Apple Freeform as a Product Wireframe Tool

November 15, 2025

My experience using Freeform to make product roadmaps, flowcharts, and proposals for clients.

It sounds crazy, but when I was studying economics in undergrad I would bring my laptop to lectures and open up PhotoShop to take notes. Using the shape tool, I’d draw circles and boxes representing concepts from the lecture, and then label them and give context using the text tool, and if I was really getting into it I’d use the pen tool to draw lines connecting ideas into flowcharts. Pretty exhausting really, but for some reason I got fast at it because it would solidify the concepts for me.

Years later, I somehow found myself building mortgage software for Zillow and repeating a similar process with my note-taking - Only, this time the notes weren't just for me, but for my entire team as I started roadmapping digital products and diagramming massive monorepos in GitHub.

Here are some of the tips I’ve learned on massive workplace teams that have helped me get faster and more natural using Apple Freeform:

1. Group related objects and text together so you can move them around quickly.

When making flowcharts or wireframes, it's important that I can update it quickly in the future when plans change. Grouping objects together makes it easy to throw stuff around when you need to visually rearrange or add new concepts.

2. Lock all background shapes and text that won't be moved much

Conversely to grouping objects together, locking the "settled" ones also helps you move fast by making sure you don't accidentally grab them while trying to grab your groups!

3. Draw any type of arrows you want using the pen tool, then use the Line Ends option.

Freeform already provides a straight arrow you can use to make flowcharts - but if you need to be more creative and dynamic with your arrows, just use the pen tool.

Then, once you've drawn the line as you need it, select it and adjust the line ends to have any arrow, dot, or decoration you want.

4. Check area dimensions while in 100% view

If you need to inspect the pixel dimensions of a shape or area of the screen, make sure you're in the 100% view, which you can verify in the bottom left corner of the screen. The dimensions shown will always be relative to 100%, so if you're zoomed in or out, your calculations won't look correct.

In my experience so far using Freeform in professional environments, I'd have to say it's still rare to find many people using it. But why not? Not only is it incredibly intuitive and quick, but it's free!

...Well, it's free for you as long as you've already bought into the Apple ecosystem.

And oh yeah - Just a tip: Don't wait for me to write an article any time soon on using Freeform for iOS.

Just... trust me on that one.

- Davey ✌️