criticism. Of course using pen and paper is
quicker and easier. The advantage of any digital format is that it is
distributable, universally readable and persistent.

~~~
reaperducer
It's also possible to have both.

I have a "smart pen" that saves anything I write as a PDF on my phone that can
be searched and stored where I choose (including cloud services).

The downside is that you have to write on special paper or in special
notebooks. But it's not as terrible as it sounds because the notebooks are
very reasonably priced.

It also works as an actual pen.

~~~
ska
These are pretty useful as a note taking tool personally, and avoid scanning
etc. I've never converted over but have had colleagues use them exclusively.

PDF's are a terminal format though, and doesn't really meet the need of a
persistent, editable, graphic format for diagrams.

------
LeonM
Creating a tool like this requires significant resources, is there a business
model behind it?

~~~
davidjgraph
The core team has a 15 year contract with an Atlassian consulting firm to
produce and support the Confluence and Jira integrations with a revenue share
model. Last financial year that earned us $3.1M, up from $1.8M the year
before.

~~~
HillRat
Glad to hear that. Had an enterprise contract with you guys for years —
mxGraph was an important part of our front-end stack.

~~~
davidjgraph
Good choice :). We do still evolve the project as OS,
[https://github.com/jgraph/mxgraph](https://github.com/jgraph/mxgraph), since
it's the base of our stack.

------
tombert
I love draw.io. I work for one of the big brand-name tech companies, and still
routinely use draw.io for diagrams whenever I have to give presentations
(high-level, system architecture things mostly).

It's easy to get something that looks relatively pretty made relatively
quickly, and unlike something like Omnigraffle, it works on Linux.

------
TheHypnotist
I use Draw.io for work all the time. It's far less clunky than Vizio. My one
minor issue is, due to security restrictions, I can't really save a whole lot
outside of my local and it doesn't give me the option to choose my preferred
directory.

~~~
davidjgraph
Use desktop version [https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-
desktop/releases](https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-desktop/releases)

~~~
xiwenc
Thanks for pointing this out! Now I can draw.io offline :)

~~~
davidjgraph
Doesn't a footer pop up when you save locally on the online version telling
you about the desktop version?

~~~
irq-1
I saw "download" and clicked it thinking to download the diagram and closed
the webpage without looking at it. Maybe it's me, or it might need UX work.

Great website. (and I will be downloading the desktop client :)

------
jackdh
Huge fan of Draw.io, with Visio still missing Mac support it's been great for
cross machine architecture design.

~~~
brightball
OmniGraffle on the Mac is great. It's the only thing I've missed since
switching to Linux.

------
sandGorgon
Is it possible to add Monodraw
([https://monodraw.helftone.com/](https://monodraw.helftone.com/)) style text
art to this ?

I would pay for something that is browser only and generates really nice text
art for diagrams.

~~~
fouc
[http://asciiflow.com/](http://asciiflow.com/) maybe?

~~~
thanatropism
I've tried asciiflow a few times and monodraw seems so appealing in contrast.
But: Mac-only.

------
dang
Related from 2017:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15029989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15029989)

2013:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6464495](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6464495)

2012:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4947820](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4947820)

------
ssddanbrown
Draw.io is a great application. I integrated it into BookStack (Documentation
System) as a way for people to create and manage drawings in the platform. Was
much easier than I expected and David (davidjgraph) was very supportive.

~~~
davidjgraph
Productivity tools often do integrate draw.io, but often are just embedding.
Bookstack is one of the best integrations, the create and edit flow is exactly
how we intended it.

------
CivBase
Anyone have recommendations for a simple text-based flowchart specification
format? Something that a human can read and easily understand in plaintext,
but can also be rendered as a graphic?

The current solutions we have at my work are extremely difficult to use with
VCS.

I've looked at Mermaid [0], but it is pretty limiting in its feature set.

I typically use draw.io/mxGraph [1] when I'm making diagrams and flowcharts,
but the XML-based file format is pretty overwhelming for humans to read.

[0] [https://mermaidjs.github.io](https://mermaidjs.github.io)

[1] [https://github.com/jgraph/mxgraph](https://github.com/jgraph/mxgraph)

~~~
steve-s
GraphViz?

~~~
graphviz
What?

------
packetlost
draw.io got me through all of college. Easily one of my favorite applications
ever. Suck it visio!

------
Phillips126
We recently had management ask for some diagrams of our applications
infrastructure. Draw.io made that so easy with their pre-made components and
export to PDF. Will definitely use it again.

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
The pre-made components and user lib is huge.

I was at Amazon working on something - their own engineer was using draw.io to
quickly grab AWS icons for Lambda, IoT core, API Gateway etc and place them
into his flow chart.

He said they had a library somewhere of AWS artwork, but it was easier to just
use draw.io’s art lib.

------
rajesh-s
Long time draw.io user here. A couple of weeks back
[brainio]([https://brainio.com/#/](https://brainio.com/#/)) was posted on HN.
Though it's still in beta, it works really well and I like the concept of
going from Markdown to Mindmap and vice-versa.

Drawio is also trying to implement this through PlantUML but it's not fully
functional yet with only some constrained types on PlantUML support.

------
Phait
This has been my go-to software for making diagrams since I was an undergrad.
Absolutely stunning. I recommend their stand-alone version for offline editing
as well.

------
sizzzzlerz
Just 10 minutes of playing around with it and I'm hooked. What a great tool.
Much easier that having to deal with Visio. And, it's cross-platform!

------
KhoomeiK
I use this all the time for basic schematics, especially hackathon projects to
explain app architecture to newcomers. Never new it was open source!

------
freeman478
It is a great tool !

Only issue with it is that the source code (of the front-end) is quite hairy
to understand and modify. I tried to add support for Github Enterprise
([https://github.com/jgraph/drawio/issues/473](https://github.com/jgraph/drawio/issues/473))
and was quite lost.

~~~
davidjgraph
It's a reasonable critism. The base of the stack is a proper dev library. The
top part evolved from an example to that library and didn't get the same
refactoring love to make it accessible to other devs.

Main problem from our end on your issue is we don't have access to a Github
enterprise instance to test anything.

------
goffi
It's a really nice software, great tool, thanks to people behind it!

I'm wondering about the licenses of icons, clipart or other shapes that are
available for the diagrams. There are a lot of shapes, are they all usable
without counterpart in any document (private or public)? If not, is there a
way to check the licenses of the shapes we want to use?

~~~
davidjgraph
For all the icons built into the app we've performed due diligence that the
source allows them to go into the app and allows publishing in any format, or
we built them internally from scratch. And yes, we need to publish the audit
trail for that, it's on my todo.

------
j1elo
After looking for good tools in this space, to create documentation diagrams,
I stayed with Draw.io and yEd[1].

The latter has a pretty cool feature that re-arranges all objects according to
some predefined layout. Quite neat.

[1]:
[https://www.yworks.com/products/yed](https://www.yworks.com/products/yed)

------
wuliwong
I couldn't tell, why was this trending today? I didn't realize this was open
source, I too am a draw.io user. :)

------
jchw
I had no idea draw.io was open source, is this new?

Good stuff either way. I always thought it was amazing that it was free.

------
sylens
Used this tool for a while until my org finally decided to pay for Lucidchart

------
kylecazar
Wow, this is a really slick experience on mobile. I've tried most tools in
this class and this might be the most responsive & snappy. Maybe because
everything is client-side.

------
ouid
When trying to create a new drawing, if I select the "not in my root folder"
option, it a) tries to log me in despite my already being logged in, and b)
fails anyway.

~~~
beernutz
I see the same issue. I can save to root folder only in google drive. Also i
am unable to open a file in google drive as it has the same "log in" dialog.

[https://www.screencast.com/t/g4wnSWLDtOLk](https://www.screencast.com/t/g4wnSWLDtOLk)

Clicking the "Sign in" button closes the dialog and reopens it. It does this
cycle twice, then shows this error pane:

[https://www.screencast.com/t/qmUhxSuU2T](https://www.screencast.com/t/qmUhxSuU2T)

~~~
davidjgraph
Pleas file an issue at
[https://github.com/jgraph/drawio/issues](https://github.com/jgraph/drawio/issues).
Can't recreate currently, but need more details.

------
somishere
I used draw.io a bit a few years ago, before running out of reasons between
jobs. Tried out a few paid alternatives recently before re-stumbling across
draw - connected it to my personal gdrive and uncovered a whole bunch of old
(very useful) diagramming - forget slick UIs, draw.io a remarkable balance of
simplicity, flexibility and function. And free! Someone mentioned handbrake
and vlc, would definitely agree with the comparison.

------
darkandbrooding
Just adding to the choir. This is a great tool. I prefer using open source
software when possible, but I also like to pay for the tools that makes my job
easier. The developer is aiming at corporate, volume licensing and I
understand how a Patreon account would run counter to their business strategy.
I wish there was a 'small dollar donations' channel, though. I like this tool
enough to throw them some regular money.

------
pixelbath
We use draw.io at work for embedding diagrams into our process wiki which
accepts basic HTML. It's great and allows us to update the drawings at any
time.

------
SkyTreasure
Just now my colleague was showing the flow chart in draw.io. I was impressed
by it and bookmarked the site and now it's trending here

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
The site is good. It’s one of the only online drawing programs that doesn’t
IMMEDIATELY get bogged down.

But... the offline tool is superior for speed and UX imo. That’s where it
really shines.

------
dd36
I used draw.io for a wiring diagram for my solar permit, as well as for a site
plan for a fence permit. Works great! Love it!

------
jjice
I was just using this today for an ER diagram for class with a group. Working
on a single document as a group works well, which has come up quite a few
times in my time at university. Draw.io offers everything I need (which isn't
very much) without being overly complicated.

------
justplay
I use it everytime i have to draw any flowchart. It is not good as lucidchart
but as it is free so i use it.

~~~
FunnyLookinHat
Same here! Ironically I think it's better than lucidchart because it's simpler
and let's me just get my ideas down more easily.

------
nefitty
Evernote, Google Sheets, VS Code, Draw.io. These are the apps that shape my
work and life the most.

------
yoran
Funny, I just used it this afternoon to create an diagram of our technical
infrastructure. Initially I was looking for the "Sign up" button so that I
could save my diagram in the cloud but then I realized that it's all run in
the browser. Love it!

------
voiper1
For web-design things, you can turn on Bootstrap in the "More shapes" on
bottom left.

------
protomyth
Does it allow boolean operations on shapes?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_operations_on_polygons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_operations_on_polygons)

------
krsdcbl
I've been using draw.io massively over the last years everywhere from
concepting & mindmapping up to integrating it directly into website editors
where needed - huge kudos to the authors, such a useful and well designed
tool.

------
tcrow
Been using draw.io for years and have turned many people at my work on to it.
Simple, elegant, and works a treat! Thank you so much for sharing this work
and for helping make the work day run a little smoother :)

------
ericrich
I've worked with draw.io (mxGraph) quite a bit over the years. Love it!

------
boyband6666
The draft of my (part time) PhD thesis uses draw.io to present a flowchart of
the findings - hopefully it makes the final cut next year.

Fascinating to hear the other uses, and thankyou for a wonderful and elegant
tool!

------
tralarpa
I used the javascript and java versions of mxGraph (jgraphx) in several
projects. Very powerful libraries with many features and many possibilities
for customization. Documentation sucked, though.

------
allenu
I use draw.io all the time. It's incredibly simple and that's what makes it
work so well. I can whip up a good architecture diagram in a few minutes using
it.

------
tempest-tost
I've used it as a lightweight alternative to LucidChart and was impressed.
Pretty cool to be able to just download it as html, in addition to as an
image.

------
a_c
A tremendous useful feature, well to me at least, is to let user specify graph
data structure with associating data and export the data after drawing is done

------
mips_avatar
Draw.io is a phenomenal program, easier to use for new users than visio. I had
everyone use it in my college's robotics team to draw system diagrams.

------
dep_b
Used it a lot. It's not perfect, but good enough.

------
Coxa
My dissertation would be half as pretty without it.

------
yug_blop
I can personally recommend precursor:

[https://precursorapp.com](https://precursorapp.com)

------
robodale
Been using Draw.io since early 2016. Love it. Love the integration with Google
Drive, as I live within that platform.

------
pknerd
Didn't know it was open source. I used it for various diagrams for my blog
posts. Thanks!

------
papln
I tried to save a Diagram to Google Drive, not in root folder:

"Error Maximum call stack size exceeded"

------
asicsp
probably not intended for this use case, but I use draw.io to create cover
image for my ebooks

------
aguilar
Also a good choice for fast easy prototyping and wireframing.

------
newprint
Ok, just a note to everyone ! It is online service and your diagrams are
stored in the "cloud" and you have zero control over it. Please, do not post
your company's secret in form of diagrams. Recently, we caught one of the
contractors using Draw.io to make diagrams of brand new systems that we are
designing(we are fortune 40 company). System is expensive, very sensitive.

~~~
topspin
> your diagrams are stored in the "cloud" and you have zero control over it

I made a diagram on Sunday and saved it to my local device without logging in;
nothing stored in the cloud. Just opened it again from my local storage and it
loaded into draw.io with no problem.

~~~
alderg
As David mentioned, check out the desktop app for local device storage at
[https://get.draw.io](https://get.draw.io)

