Excalidraw-Desktop

excalidraw-desktop-demo.mp4

Excalidraw as a standalone binary:

• offline
• command-line argument support
• image and file export shortcuts

Note

This prototype mainly exists because the Excalidraw-PWA does not integrate as well in my neovim workflow.

---

Usage

excalidraw <PATH>

Shortcuts

key	action
<A-w>	write file to path
<A-p>	write image to path
<A-a>	write image and file
<A-P>	switch image type
<A-m>	toggle darkmode

---

Installation

• clone this repo to your machine

Linux

npm run build
mv release/<VERSION>/excalidraw-Linux-0.0.0.AppImage ~/.local/bin/excalidraw
chmod u+x ~/.local/bin/excalidraw

Important

this requires you to have ~/.local/bin/excalidraw in your $PATH

NixOS

AppImage binaries are dynamically linked, so they don't work on Nix OOTB. Luckily there are these handy options for registering an interpreter to run them:

{
	programs.appimage = {
		enable = true;
		binfmt = true;
	};
}

For better integration you can also use the excalidraw-desktop.nix file

{ config, lib, pkgs, ... }:
{
    environment.systemPackages = [
        # adjust path as needed
        (pkgs.callPackage ./packages/excalidraw-desktop.nix {})
    ];
}

.desktop Entries

Example file (/home/user/.local/share/applications/excalidraw.desktop):

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Excalidraw
Comment=Whiteboarding App
Exec=/home/user/.local/bin/excalidraw
Icon=/home/user/.local/share/icons/excalidraw-icon.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
MimeType=text/json
Categories=Utility;

Setting and updating desktop entries with desktop-file-utils

desktop-file-validate ~/<FILE-LOCATION>/excalidraw.desktop
desktop-file-install --dir=~/.local/share/applications ~/<FILE-LOCATION>/excalidraw.desktop
update-desktop-database ~/.local/share/applications

Windows

Just kidding.

---

Integration

Neovim

My current keybinds:

-- usually [name](path) in markdown
-- open the next content in braces as a path in excalidraw
vim.keymap.set("n", "<leader>xo", function()
    vim.cmd("norm yib")
    local word = vim.fn.getreg('"')
    vim.fn.jobstart({'excalidraw',word})
end, { noremap = true, silent = true })

-- take a markdown link and convert the path to an svg image
vim.keymap.set("n", "<leader>xp", function()
    vim.cmd("norm Vy")
    local filename = string.match(vim.fn.getreg('"'),"^.+%.")
    vim.cmd("norm o!"..filename.."svg)")
end, { noremap = true, silent = true })

---

Development

Environment Variables

Key	Functionality
VITE_TESTING_FILE_PATH	Argument for path of file

PNPM Support

For the time we are stuck with npm. "Why no pnpm, electron?" JS-dev asked calmly