Excalidraw on a Mac: the desktop app, and a board on your desktop

Excalidraw doesn't make a Mac app. It had a desktop app once, and retired it on December 17, 2020. What it tells you to do instead is install excalidraw.com as a web app: it opens in its own window with an icon in your Dock, works offline, and opens .excalidraw files.

If what you really want is a whiteboard that's always on your Mac, sitting on the desktop and kept in a file there, that's a different thing, and the second half of this guide covers it.

We make Koi, so read this with that in mind. The Safari steps come from Apple's own guide, and the Excalidraw facts from Excalidraw's site, checked October 25, 2026.

On macOS Sonoma 14 or later, Safari turns any site into a web app (Apple's guide):

1. Open excalidraw.com in Safari.
2. Choose File, then Add to Dock. Or click the Share button and choose Add to Dock.
3. Name it Excalidraw and click Add.
4. It's saved in the Applications folder in your home folder, and opens from the Dock or Spotlight like any app.

It's still Excalidraw's website, in a window of its own. The web app's settings have a Privacy tab where you can clear the site's data, so don't: that's where your drawing is.

Excalidraw keeps the scene you're working on in the browser's own storage, not in a file. That's why it opens where you left off, and why a drawing can vanish: clear the site's data, use a different browser, or open it on another Mac, and it isn't there.

• Save a copy as a .excalidraw file from the menu, and keep it in a folder you back up.
• Export to PNG or SVG for slides and docs.

A web app is still a window you have to find. Koi 2.0 has a board that works like Excalidraw and lives on your wallpaper, under every window and on every Space, showing the board as you last left it. It's drawn by the Mac app itself, not a web page.

1. Open Koi 2.0. The board is on your desktop to begin with. If it isn't, turn on Settings, Notch & tools, Board on the desktop.
2. Clear your windows, or open a new Space. The board is there on the wallpaper.
3. Click it. It grows into a big window with the Mac's red, yellow and green buttons top left. The green one fills the screen.
4. Draw with Excalidraw's tools and letters: rectangle, diamond, ellipse, arrow, line, pen, text, plus sticky notes and frames.
5. Press Esc or ⌘W, or click the red or yellow button, and it folds back onto the desktop.
6. Hover it and click the ⋯ in its corner to make it small, medium or large, put it back in its corner, or hide it from the desktop.

You can also open it from the notch: hover Koi in the notch, then click Board.

• Each board is a file in Koi's data folder, saved a moment after each change. Pictures you put on it are copied beside it.
• It's never uploaded. Like any window, Koi's AI sees a board on screen when your screen goes with a question.
• A web link you put on it as a card is fetched once, straight from your Mac to that site, for its title and picture.
• Text to diagram sends what you typed, and Wireframe to code a picture of what you picked, to Koi's AI, only when you ask, and count against your plan's Koi usage. Mermaid to diagram runs on your Mac.
• Export as PNG, PDF or SVG, or copy as PNG, SVG or text.

What it doesn't do: draw with other people live, sync to another Mac, or run on an iPhone or iPad. It's one endless board, in English.

tldraw offline is worth knowing too: a free desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux, launched July 16, 2026, that needs no account and saves .tldraw files where you pick (tldraw's post).

Excalidraw and tldraw offline are free. Koi has no free plan or free trial: Pro is $20 a month, or $7 for a first week, and Lifetime is paid once. The board comes with dictation, call recording and an assistant in the same app. See the plans, or compare more boards in the best whiteboard apps for Mac and Excalidraw alternatives.