Settings

General

When using Vectornator on your Mac, you can customize your workspace in the Preferences menu. You can change the settings like your App Theme or how layers work in your version of Vectornator. You can find these options by clicking the Vectornator dropdown menu in the top-left corner of the menu bar or by pressing ~key~⌘ ,~key~.

Here, you can change the:

1. Appearance. This feature gives you the option to choose Vectornator's UI Theme: Dark, Light, or System-based.
2. Canvas. This feature lets you decide where you want a new element to be placed.

You can also customize the Appearance by going to the System Preferences > General and changing the Theme. This will give you the opportunity to change the highlight color for the buttons inside Vectornator and the color of the node selection handles.

In Vectornator for macOS, the other Settings Options are distributed along the Mac Menu Bar.

If you're familiar with our iOS App, and wondering how to quickly access to all your settings like with Quick Settings on your iPad, you will find them in the Top Toolbar on macOS. Items can be added with the native macOS behavior by going to View > Customize Toolbar. To hide the Top Toolbar panel, click Hide Toolbar.

Storage Options

You can save documents in Vectornator by going to File > Save or pressing <key>⌘S<key>. Then, select the location where you want your file to be saved.

Document History

When you save a document or new changes you've made, your changes will automatically be saved in the Document History. You can choose between two options to change the Undo & Redo behavior which you can always change by going to File > Storage options.

• Default is the right option if you want to have access to your document history even after you have closed your document.
• Optimized allows you to reduce the file size by limiting your document's history to per-session.

⚠️ When switching from Default to Optimized, an alert will appear, explaining what this means.

Localizing Documents

You can localize all your Vectornator documents from the Vectornator Gallery. To do so, simply right-click on a document to immediately locate it.

Document Settings

The View menu inside the Menu Bar allows you to set all related-documents options, including:

1 – Interface-related options when working with multiple documents opened

2 – Zooming options

3 – Interface-related controls

4 – the Units of your document

5 – show/hide elements as Rulers, Guides, Dimensions

6 – Grid options

7 – special display options such as Isolate Active Layer, Outline Mode, and setting the Background color to white and Previewing it in CMYK Space.

8 – Snapping options

9 – other Interface-related options such as Customize Toolbar and Enter Full Screen mode.

Document Units

To change the unit format of your document, navigate to the Menu Bar > View > Units. Here you can choose from: Points, Picas, Inches, Millimeters, Centimeters, or Pixels.

Isolate Active Layer

This feature comes in handy if you work with a lot of layers. While active, the AI will automatically focus on the Layer that you’re working on, and all the elements on other layers will be grayed out. When the Isolate Active Layer switch is enabled, only the paths placed in the active layer can be edited.

Outline Mode

This feature will show your document elements as wireframe outlines without any color or texture. You can activate it by going to View > Outline Mode.

Outline Mode is like an X-ray mode for your document, and it's usually used for checking complex designs. Viewing artworks without colors attributes speeds up the time it takes to redraw the screen.

White Background

The background in Vectornator is set to white by default but you can always de-activate it by going to the View > White Background. Once off, your Artboard background will display the typical white-grey grid that indicates a transparent background.

When exporting your project as a .PNG or any other editable format, keep in mind that the white background will not appear if you turn this feature off.

CMYK Preview

Although Vectornator does not yet support the CMYK Color Space, you have the possibility to preview your artwork in CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black). You can switch on the CMYK Preview Mode by going to the View > CMYK Preview. This feature comes in handy especially if you want to later print your artworks created in Vectornator.

Learn more – A Walkthrough of Color Theory and Concepts ->

Using Grids

The Vectornator Mac App supports two types of grids: the classic Perpendicular Square Grid, and the triangle-based Isometric Grid.

When a grid is enabled, it will display on top of your canvas, over your elements. To activate it, go over to the Menu Bar >View > Show Grid (1).

⚠️ You can only apply grids to Artboards in Vectornator, and they can be different for each board.

Perpendicular Grid

To set up a perpendicular square grid, choose View > Grid Settings and then select Perpendicular (1). To change its settings as the spacing between the cells, simply type a number inside the Spacing box.

Learn More – When working with grids, it might be useful to snap your vector paths to the grid. Activate the Snap to Grid from the Menu Bar > View.

Isometric Grid

To set up an isometric grid on the Vectornator Mac App, choose View > Grid Settings. In the pop-up window select Isometric (2). Here, you can adjust the distance (A) between your grid lines, as well as their angle (B).

A so-called “true isometric grid” has a 30 degree angle, but you can set up a different Isometric grid with a 45 degree angle to draw a shape with a different aesthetic.

Video Recap | Isometric Grids on Mac

You can create an Isometric Illustration or Design by using a technique called Isometric Projections. With this method, you can visualize any 3D object on a 2D surface. In this video we’ll be learning about the Isometric Grid and how you can generate one in Vectornator.

Learn More – How to create a beautiful 3d composition ->

Changing Language on Mac

To change the app Language, navigate to System Preferences > Languages & Region. Then switch to the Apps Window, and click the <key>+<key> to add Vectornator. Here you can choose from the 14 supported languages, independently from the language you set on your Mac.

Notifications

We send Push Notifications for update announcements, video tutorials and articles, features highlights, and achievements. You can enable or disable them by going to System Preferences > Notifications. Then select the Vectornator App and apply changes.