The app is available exclusively through the Mac App Store and the Microsoft Store. The two stores handle testing differently.

Unfortunately, the Mac App Store↗ doesn't offer a way to test one-time purchase apps for the macOS version. Some developers work around this by offering their app for free and dividing the features into free, time-limited, and unlimited with in-app purchases. Square Sketch, however, is intended to be a classic app where the costs are fixed upon download and whose interface is free of any indications of potentially paid features during use.

Occasionally, there are beta tests for the macOS version available through TestFlight, which you’re welcome to join. According to the TestFlight Terms of Service, these beta tests are primarily intended to provide feedback to the developer, not to serve as a basis for making a purchase decision.

The Microsoft Store↗ offers the option to test the Windows version of the app for 30 days.

For optimal integration into the respective operating system, the native development tools and app stores of Apple and Microsoft are used. Unfortunately, there is no way to share licenses between the Mac App Store and the Microsoft Store.

Since Apple uses Swift and Microsoft uses C#, different native programming languages, development effort increases because there is no shared source code. The advantage is that the platform can be better supported and its potential fully utilized. macOS users, in particular, place great value on a fully native app.

If you wish to use the app on both platforms, please consider purchasing a separate license from the Mac App Store and the Microsoft Store. This will support the additional development effort required for optimal operating system integration.

Drawing apps with pen support closely resemble drawing and writing on paper, allowing for freehand shapes and handwritten text. This is ideal for personal drawings.

However, Square Sketch is designed for publishing drawings with precise geometric shapes and typed text. A mouse and keyboard are ideal for this. Other functions also benefit from having one hand on the keyboard at all times.

However, it would be conceivable that there would be an iPad version to supplement this if you mainly want to view drawings and only edit them to a limited extent.

Since the development effort is very high in relation to the benefit, there are currently no concrete plans for implementation.

A Linux version would have the advantage that, together with the macOS and Windows versions, all major desktop operating systems would be covered.

However, porting is complex, as previous versions rely on native frameworks for optimal platform integration.

At the moment there are no concrete plans for implementation.

The font size can be set separately for the drawing area, export, and printing. However, a drawing cannot contain multiple different font sizes simultaneously, for several reasons.

Minimal styling: The app is optimized for sketching ideas, focusing on simply capturing the content rather than its styling. In this context, numerous styling options can even be perceived as distracting. Instead of using variable font sizes, you can emphasize headings using other available options. For example, you can make them bold, highlighted, underline them with the drawing tool, or add a border.

Analogy to graph paper: Even on classic graph paper, headings are often underlined instead of being written larger. The main reason for this is likely writing speed, but the underlying idea is similar: headings shouldn't necessarily be emphasized solely through size.

Stroke width: In traditional drawing and writing on paper, the stroke width for geometric shapes and handwriting is identical because the same pen is used for both. The app replicates this by making the stroke width for geometric shapes approximately the same as that of the font. With a variable font size, the app would no longer be able to consistently maintain this, as the stroke width increases when the font size is enlarged.

Headings outside: If the drawing is inserted into a document that itself uses larger headings, the drawing should only use the normal font size anyway. To ensure consistent font sizes between the document and the drawing, the font and size can be specified in the export settings.

Colors can be set separately for the drawing area, export, and print. However, a drawing cannot contain more than two different pen colors at the same time, for several reasons.

Minimal styling: The app is optimized for sketching ideas, focusing on simply capturing the content rather than its styling. In this context, numerous styling options can even be perceived as distracting. Instead of using multiple colors, you can differentiate objects using other available options. For example, you can make strokes bold or dashed.

Analogy to graph paper: Even on classic graph paper, often only one pen is used. Sometimes a second pen of a different color is used to highlight certain parts.

Traditional media: For many traditional media, such as books or blueprints, this second color was unavailable for technical or economic reasons. Nevertheless, it was possible to visualize almost anything.

General recommendation: Even though there's no limit to the number of colors, it's often recommended to use no more than two. For example, professional drawings in digital media often contain no more than two colors. Too many colors can quickly become distracting without adding any value.

Customizability: The app doesn't use physical color values for drawing. This allows colors to be set separately for light and dark modes, as well as for export and printing. Adjusting colors manually would become impractical with a large number of colors.

Two stroke widths are offered, for several reasons.

Minimal styling: The app is optimized for sketching ideas, focusing on simply capturing the content rather than its styling. In this context, numerous styling options can even be perceived as distracting. Instead of using multiple stroke widths, you can differentiate objects using other available options. For example, you can highlight lines with a different color or make them dashed.

Analogy to graph paper: On classic graph paper, often only one pen and therefore one stroke width is used. If a stroke is to appear bold, sometimes several strokes are drawn or written over it. In technical drawings, dimension lines are often drawn thinner. In that case, however, paper without a grid is usually used, as otherwise the distinction between the grid and the thin line can be difficult.

Font stroke width: In traditional drawing and writing on paper, the stroke width for geometric shapes and handwriting is identical because the same pen is used for both. The app replicates this by making the stroke width for geometric shapes approximately the same as that of the font. Since most fonts only support two stroke widths (regular and bold), the app also offers two widths.

Dotted lines are not supported for several reasons.

Minimal styling: The app is optimized for sketching ideas, focusing on simply capturing the content rather than its styling. In this context, numerous styling options can even be perceived as distracting.

Distinctiveness: The smaller the zoom level, the more difficult it becomes to distinguish between a dashed and a dotted line. Instead, you can, for example, highlight it with a different color or make it bold.

Analogy to graph paper: Dotted lines are rarely used on classic graph paper, mainly because of the effort involved. Furthermore, when using ballpoint pens, rolling the pen is necessary.

On traditional paper, hatching is a simple way to suggest a surface with a pen without having to laboriously fill it in. On early plotters, it was often the only practical method for representing filled areas.

In digital sketches, by contrast, an area can easily be filled completely, which often results in a calmer and more harmonious appearance. For this reason, it was not an easy decision whether the app should support hatching at all in keeping with its minimalist design principles. However, since hatching is a characteristic and defining element of sketching, it was ultimately included as a fill style.

Different hatching styles are not planned, as additional styling options would contradict the app's design philosophy. In technical drawings, two different hatch patterns are often used to distinguish adjacent areas. In the app, this can instead be achieved by using two different fill styles (hatched and translucent) or colors (normal and highlighted).

The app replicates drawing with pen and paper, with a ruler and compass available as tools. The advantage is that arbitrarily complex geometric shapes can be constructed using only these, without having to use a large number of different tools. In addition to its simplicity, the app also follows this principle because drawing lines and circles can be well represented through pointer gestures.

As with pen and paper, a rectangle is therefore composed of four lines. Rounded corners are also constructed individually. If the rectangle is needed multiple times, it can be duplicated using copy & paste. It may also be useful to store frequently used shapes in a separate drawing for later reuse.

Unlike CAD software, which is designed for scaled technical drawings, Square Sketch is primarily intended for non-scaled sketches.

A sketch should primarily represent the idea, such as the number, arrangement, rough proportions, and labeling of the parts of an object. A sketch is not limited to objects, but can also include diagrams, for example.

Square Sketch does not use physical units of measurement when drawing. Instead, lengths are based on the number of grid squares. However, if you wish, you can mentally assign a specific physical size to a grid square and thus emulate drawing to scale. When exporting or printing, the physical size of a grid square can also be set.

This question is closely related to the previous question about drawing to scale and the difference between technical drawings and sketches.

Unlike technical drawings, which are to scale, sketches usually have no exact relationship between the depicted and the intended size. The size of the drawing is guided more by the coarse grid and the space needed for labeling. The intended size can then be indicated in the label.

Since the app is designed for sketches, it relies on manually drawn dimension lines with manual labeling.

The app's basic principle is that it uses a single font size and a grid-based manual layout for everything. This allows even arbitrarily complex mathematical formulas to be implemented directly, without having to learn and use a special formula layout system.

Analogy to a typewriter: The principle is similar to how drafts of scientific papers were often submitted a few decades ago. Formulas were frequently typed on a typewriter, and fraction bars or radical symbols, for example, were added later with a pen. To superscript exponents, for instance, the typewriter platen could be turned back half a line.

Support features: To assist with this, Square Sketch offers a monospace layout where each character is exactly half a grid square wide. This facilitates combining monospaces with larger symbols added using the draw tool or via copy/paste. The grid is divided into half-squares when zooming in, allowing, for example, exponents to be moved up half a line. When laying out formulas, it's helpful to lock the alignment while creating text by long-pressing the arrow keys and the monospace layout by long-pressing space.

During export, only features from the standard SVG 1.1 (Second Edition)↗ are used. Although this specification dates back to 2011 and was therefore published a long time ago, sometimes not all of its features are supported by other software during import.

All current browsers and Inkscape↗, for example, offer very good SVG support. If you have problems importing a drawing, you could test the correctness of the SVG data with such free software.

If you don't necessarily need the drawing in a vector format, you can also select the PNG format (default) in the export settings, which is usually better supported by other software.

Text creation should be as simple as possible, since sketches often contain many labels. Therefore, you can click anywhere and then start writing.

As expected, a single click deselects everything in this implementation, but it also sets the cursor. This corresponds to the familiar behavior in a text editor. However, a text object is only created after the first character is typed. This prevents the unintentional creation of empty text objects.

To deselect all objects without placing the cursor, press Esc.

Double-clicking to create text is not used because it is a more complex operation and the action Set Cursor would then vary depending on the context: single click inside text and double click outside.

Yes, that would be a toggle behavior. However, if within a selection the styling option is applied to some objects and not to others, the behavior is no longer so clear. Many apps behave in this case in such a way that on the first press of the shortcut, the option is initially applied to all objects in the selection, bringing them to the same state. After that, the shortcut must be pressed again to ultimately remove the option. In larger sketches, it is often not immediately apparent whether a selection is in a mixed state, and the user would have to monitor the process step by step to avoid pressing the shortcut too few or too many times.

Square Sketch handles it so that the same shortcut together with Shift is used to remove a styling option. This has the advantage that it directly leads to the desired result in all cases. Removing an option can be done almost “blindly,” and the shortcut can also be pressed multiple times without the meaning switching back and forth between applying and removing the option.

The keyboard shortcuts for adding a fill or an arrowhead are designed so that, when pressed repeatedly, they increase the opacity of the fill in three levels or the number of arrowheads in two levels, respectively. It would be unintuitive if the fill or the arrowheads disappeared again after the highest level. The behavior is similar to working with pen and paper, where coloring in an area gradually increases the opacity and then reaches a limit, but does not become transparent again. It would also be impractical if, for example, to remove the lowest opacity level one first had to switch through the higher levels, thereby initially doing the opposite of removing.

Instead, the fill level can be reduced step by step using the delete tool, or removed immediately via selection and delete. For arrowheads, this function will be delivered with one of the next updates.