Framing one set of content is easy, but what is the best method for framing large groups of other frames into a single frame?

We’d love to add this as a feature request. Layers could also accomplish most of this, or simply allowing grouping of multiple frames together.

Part of the trouble is applying an outline or stroke to objects that don’t otherwise support this - photos primarily. If you want a stroke or outline border of the photo object, you can create a frame, but now that object is unable to sit inside a larger frame. The next best option is to add a shape, but then you are manually resizing and grouping that shape to each photo. It would be much easier if there were just an “add border” option, followed by “add to Layer or Frame Group”

We’d be happy to setup a meeting to dive into a few of these requests.

I also would love to see this ‘layers’ feature in Miro! 

I use miro for building marketing processess and funnels. Layers would be great for projects visualization. Just as an example:

• 1 frame for landing pages
• 1 frame for emails and messaging tools
• 1 frame for traffic sources and pixels/remarketing implementation
• 1 frame for notes & people’s tasks
• 1 frame for cards

I imagine being possible to see all the frames or just those i want (lik: want to see Landing pages and people’s tasks, and etc.)

See also https://community.miro.com/wish-list-32/folders-directories-in-projects-395

The idea to add tabs to the frames might allow them to be turned on and off (as layers).

For example, you have a frame with three tabs (like in chrome or excel).

Each tab has some drawings. If you want to overlay them all together you can select all three tabs (turn them on, so to speak by clicking a button on each tab to activate them). If you want to remove one layer, you can just turn off that tab, but it will of course remain there for future use.  Since the color system in miro already offers transparency, perhaps the tabs just need to be ordered in the way they should be displayed.

Nested Frames

I’d really like to create frames “within” frames.  Right now it seems like objects only belong to a single frame?

Frames within frames would be amazing

As someone coming from Omnigraffle (RIP), which had a wonderful-to-use layer system, or Adobe for that matter, I’m a huge fan of what can be done with layers.  What @Marcos Lenine  is talking about with toggling layers off and on is SO key to presenting and managing complex systems.  Layers was one of the top features I found missing immediately on picking up Miro… but not missing enough to keep me away. 

IMHO -- What is problematic at the moment is that Miro is using frames to accomplish some of what layers would accomplish and I hope they don’t remain conflated. 

My feeling is that frames should be viewports (think camera position/angle on a film set), while layers should be nestable object collectors that control position and visibility of all constituents (think about this as the cast in the scene, or the background set, or props, or subgrouping like ‘lead actors’ or ‘all the background extras’ -- “Can we get all the extras off set while we focus on the lines here??”).  When a camera moves to a new angle on a film set, the actors and scene don’t move with it.  When a frame moves in miro, the objects inside its bounds move with it. This makes sense if frames are thought of metaphorically as picture frames… but this thinking becomes problematic once trying to intuit what should happen when there are frames within frames or overlap of frames …(Venn Picture Frames )… Whereas the film camera position and angle metaphor doesn’t break down on overlapping or nested frames. 

I think the following logic borrowed from Omnigraffle and Prezi is sound:

frames: the viewport bounding box subsection of a larger board.  Deciding what is in bounds and out. (Omni didn’t have frames, but Prezi did - so following prezi).

layers: scene level or global object collections. 

groups: used to create singular, compound objects composed out of diagramming primitives -- molecules out of atoms. 

We already sort of have layers, but imagine if you had a toolbar like photoshop where you could see each layer and sort them easily from there. Too many times I’ll add something and it will be on top of everything, then I have to ‘Send Backwards’ but then that puts it at the bottom and have to manually ‘Send Forwards’ everything that needs to be on top of that part.

Essentially, I’d like there to be 2 categories. Groups and layers. We already have Grouping, so that works. But each Group or item that is in Miro would be it’s own layer. You don’t have to right-click the object to send it backwards or forwards, you simply just access the toolbar where you can move it up or down the list, as-well as toggle visibility and maybe opacity because why not. If you have a big project, this could get a little messy but it’s better than nothing. I think something to help the ‘mess’ would be the ability to ‘Merge’ objects. Not just group. Just permanently merge them to reduce the number of layers and clean up anything drawn with the Pen tool.

It sucks that when you draw things with the pen tool, every single line you draw is it’s own separate entity. It creates a huge mess and your project becomes unclickable because there’s so many things trying to compete for priority. You’re basically moving things, sending things backwards and forwards, just so you can click on one thing in the mess of things. Merging and layers would solve this issue because you’d be able to toggle visibility on the things that are in your way. Basically, I’d use the Pen tool a lot more if it didn’t create such a big mess. 

The other thing I was thinking of was being able to lock items to where they don’t become clickable at all. As if they’re background items. So, if you click on it, it doesn’t bring up it’s ‘hitbox’ and the options to unlock it. You’d be able to just click through it. This would be incredible with the Pen tool, among anything you’ve intended to be in the background that you never want to click or move. Putting this option into the Layer toolbar would probably be the best choice. So, if you want to unlock it you’d just click the Lock button on the toolbar instead of having to click on the item itself. 

Miro has the potential to be the greatest thing ever because it’s the only software that I’m aware of that is so powerful, and you can create things in real-time with a friend or group. Accessibility and convenience features like this could open up different avenues of people working on different types of projects. For example, I’m working on a Fantasy Map with a friend and that’s not the softwares intended use, but that’s what makes it so great. It has the potential to be used for anything.

Layers looks like very useful feature. My case: a lot of process in one diagram with some locked vertical delimiters. When i need to change size of all delimiters, i should unlock each separately. Independent layers with object provide ability to lock all object without irritative multiple actions

Upvote - this would be extremely helpful. 

There is another tool that I had started using at one point but can’t recall the name as overall I prefer Miro, but it had one feature that was really nice which was basically nested boards/frames. It allowed to keep the different projects more structured by basically having the top level board/frame just be a TOC for the actual content. For example, in development of my video game, I had a frame that was labeled “Characters” and inside that frame was just a link to sub frames for each character. I did the same for Story and had one frame on the top level be “Story” and inside was just a link to sub frames for each chapter. The rest of the features of that tool were lacking a bit so since I’m still in the beginning of these projects I decided to stick with Miro. That level of organization was more of an OCD impulse but I feel as projects get bigger, it would be very useful.

I posted the same comment in https://community.miro.com/wish-list-32/folders-directories-in-projects-395?postid=7886#post7886 as I feel these are at least partially related features.

I’d love to see layers also. I am currently building some complicated workflows and system drawings. There’s a couple of different use cases for the base level of the same workflows and they don’t site nicely on top of one another.  It makes for very noisy drawings. 

Keep up the great work. 

I have to present a very complex Website integrations document to a non-technical client stakeholder tomorrow that I’m dreading, because I’m not easily able to act upon grouped objects to (eg) hide / show them quickly.  This is the promise of Layers, aka, Frames inside Frames and what others above have mentioned above. Other tools like OmniGraffle and MindNode have this feature to collapse sections.  That is very akin to this.

It would be great to be able to introduce a complex diagram like the following in sections or parts during a presentation with just a click of a button right inside the tool.  For now I’m stuck with hiding layers, exporting them to PNG and putting them in a slide deck 

Definitely upvoting layers! This would be a huge benefit to switch on/of views and perspectives, lock layers from access by collaborators, hide/show groups of elements, integrate background-metaphors - tons of applications I see. 

Hi @Marina,

I see there is wider interest in layer functionality, which can provide scalability through deep structures of information. Is this intended to be provided through Frames, or has @Max Harper’s great suggestion of avoiding conflation of two similar features been taken into consideration?

Also, is there an ETA for this feature?

Many thanks,

Michael

I would definitely like to upvote Layers as an essential feature for presenting complex related concept on a common model, either for different audiences, turning layers on and off to discuss different perspectives of the model or as a way of gradually building understanding of the complexity one layer at a time.

Still a great product, but this would really take it to another level.

Thank you for your comments!

@Michael McCoy, I’m afraid no ETA for this feature from the team yet. 

OK thanks @Marina. It would be good to get confirmation on @Max Harper’s suggestion in the meantime though.

Thanks again,

Michael

I’m happy that this is already being discussed!

I just realized I’d really love to have layers functionality similar to Photoshop, for example, while working on a design blueprint. It would be extremely helpful to be able to hide specific parts of it, to make it more or less complex when necessary, or to be able to only focus on specific parts of it.

For example, when I’m working with a design blueprint, I often need to see it its complexity, with all my sidenotes and quickly-scribbled ideas. But when I’m presenting it to my colleagues during a workshop, I need them to understand the process described in the blueprint without overwhelming them by distractions. The option to simply hide some pre-selected parts of it would be great!

I’m not 100% sure, but I’ve just developed a plugin called ‘Carbon Copy’ which could help.

You can just enable sync’ing on a Sticky, or indeed any other widget, and Carbon Copy will ensure all copies of a widget stay in sync across the board with each other - this includes style characteristics.

I’ve put in a request to have it added to the marketplace, here’s a video preview.

https://www.loom.com/share/92954f3327c147bc9bfbfdf3ab97abce

Yes Please!

Frames within frames and layers would be really helpful.

Lack of managing layers is keeping our team from using Miro, and still using LucidChart which has great layer features. When we present diagrams to clients we only want to present certain parts at one time, then ‘show’ layers one by one to client.

Layer features needed:

• re-order layers
• layer visibility
• lock layers
• rename layers

Now that I’m comfortable in Miro, the need for nested layers is important to me.  I searched for the ability to do nested layers and came to this page.  Consider this and my team’s request for this feature as 20 up votes.

Thanks!

Upvoting for this!!!!!

Nested Frames , better control on groups/Layers

Hey this is a pretty basic feature that I need now.

At least give us a ETA on it!

I’d also like more image arranging features such as “normalize height/width” to scale images of different resolutions to the same scale.
Besides that more features to arrange things with user set space sizes, snapping things to the grid (can you do that already? I can’t find out how).

We could fix the frame issue temporarily by allowing frames to be arranged depth-wise just as images are handled (send to back, send to front etc).

Any Update on Layers and Layer Sorting? Is it on the roadmap? 1500 user company POC and this is a must have feature and your competitors have it. Do I need to say more?

You are getting quite a bit of feedback from the above posts, are user requests something that are tracked and taken seriously?

Our use case is the same as all those above.
When presenting complex ideas without tainting the brainstorming process across cross functional teams. We start small and have the solution grow in layers as we explain… so suggestions come out organically, before presenting our proposed solutions and logic.