Bento View
Bento view shows the Canvas you're on as a neat grid instead of a free-form board. Everything placed on the Canvas is laid out in rows — all the Cards in one row, all the Images in another, or one row per Group — so you can scan a busy Canvas at a glance. Switching views never moves anything: the free-form layout is still there when you switch back.
Switch views
In the top-left corner, next to Go Back / Go Forward, is a two-part switch:
- Canvas View (
⌘1) — the free-form Canvas. - Bento View (
⌘2) — the grid.
Each Canvas remembers its own view, so one Canvas can stay in Bento view while the rest stay free-form.
Bento view isn't offered on a Space's top Canvas, on the top of Daily Drafts or Archived, or on an empty Canvas (a Canvas with only Dividers counts as empty). The day Canvases inside Daily Drafts do have it.
What's in the grid
Bento view shows exactly what's placed on this Canvas — Cards, Images, Links, Sketches, Sparks, Tables and nested Canvases. Artifacts that live only in your Artifacts Gallery or on other Canvases don't appear. Connections and Dividers aren't shown.
Each tile is the real object, not a picture of it, at 90% size. You work with it as you would on the Canvas — open and edit a Card, play a Spark, double-click a nested Canvas to enter it, right-click for its menu.
Moving around
- Scroll up and down to move between rows.
- Scroll sideways (or
⇧+ wheel) inside a row to see more of it. A fade at the edge tells you there's more. ⌘FSearch & Replace still works: it scrolls the matching Card into view.
Arrange rows
The three switches at the top apply to Bento view on every Canvas.
| Switch | Options | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Rows | Type / Group | One row per kind of Artifact, or one row per Group on the Canvas. |
| Sort by | Updated / Created | Order tiles (and Group rows) by when the Artifact was last changed or first made. |
| Direction | Ascend / Descend | Oldest first or newest first. Newest first is the default. |
By Type
Rows appear in this order, each titled with its kind and a count: Card, Image, Link, Sketch, Spark, Table, Canvas (nested Canvases). Empty rows are hidden.
Some kinds matter more on some Canvases — on a reading Canvas, Links might matter more than Cards. To change the order for this Canvas only, click More (⋮) beside a row's title (or right-click the title) and choose Move Up or Move Down. Reset Order goes back to the default.
By Group
Each Group on the Canvas becomes a row, titled with its name. Objects that aren't in any Group go in No group, and nested Canvases outside Groups get their own row at the end.
- Double-click a Group row's name to rename it.
- Its More (⋮) menu has Rename, Move Up / Move Down / Reset Order, Chat with AI and Ungroup.
Pin tiles
Pinning puts what you use most where you'll see it first. You pin by dragging a tile a short way in one direction — a label appears beside the tile to tell you what will happen, and nothing changes until you've dragged far enough and let go.
| Drag | Action | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Left | Pin to front | The tile moves to the start of its row. |
| Right | Unpin | It goes back to its normal place in the row. |
| Up | Move to Pinned | The tile moves to the Pinned row at the very top. |
| Down | Remove from Pinned | It goes back to its own row. |
A tile pinned to the front of its row shows a pressed pin button in its header; click it to Unpin. Pinned tiles are still sorted among themselves by the sort you chose, not by when you pinned them.
Make a tile wider
Drag a tile's right edge to the right to make it span more cells, or to the left to shrink it. A dashed outline shows the size you'll get.
| Kind | Width |
|---|---|
| Card, Link, Image, Sketch | 1 or 2 cells |
| Table | 2 or 3 cells |
| Spark | Always 2 cells |
| Nested Canvas | Always 1 cell |
A two-cell Link shows its picture beside its text; a two-cell Image is cropped to the wider shape.
Pinning and resizing are part of the Canvas, so ⌘Z undoes them.
Things that work differently
- The zoom indicator shows 90% and can't be dragged, and the minimap is off — there's no free-form Canvas to zoom.
- You can't drag tiles around freely or draw selection boxes; for that, switch back to Canvas view (
⌘1).