Playing

Boards with a playable animation show playback controls in the Player and in the editor's Player mode. Boards without one show only the navigation controls.

With the playback controls you can:

• Play continuously: run the animation from start to end, like a video. See Continuous playback.
• Step through pause markers: stop at each pause marker and wait until you continue. See Step-by-step playback.
• Adjust the session: seek to any time, change the playback speed, loop the animation, or toggle camera follow. Any changes you make in these controls last until the Player closes; the next session starts from the board's saved Player settings, which also choose the sequence and playback range.

Playback controls

The Player groups its controls into three areas:

1. Navigation controls: Camera follow, Zoom to fit, Fullscreen, and How to use the Player.
2. Playback controls: the seek bar, playback buttons, speed, loop, and presentation mode.
3. Zoom and minimap: the current zoom and the minimap, when Minimap is on in Player settings.

How the controls appear depends on the screen and playback state:

• Small screens: hide the zoom and minimap area, and show Zoom to fit only in fullscreen.
• During playback: the controls fade out after a moment, leaving a thin progress line along the bottom. Move the pointer or tap the board to show them again.

Continuous playback

In continuous playback, the bottom bar shows:

• Play and Pause: start and stop the animation.
• Seek to start and Seek to end: jump to either end of the playback range.
• Time readout: on large screens, shows the current time and the range's end time beside the playback buttons.
• Pauses during continuous playback: pause markers count toward the total time and the progress bar; playback holds for each marker's duration and then continues automatically. Block pauses hold only their own blocks.

Step-by-step playback

Pause markers divide an animation into steps (unlike block pauses, which only hold individual blocks). When the selected sequence has no pause markers, playback is always continuous.

When the selected sequence has pause markers, playback starts step by step unless Presentation mode is turned off in Player settings:

• Presentation mode: switches between the two playback modes for the current session:
  • On: playback stops at each pause marker and waits for you to continue.
  • Off: playback runs continuously, holding for each pause marker's duration before continuing.
• Play to next pause: plays until the next pause marker and stops there, or plays to the end after the last marker. While the animation is playing, this button becomes Pause:
  • Double-click to skip ahead: jumps straight to the next pause marker without playing the animation in between.
• Seek to previous pause: jumps back to the previous pause marker, or to the start of the range before the first marker.

Playback from the board

You can also start and stop playback directly from the board:

• Click empty board space: clicking outside interactive shapes triggers the main playback action (Play or Pause in continuous playback, Play to next pause or Pause in step-by-step playback). A play or pause icon appears briefly in the center to confirm the change.
• While you interact with a shape: the first click outside it only ends the interaction. Click again to play or pause.
• On a touch screen: if the controls have faded out, the first tap brings them back; tap again to play or pause.

Seek bar

Drag along the seek bar above the playback buttons to jump to any time in the playback range:

• Fine adjustments: while dragging, move the pointer farther above or below the bar to scrub more slowly.
• While playing: playback continues immediately from the new time.

Playback speed

Choose Playback speed in the bottom bar (which displays the current multiplier, such as 1x) to change how fast the animation runs:

• Presets: pick a speed from 1x to 3x.
• Slider: drag to any speed between 0.1x and 3x.
• Decrease playback speed and Increase playback speed: step the speed down or up by 0.25x.
• Effect on pause markers: in continuous playback, speed also scales pause markers, so each marker holds for its duration divided by the playback speed.

Loop

Loop animation sets what happens when playback reaches the end of its range:

• On: playback restarts from the beginning of the range.
• Off: playback stops at the end.

Camera follow

Follow the animated camera during playback appears in the top-right navigation controls when the board has camera animation:

• On: the view follows the active camera's position, zoom, and camera switches, and dragging horizontally on the board scrubs the animation:
  • Skips uncovered gaps: playback runs only during the times covered by Active Camera blocks and skips any gaps between them. Seek to start, Seek to end, and Loop animation use those covered times too.
  • Zooming or panning while paused: frees the view so you can look around. Pressing Play or seeking to another time returns the view to the active camera at that time.
• Off: dragging on the board pans the view, even while the animation is playing, so you can explore the board freely.

Scrubbing the animation

Scrubbing lets you move forward and backward through the animation by dragging across the board when the board has an active camera and Camera follow is on:

• Drag horizontally: drag right to move forward in time or left to move backward, with the mouse or one finger. The pointer changes to a left-right arrow when dragging will scrub, and a hand when it will pan the view.
• Pauses playback: the animation pauses as soon as you start dragging and stays paused where you release.
• Follows the camera: the view tracks the animated camera's position and zoom as you scrub through time.
• Adapts to drag speed: drag slowly for fine adjustments; faster drags cover up to three times as much animation over the same distance.
• Stops at the range ends: scrubbing stops at the start and end of the Player's playback range.