Idea

Top toolbar change in Lucidchart

Related products:Lucidchart

Forum|Forum|21 days ago
September 2, 2026
42 replies
711 views

Can anyone advise why I no longer see this toolbar in my LucidChart??

Pinned Reply By AnnieMoscon

Hi! I'm Annie, part of the product team here at Lucid.

We reorganized editing controls so the ones you use most are faster to reach: your most common controls now live in a mini bar right above your selected shape, instead of a fixed toolbar at the top of the screen you'd have to look away from your work to use.

Here are a couple quick tips:

The mini bar shows controls relevant to what you've selected, so you're not scanning past options that don't apply.
You can drag that bar anywhere on your canvas.
The right panel to the right of your canvas (under the Share button) has those same controls, plus more advanced options, if you need them.

This is also just the start of some broader changes coming to Lucidchart. If you have any other questions or feedback, we'd love to hear it.

For more information about these changes, check out this post:

Show previous replies

G

Guido

This UI change made me register to comment.

I can't for the life of me understand why you would make this drastic UI change. For the last couple minutes I've been trying to figure out how to adjust a iconset on a shape. What used to be 1 click, is now couple of clicks in a sidebar that pops out? Come on guys..

Ambar D

Lucid community team

Thank you @Guido for your comment and honest feedback. I appreciate you taking the time to register and comment with your thoughts, and I am personally sharing your feedback directly with the team.

I’ve connected with our product team and want to share a few tips just in case they’re helpful:

Your most common controls now live in a mini bar right above your selected shape. The mini bar only shows controls relevant to what you've selected on the canvas, so you're not scanning past options that don't apply.
You can drag that bar anywhere on your canvas.
The side panel to the right of your canvas (under the Share button) has those same controls, plus more advanced options.

If you have any specific question about the new UI or are having trouble accessing any specific tools, please let me know and I’d be happy to help further.

G

Guido

Ha Ambar, thank you for the response. Some questions that I would ask myself as a product owner when confronted with a suggest change.

1. “most common controls” Who decides what the most common controls are?
2. What is the benefit of changing from 'grouped controls’ (i.e. all controles are more/less in one place, just like this platform, where the controls for text editing are also in one place) to a mix of locations. For icon set change I have to go to the right, for color changes I have to go to common tools. Does this make the usability better?
3. There is mention of ‘freeing up additional space for the canvas'. And in return we get this freely floating common controls mini bar, which is on top of the canvas and possibly obscures data you are looking at. This feels like tablet-UI, is this the medium our Lucid users work on?

It feels like this was setup with a single type of user in mind, that primarily uses the ‘Common tools’. As someone else allready mentioned.. please, please, please, make this optional.

Gr. Guido

L

lucidreta

Hate to pile on but I can’t even find where to add a shadow to a shape anymore. Time to go back to how things were before.

Ambar D

Lucid community team

We welcome your feedback, thank you for your comment @lucidreta! I’m sorry to hear that it was difficult to find how to add a shadow to a shape, that’s valuable feedback for us.

To add a shadow to a shape in this new experience:

Select your shape.
Select the side properties panel at the top-right of your screen.
Under Object, select the three dots to show additional object settings.
In the object settings pop-up menu, you’ll see the option to toggle on Shadow.

Once you’ve toggled on Shadow you’ll see additional options to adjust the shadow. In the example below, I’ve increased the distance of the shadow.

I hope this helps! Please let me know if you have any questions, or run into trouble locating any other specific features or settings.

L

Lucider

Make it optional. In the doc settings should be able to choose between having toolbar on/off, and floating bar on/off.

T

tristan.allanson

Hi Team

I would like to request that the toolbar be reinstated and/or that proper notice is provided any changes.

I have recently started using Lucid Chart and really enjoyed it, however discovering that the toolbar has been removed is impacting my workflow due to the following reasons:

Editing and manipulating objects now takes up more screen space then previously:
With the toolbar at the top, I had all the options in an easy to access area.
More clicks required to complete the same task as previously.
What could have been completed a 1-2 clicks with the toolbar, is now taking me more clicks due to needing to use two toolbars in different locations.
The new format is not intuitive, especially without proper notice (even a brief tutorial).
I am managing a large complex network design with lucid and it was very disorienting trying to find every thing again.
New floating toolbar is not effective if dealing with large selections [still moving the floating tool bar to the top or bottom of the page due to it causing obstruction., which is defeating the purpose of this change]
Basic usability ignored.
Excluding options to lock and/or select toolbars is a problem, as it should be an option to allow the user reorient the their page to best fit the user’s work profile.
The ability to have tool bars and even change their layout position is an option that is allowed by your competitors.
Lack of communication.
A change of this magnitude needs to be communicated clearly.
Opening a program with an unannounced UI change is not providing any good will to the community.

I am not saying that this change is bad, however some of the design decisions are questionable and appear to be made by those who are not using Lucid Charts as a daily driver.

I made the switch to Lucid Chart because of a colleague of mine was using it and found alot better than the main competitor for my tasks.

However, it is a little unsettling that this UI change was implemented without prior notice or the option to revert.

Please review my honest feedback, as I want to continue to keep using lucid charts.

Cheers

Tristan.

Ambar D

Lucid community team

Hi Tristan, thank you so much for your detailed and honest feedback. I appreciate the time you’ve taken to leave your thoughts on this @tristan.allanson. I’ve shared your feedback directly with the product teams over these features!

I completely understand your comments here, and apologize for the confusion while we work to update our documentation. We hope to have that soon for everyone! As soon as we have updated documentation to share, I will post it here in this thread.

If you encounter any trouble finding specific features or settings, please don’t hesitate to ask in this thread. I’m happy to help!

Thank you again for sharing your feedback!

B

BlueLghtning

I’ve been using Lucidchart for years building wiring diagrams and this change is so unwelcome and not at all something I appreciate.

For a piece of software that I pay for, making this kind of unwanted change without a way to have it the way it originally was is a very poor decision.

This may be the final straw that pushes me somewhere else.

At least give us an option to restore it the way it was.

Ambar D

Lucid community team

Thank you for your honesty @BlueLghtning and for sharing your feedback! We’re committed to continually improving our products, and your feedback helps us do just that.

I do want to share a few tips in case these help:

When you select a shape, you’ll see a mini bar with the most common controls. The mini bar shows controls relevant to what you've selected, so you're not scanning past options that don't apply.
You can drag that bar anywhere on your canvas.
The right panel to the right of your canvas (under the Share button) has those same controls, plus more advanced options, if you need them.

If you have any specific questions about where to find the features and tools you’re used to seeing, please don’t hesitate to let me know. I’d be happy to help!

R

Ramel

I am a systems engineer, I have huge demo today and I use Lucid to diagram for the team, unfortunately now I’m unable even do what I’m supposed to without fumbling around in these new and UNWANTED features. Please revert. *Paying customer*

Ambar D

Lucid community team

I can certainly understand the frustration here @Ramel, and I am thankful for your honest feedback.

Our product team is reviewing user feedback on this thread and we appreciate you being part of this process.

If you have any specific questions about the new experience, please let me know and I’d be happy to help. For a bit more detail and information, check out this documentation.

J

James Hayes

In addition to everyone else’s comments on how removing the top toolbar has been frustrating, I would like to provide a little extra detail for my personal experience.

The top toolbar for how I work is typically to set the standards for how the overall figure will look. So for example, selecting fonts, sizes, having a good understanding of colour palette etc. Having to do that separately with a mini-bar for every single facet that I need is not useful because I have to drag each one in, change what I need, then remove it to make way for the next mini-bar. The additional problem is that because I’m changing these standard settings, the mini bar doesn’t do the job- I have to then select the minibar, select specific tool (for example lines), then a properties bar pops up on the reverse side of the screen from where the rest of the tools are! I have to do this “drag mini bar", “select tool” “go to properties” “delete current minibar” for each part I want to organise. What’s worse, the minibar almost always doesn’t have any more information on it then what’s in the left hand tools and templates, and I have to actively scroll over to that minibar if the figure is anything bigger than very simple. The left hand column of tools and templates can be minimised anyway if I wanted the space! Why not just have the top tool bar minimize-able with a single click?

Ambar D

Lucid community team

Thank you for this incredibly detailed feedback @James Hayes! This makes a lot of sense with your workflow, and I appreciate you sharing openly.

I did want to mention in case it helps- the mini bar can be dragged to any location on your canvas. I’ve found it helpful to drag to the bottom right or left of my canvas, for example. That’ll keep it in one spot even as you add other shapes to the board, which others have found to be helpful as well.

Does trying something like this help alleviate part of your workflow?

Additionally- if you have any specific questions about the tools that come up as you work, I’d be happy to help! Thank you again for sharing your thoughts with us.

T

tristan.allanson

Hi Amber

Per your example, I feel that it is not alleviating workflow but instead further complicating simple tasks.

Previously, all we had to do was:

select/add all shapes and connections.
highlight specific shapes and/or connections
select options from top tool bar.

Now with the changes, it has become:

Select shape
Move toolbar
add shapes and/or connections.
(if obscuring) move tool bar
make changes with floating toolbar
Make changes with new side bar
select other objects
(if obscuring) move tool bar
make changes with floating toolbar
Make changes with new side bar.
repeat steps 4-10 as required.

What was once 3 simple steps (which is especially needed for complex diagrams), it is now taking exponentially more steps.

This is what everyone’s frustration is at the changes and why the consumers are saying that the Lucid Product team has not thought of basic functionality.

Please let the product team that the majority of users are on keyboard and mouse, and not an iPAD/touch screen.

Cheers Tristan.

J

jeremiah.batac

Can you guys put the old toolbar back!!!!

T

turbo2ltr

Once again, a company makes a change for the sake of making changes to make it feel like you are getting your money’s worth out of a very expensive subscription.

It’s really annoying when you go to use Lucidchart and the whole toolbar is gone and you are left scratching your head , reinstalling the browser, thinking there is something wrong with your computer as how could the whole toolbar be gone? Surely this is a browser issue.

At the VERY least you MUST have some popup walkthrough instructions of the basics of where everything went the first time a user comes back after a change like this.

But what you should do instead is PUT IT BACK. Nobody likes context menus. Direct control via a toolbar for an application like this where nearly every action requires interaction with some tool is the proper UX.

The rule is simple..does the action now take more clicks than before? If so, don’t do it. NOBODY wants more clicks, ESPECIALLY when what they have to click changes locations on the screen every single time (like context menus).

Ambar D

Lucid community team

Thank you for your honest feedback here. I certainly understand your experience here, and appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts in this thread.

Our product teams continue to review feedback within this thread as they research new features or enhancements. Thank you for being part of the feedback process at Lucid!

I

IvanKraljevic

This is absolutely a step backwords in terms of usability of the product.
Before everything was so natural and I can go into flow state of creating the diagramas I like.
Now there is a steep learning curve.
How can you edit transparency of multiple color shapes now ?
I need to create a new color and then choose it for multiple items.
I dont know who suggested this but zooming in and out gave me more than enough flexibility, i dont need 2 more rows of blank canvas.

Please reconsider make this optional for users at least instead of forcing it.
I am considering stopping the payment and migrate all of my charts to draw.io free service that somehow has an similar UI as you guys had.

Ambar D

Lucid community team

Hi @IvanKraljevic, thank you for your feedback.

If you’d like to edit the transparency of multiple shapes with different colors, I recommend the these steps:

Select all relevant shapes and you’ll see a mini bar appear.
In the mini bar, select the option to Open right panel.
With the right panel opened, scroll down to the to Object section > select the tri-dot Object settings button > you’ll see the ability to adjust Opacity in the popout.

These steps are also illustrated in the screenshots below! Please let me know if you have any additional questions or concerns, or if you run into issues with this. I’m happy to help!

*Selecting all shapes an opening right panel*

*Navigating to object settings and opacity from the right panel*

Thank you again for providing us with your honest feedback. These comments are shared directly with the product team as they continue researching and making improvements. Thank you for being part of the feedback process at Luid!

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