The canvas where everything lives
A board holds images, video, documents, links and your own notes — arranged however you think, not filed into folders. This walks through what a board can hold, how to shape it, and why the shaping matters.
- 1
Start with an empty canvas
A board is an infinite space, not a folder. Nothing has to be named, sorted or filed before you put it down — you drop things in and arrange them later, the way you would on a wall.
This is the difference that trips people up coming from Drive or Dropbox. A board has no correct structure. It has the structure you give it.
- 2
Put almost anything on it
Images and photography, video and audio, documents and PDFs, notes written straight onto the canvas, and links that come in as live previews rather than bare URLs.
- 3
Get material in, three ways
Drag files straight from your desktop onto the canvas. Paste a link and Wovea fetches the image, the video or a preview of the page. Or clip from any page on the web with the Harness browser extension.
If GPS is missing from an iPhone photo, that's iOS stripping it on export, not Wovea — the Quick answers below explain which upload routes keep it.
- 4
Let video sort itself out
Drop a video file on and keep working. It uploads and transcodes in the background, showing a placeholder until it's ready, then becomes a real player you can scrub.
- 5
Group what belongs together
When a cluster starts to mean something, group it into a collection and name it. A collection is a way of grouping, not a folder you have to file into — a card can sit loose on the canvas indefinitely.
- 6
Choose how a collection reads
Each collection picks its own layout: Grid for fast scanning, Stream for a single column, Masonry to pack mixed aspect ratios tightly, Carousel to step through in order.
- 7
Say what each thing is
Tag a card with a type — Theme, Character, Research, Tension and more — each carrying its own colour and glyph. Types are what let you see the shape of a board at a glance instead of reading every card.
- 8
Draw the connections
Link two cards and name the relationship: this one supports that one, this one contradicts it, this one leads to the next. Connections are the part people skip and the part that pays off most.
They're also what the AI reads to understand the argument a board is making, rather than just an inventory of what's on it.
- 9
Switch the vocabulary to your work
A board runs in a mode that renames everything to fit what you're making. Story mode speaks in Themes, Characters and Scenes; Campaign mode in Key messages and Audiences. Same board, language that matches the job.
- 10
See it two ways
Spatial is the default — a free-form canvas where you place cards anywhere and draw connections. Organized lays the same board out as a tidy grid of collections. It's one board; the toggle only changes how you look at it.
- 11
Start from someone else's
The Gallery is a curated set of public example boards. Find one close to what you're making and add it to your workspace — the files are referenced rather than copied, so it costs nothing against your storage.
The Gallery lives inside the app, so you'll need to be signed in to browse it.
- 12
Know it's backed up
Every board is backed up automatically overnight, and you can trigger a manual backup any time from the board's settings. If something goes wrong, restore from a backup rather than rebuilding.
Where to go from here
Quick answers
All questions →A Brain Board is an infinite canvas for everything that feeds a project. Pin images, clips, documents and notes, then drag, group and connect them the way your mind actually works — not in rigid folders.
Almost anything visual or textual:
- Images and photography
- Video and audio clips
- Documents and PDFs
- Notes written right on the canvas
- Links that embed as live previews
Every card can be tagged with a type — Theme, Character, Research, Tension and more — each with its own color and glyph. Draw a connection between two cards and give it a relation (supports, contradicts, leads to, depends on…). The line style encodes the meaning, so the graph stays readable at a glance.
A board runs in a mode that renames the whole vocabulary to fit your work. Story mode speaks in Themes, Characters and Scenes; Campaign mode in Key messages, Personas and Content pieces; Custom lets you define your own. Modes only change the labels and the AI's language — your cards and colors stay put.
Group cards into a collection, then choose how it lays its members out: Grid for fast scanning, Stream for a single column, Masonry to pack mixed ratios tight, or Carousel for a horizontal ribbon. The choice follows the collection wherever it appears.
If you uploaded an iPhone photo and its location didn't come through, that's Apple, not Wovea — iOS strips GPS from photos shared as JPEG through a browser's file picker. It's a privacy default on the phone, so the coordinates are gone before the file ever reaches us.
To keep location data on your photos, upload them one of these ways:
- Upload the original HEIC from your iPhone — iOS keeps GPS on HEIC files. Don't export or convert to JPEG first.
- Upload from a Mac — AirDrop the photo to your Mac, then upload from the browser there. Full EXIF, including GPS, is preserved.
- Download from iCloud.com on a desktop browser, then upload — the original GPS is included.
- Download from Google Photos (photos.google.com) on desktop, then upload — GPS is included.
Once a photo arrives with its GPS intact, Wovea shows the location on the asset and uses it to write better titles and tags.
A board can be viewed two ways. Spatial is the default — a free-form canvas where you position cards anywhere and draw connections between them, the way your thinking actually branches. Organized lays the same cards out in a tidy grid, sorted into collections, for a quick scan or a simpler read. Switch between them any time from the toggle on the board; it's the same content underneath, just arranged differently.
Yes. Drop a video file onto a board and Wovea uploads and processes it in the background — you'll see a placeholder while it transcodes, then a full player once it's ready. You can trim a clip down to a snippet in the built-in editor, and ask AI to write a title and summary straight from the video's own transcript.
The Gallery is a curated set of public example boards you can browse for inspiration. Find one that fits what you're making and add it to your own workspace in one click — it copies in as a reference at no storage cost to you, so you can study or remix it freely.
Yes. Every board is backed up automatically overnight, and you can trigger a manual backup any time from the board's settings. If something goes wrong, you can restore a board from any past backup from the same place.
Put ten photos on a canvas
It's free to start, and the fastest way to understand any of this is to drop a handful of references down and start moving them around.
Start a boardLast updated August 2026 · Gather, shape, publish.