Online Whiteboard made simple. That's what Excalidraw promotes its app as and it is true. Excalidraw is a great app to create and share diagrams for your next project.
I use it locally on my Mac and love its simplicity.
Excalidraw positions itself as a "simple online whiteboard," and its architecture reflects that philosophy. Built with React and TypeScript, Excalidraw provides a minimal, collaborative environment for diagramming—ideal for technical teams, architects, and anyone who needs to quickly visualize system designs, workflows, or data models.
As an open-source project, Excalidraw can be deployed locally, giving teams full control over data privacy and customization. Here’s how to set it up for local use:
Clone the repository
Execute git clone https://github.com/excalidraw/excalidraw.git to download the source code.
Install dependencies
Navigate to the project directory and run npm install to install all required Node.js packages.
Launch the development server
Start the app with npm start. By default, Excalidraw will be available at http://localhost:3000.
Begin diagramming and sharing
Use the web interface to create diagrams, export them in multiple formats.
Right out of the base installation, you can even use Mermaid (https://mermaid.js.org/) to use text to draw diagrams.
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