Apple released the Freeform app on Tuesday, describing it as “an infinite canvas” for “creative brainstorming and collaboration.” It’s a virtual whiteboard that you can share with your friends.
Apple announced Freeform earlier this year during its WWDC keynote, demonstrating the ability to add photos, files, drawings, links, notes, and more to a virtual canvas, either alone or with others. Of course, Freeform integrates with other Apple apps, and the app has buttons that allow you to start a conversation with other collaborators about what you’re working on via iMessage or FaceTime.
Freeform makes a good first impression. Changes are typically synced among devices and accounts in near real-time, including on cellular, which is critical for a collaboration-focused app. It can move images to the back layer so that handwritten text appears over the top of them, and it can add descriptive text to elements that VoiceOver reads aloud. Users can also paste and copy styles between textboxes or premade shapes, as well as lock items that they don’t want to move around accidentally.
Both macOS and iPadOS required the user to go into settings and manually enable iCloud syncing for Freeform. It also took some time for the app to appear on the iPhone after it was updated; it had to be launched through the App Store several times before it appeared in the App Library or Spotlight. That’s not to say we recommend the Freeform experience on the iPhone; it’s clearly designed for big-screen devices, though the handheld version will probably suffice in a pinch.
Users also managed to get their devices out of sync, which took them a moment to sort out, and the collaboration features occasionally told me that no one else had been viewing the board, even though someone had. Apple claims it is possible to have a maximum of 100 users on the same board at the same time. It’s presumably too early to tell if Freeform will emerge as a necessary part of workflows.
