Getting started

Scissor opens in a browser tab. There is no account to make and nothing to install before you begin: the drawing engine is compiled to WebAssembly and runs on your own machine, so your artwork is never uploaded anywhere. On your first visit a bar at the foot of the window asks whether Scissor may count visits with Google Analytics; declining loads no analytics at all, and you can change your mind later under Help > Privacy Settings….

Shortcuts below are written in the macOS form. On Windows and Linux, read ⌘ as Ctrl and ⌥ as Alt; ⇧ is Shift.

What you see

Across the top sit the menu bar and, beneath it, the Control bar, which changes with what you have selected and holds fill, stroke, weight, opacity and the X, Y, W and H of the selection. The tools run down the left edge; the panel dock is on the right. Between them is the canvas, with a tab for each open document above it and a status bar below showing the zoom level, the active board, the current tool and the name of the last undoable step.

With no document open, the canvas shows a start screen with New Document… and Open…; double-clicking anywhere on it opens a file. Press Tab to hide the panels and give the artwork the full window, and again to bring them back. Hold the space bar at any time to pan.

Making your first document

Choose File > New… (⌥⌘N). The dialog groups blank presets under Print, Web, Mobile, Film & Video and Art & Illustration; click a card to load its size, or double-click it to create the document at once. On the right you can set the document name, width and height, the units, and portrait or landscape orientation. Boards, Columns and Spacing lay out more than one board in a grid. Under Bleed, the link button keeps all four sides equal; switch it off to set them separately. Advanced holds the colour mode (RGB or CMYK) and the resolution used by raster effects. Enter creates the document, Esc closes the dialog.

Drawing a first shape

Press M for the Rectangle tool or L for the Ellipse tool and drag on the canvas. Hold ⇧ while dragging to keep the shape square or circular, and ⌥ to draw out from the centre rather than from the corner. A single click instead of a drag opens a small dialog, so you can type an exact width and height. With the Polygon or Star tool, the up and down arrow keys change the number of sides or points as you drag.

The fill and stroke swatches sit at the foot of the toolbar. X moves the focus between them, ⇧X swaps the two colours, D returns to the default white fill and black stroke, and / sets the focused one to none. Press V for the Selection tool to move and resize what you have drawn.

Saving

Scissor documents are .cut files. File > Save (⌘S) asks once where the file should go and, in browsers that support direct file access, writes back to that same file every time after. Browsers without it save the document to your downloads folder instead. Save As… is ⇧⌘S and Save a Copy… is ⌥⌘S. To hand work to another program, use File > Export.

While a document has unsaved changes Scissor keeps a copy in the browser's own storage every few seconds, and again whenever the tab is hidden or closed. If the tab goes away before you save, your next visit offers the work back with a Recover notice.

Installing Scissor

Choose Help > Install Scissor… to install it as an application. It then opens in its own window without browser chrome, works offline, and can be set as the program that opens .cut files. If your browser does not offer the prompt, use its own install option in the address bar or menu.