tldraw offline: a local whiteboard desktop app with no accounts and no server

What tldraw offline actually solves

Most whiteboard tools assume a server. You sign in, the document lives somewhere else, and the file on your disk is a cache or an export. tldraw offline inverts that. The README describes it as "a local whiteboard for you and your agents" and states that there are no accounts or servers and that the app works without an internet connection. Documents are saved as portable .tldraw files that the reader can keep private, back up, or share.

The audience is narrower than "anyone who draws diagrams". It is people who want the tldraw infinite canvas without a hosted workspace: engineers sketching a system on a laptop, teams that cannot put internal diagrams on a third-party service, and users who want a file they own and can move between machines. The second audience is less obvious. The app is designed to work with coding agents such as Codex, Claude Code, Pi and OpenCode, and an agent can inspect an open canvas, make changes, and create document scripts that add new behaviour to a file. That makes the canvas a target for automation, not just a drawing surface.

The trade-off is stated plainly in the README: tldraw offline is not open source, and all rights are reserved. There is no source to audit, no self-hosted build you can compile, and no licence that lets you fork the app. For a local-first tool aimed at people who care about where their data lives, that is a real tension worth naming before you install anything.

How the app is put together: windows, files and embedded scripts

The architecture visible from the README is file-centric. Each document opens in its own window, and the .tldraw format is described as the native and preferred format. A file contains the canvas, its pages and stored media, and any embedded document script. That last item is the interesting one: a script travels inside the file, and the README warns that scripts stored in a .tldraw file can run when the file is opened.

That single design decision explains most of the app's security posture. A .tldraw file is not inert data in the way a PNG is. Opening one can execute code that was placed there by whoever produced the file. The README does not downplay this. It says the agent integration is "powerful by design", notes that an agent with access to the app can read and edit your documents, and tells you to grant access only to agents you trust and to open files only from sources you trust.

The recovery model is separate from the file format. The app automatically keeps working copies of open documents and can restore unsaved work after an unexpected exit, but the README is explicit that recovery is not a replacement for saving and backing up your files. There is no server-side history, no version graph, and no merge layer. Legacy .tldr files can be opened and exported, but opening one imports it as a new, unsaved document and leaves the original file unchanged, which is a one-way import rather than a conversion in place.

Installing tldraw offline and opening your first file

The README points to two download routes: the project site at offline.tldraw.com and the latest GitHub release. Builds are listed per platform. macOS gets a universal DMG for Apple silicon and Intel. Windows gets an installer for x64 or Arm64. Linux gets an AppImage for x64 or Arm64 and a Debian package for x64. On macOS there is also a Homebrew cask:

brew install --cask tldraw

After installing, the README's getting-started sequence is four steps. Open the app and select New file. Draw, add text and media, or build a diagram on the canvas. Choose File then Save and pick a name and location. Reopen the document from the Home screen, the application menu, or your file browser.

The important part is step three. Until you save, the document has no path on disk, and the working copy the app keeps for crash recovery is not the same thing as a saved file. If you are evaluating the app, save immediately after the first stroke so you can inspect what a .tldraw file looks like on your filesystem.

Updates are handled by the app itself. The README states that the app checks for updates when it starts, and that you can also check manually from the application menu. There is no documented CLI upgrade path for the desktop app, so if you manage machines centrally, plan for the in-app check rather than a package manager.

The external-edit limitation is the one that bites

The README carries a warning that deserves more attention than a footnote. tldraw offline does not currently merge changes made to an open file by another program, a sync client, a Git operation, or another computer. The instruction is to close the document before replacing it externally, then reopen it.

This rules out a workflow that many engineers assume is available. You cannot keep a .tldraw file in a Dropbox, Syncthing or Git working tree and expect two machines to converge. You cannot have an agent edit the file on disk while the app has it open. The word "currently" leaves room for change, but as documented today, the safe pattern is single-writer: one person, one open window, one machine.

A second limitation is platform coverage. The README lists macOS, Windows and Linux builds only. There is no Android build and no iOS build in the table, which matters because search demand around an Android version is visible in the related-searches data even though the project does not offer one. If a phone or tablet is part of your workflow, this app is the wrong tool today.

A third is licence. Because the app is not open source, you cannot audit how document scripts are sandboxed, you cannot patch a security issue yourself, and you cannot ship a modified build inside your organisation. For a tool whose threat model includes running code embedded in files, that is a meaningful gap between what the app does and what a security-conscious user might want to verify independently.

tldraw offline versus Excalidraw

The comparison people reach for is Excalidraw, and the difference is not cosmetic. Excalidraw is an open-source drawing tool with a web app and a self-hostable option, and its files are typically exchanged as .excalidraw JSON or exported images. tldraw offline is a closed-source desktop application built on the tldraw canvas, and its native artifact is a .tldraw file that can embed executable document scripts.

The practical consequences run in both directions. With Excalidraw you can read the source, run your own deployment, and treat the file as data. With tldraw offline you get a native desktop app with no server dependency, per-document windows, crash recovery for unsaved work, and an agent surface where Codex, Claude Code, Pi or OpenCode can inspect and modify the open canvas. That agent integration has no direct equivalent in the Excalidraw description above; it is the feature that makes tldraw offline interesting to a different kind of user.

The choice is roughly this. If your requirement is an auditable, self-hostable, browser-first whiteboard that produces plain JSON, tldraw offline is not it. If your requirement is a desktop canvas that stays local, saves a portable file, and can be driven by a coding agent, the open-source alternative does not match the agent workflow as described. Neither is strictly better; they optimise for different constraints, and the licence boundary is the sharpest one.

Maintenance, releases and what the licence means for you

The repository is not archived, and the last push was on 2026-09-09, the same day as the v1.18.0 release. The two previous releases, v1.16.0 and v1.15.0, landed on 2026-09-02 and 2026-08-26 respectively, so the project has shipped three tagged releases in the weeks before that date. That cadence is the strongest signal available here about how actively the app is being worked on.

Upgrade cost is low by design. The app checks for updates when it starts, and you can trigger a check from the application menu, so there is no migration step to schedule. The risk sits with the file format rather than the binary. Because a .tldraw file can contain a document script, a file authored under one version may behave differently under another, and the README does not document a compatibility guarantee across versions. If you keep long-lived documents with embedded scripts, that is worth testing on a copy before you upgrade.

On licensing, the README is unambiguous: tldraw offline is not open source and all rights are reserved. That means no right to redistribute, modify or embed the app in your own product unless a separate agreement exists. It also means the usual open-source escape hatches are unavailable: no fork, no community patch, no independent audit of the agent and script execution paths. If your organisation has a policy against closed-source desktop tools handling internal data, this app fails that policy regardless of how local the storage is. This is a description of the stated licence, not legal advice; check with your own counsel before deploying it widely.

Editorial conclusion

Adopt tldraw offline if you want a whiteboard whose documents stay on your disk and whose file format is portable across macOS, Windows and Linux. Do not adopt it if you need a mobile client, live multi-user editing, or an open-source licence, because the README states the app is not open source and all rights are reserved. Before you commit, verify three things: that a build exists for your platform and CPU architecture, that your team accepts the agent model where a coding agent with app access can read and edit your documents, and that the external-edit limitation is workable, since the README says the app does not currently merge changes made to an open file by another program, sync client, Git operation or computer.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. Project website
3. README
4. Releases
5. tldraw/tldraw-offline on GitHub