Any outline item can also carry one or more pages of handwritten ink, drawn with Apple Pencil (or finger) on iOS/iPadOS, or with the mouse/trackpad on Mac.
Adding Handwriting
Open the item's context menu (long-press on iOS, right-click on Mac) → Handwriting. This opens the handwriting editor for that item.
The Handwriting Editor
- iOS / iPadOS: draw directly with Apple Pencil or your finger using the standard PencilKit tool picker (pen, marker, eraser, colors).
- Mac: draw with the mouse or trackpad; a toolbar provides stroke width and color controls.
- Use Undo (Cmd+Z) to remove the last stroke — grouped the same way as text edits.
Multiple Pages
- Tap + in the editor toolbar to add a new page.
- Swipe between pages, or use the page bar of thumbnails to jump to a specific one.
- Drag a thumbnail in the page bar to reorder pages.
- Delete a page from its thumbnail's context/delete action (confirmation required).
Row Indicator
When an item has handwriting, a small hand-drawing icon appears at the trailing edge of its text (with a page count badge when there is more than one page). Tap the icon to reopen the editor. If the item has no text of its own, the row displays a placeholder title (e.g. "Handwriting — 3 pages") so it isn't blank.
Sharing and Syncing
Handwriting syncs via iCloud like the rest of your outline, and travels with a shared outline to collaborators. Deleting an item deletes its handwriting along with it.
Read-Only Outlines
On a read-only shared outline, the handwriting editor opens as a viewer: you can page through existing ink but cannot draw, add, reorder, or delete pages.