Stop Wasting Time in Procreate: 7 Gestures You Need to Know

Procreate is hiding powerful gestures in plain sight that most artists completely overlook. Now, we all know the classic two-finger tap to undo. But these seven other secret shortcuts are the real keys to doubling your drawing speed today. Once you master these fluid movements, you'll navigate your canvas with lightning speed and never look at your iPad the same way. Let's start with how you control your shapes and canvas. Stop going back and forth to your menus just to copy something. Simply swipe down with three fingers anywhere on your screen to instantly bring up the copy and paste menu. It's the fastest way to duplicate anything. Tired of wonky lines and imperfect shapes? Draw your shape, like a messy circle or a crooked line, and just hold your pen in place at the end of the stroke. Procreate's quick shape will instantly snap it. But here's the real secret. Keep your pen down and tap the screen with one finger of your other hand. This instantly forces a shape to become mathematically perfect. Or make your line perfectly horizontal, for instance. Want to clear everything on your active layer without opening the layers menu? Just scrub three fingers back and forth on the screen. This is the scrub gesture and it instantly wipes your entire layer clean so you can start fresh in less than a second. Don't open your color palette every time you need to switch colors. Just tap and hold your finger on the canvas. The eyedropper tool will pop up, letting you sample any color directly from your artwork instantly. Need to add quick shading or textures to the shape on your layer? Just swipe right with two fingers on your layer in the layer menu to instantly activate alpha lock. Now your paint will only stay inside your existing pixels. Total control. If you want to check something on a single layer, don't manually uncheck all your layers one by one. Just tap and hold the visibility checkbox of a single layer to hide everything else instantly. And hold it again to bring it all back in a fraction of a second. And finally, the ultimate hidden shortcut is the quick menu. You can assign a specific gesture to it through the menu. Just go to prefs and then to gesture controls. A floating wheel pops up right under your pen where you use the gesture of your choice. You can completely customize this with your six favorite actions, like flipping the canvas or adding a new layer, giving you instant access without ever opening a menu. Once you build these seven movements into your muscle memory, your workflow will feel like magic. Want to dive even deeper into Procreate and get access to more than 250 exclusive tutorials? Go check out my Patreon. I'll link it in the description for you. Now, which of these shortcuts is your favorite? Let me know in the comments and happy drawing.