Desktop app

Whimsical evolved from a single-purpose flowcharting tool into a multi-document platform—docs, boards, diagrams, and more. But as people started creating different types of content, a new problem emerged: they needed to work across documents, not just create them in isolation.

Real workflows span multiple sources. You run a meeting with an agenda doc open alongside a brainstorm board. You draft specs while referencing diagrams. You plan projects by pulling from multiple files at once. But browser tabs make this painful—you lose spatial context when switching, can’t easily drag content between tabs, and constantly juggle mental overhead.

We needed split view to make it effortless to view and manipulate multiple documents simultaneously.

Working with engineering and product leadership, we built a desktop app for macOS and Windows. Split view was the first flagship feature that justified the investment.

Make it discoverable

The core challenge was making split view easy to find without overwhelming people. Not everyone needs splits constantly, so the interface needed to stay out of the way until you wanted it.

We designed multiple entry points that match different mental models. Dragging a tab into the workspace creates a split where you drop it—intuitive for spatial thinkers.

Embedded files display an “open in split view” action in their contextbars. This affordance makes the action apparent without requiring people to discover it through trial and error. Keyboard-dominant users can do this even faster by ⌥-clicking a link.

Contextual menus provide explicit control for people who prefer to explore options first.

The goal was to meet people where they are rather than forcing a single interaction pattern.

Make it flexible

Once you’re in a split, manipulating it needed to feel effortless. Panes resize dynamically by dragging the divider, letting you adjust proportions on the fly.

This matters because different content types have different spatial needs—a wide board next to a narrow doc, or equal splits for comparing wireframes side by side. When dragging content across panes, the gap between them collapses to create the illusion that content is literally being dragged from one side to the other.

What we learned

After months of internal dogfooding and early beta feedback, split view became a natural part of how the team worked. People used it for exactly the workflows we designed for—keeping reference materials visible and allowing easy navigation between documents.

The desktop app gave us a platform to explore features that would be difficult or impossible in the browser. Split view proved the value of that platform—not just as a checkbox feature, but as a meaningful workflow improvement.

It also reinforced that multi-document workflows were real. When you’re building a platform rather than a single-purpose tool, the relationships between documents become as important as the documents themselves.