Don't understand text on arrow behavior of draw.io

[Sonja Van Wyk]

Good day,

I am a new draw.io user.  I am used to working in Microsoft Visio.

I notice that when I enter text on an arrow (from the General shape library), I cannot delete or change the text that I entered.  When I double-click on the arrow, it creates a new "text box", it doesn't select the initial text.

I want to place two arrows in a custom shape library - one with text and another without but I want to be able to remove or change text on both.

Is there a setting somewhere or an attribute of the arrows that results in this strange behavior?

Regards.

Sonja

[draw.io Q&A]

Thanks for the question! This behavior is likely caused by where the text was added on the arrow.

In draw.io, arrows (like most shapes) have two types of text:

1. Shape text – the default label that’s part of the arrow.

2. Floating text – manually added with the Text tool or double-clicking off-center, which creates a separate label that's not bound to the shape.

What likely happened:

• The first time, you clicked directly on the arrow and typed — this added shape text.

• Later, you double-clicked slightly off-center, which added floating text, a separate text element that doesn't replace or edit the original.

How to fix this:

1. To edit the original text:

   • Single-click the arrow to select it.

   • Press Enter or F2, or double-click right in the center of the arrow.

2. To remove the original text:

   • Select the arrow, then hit Enter, delete the text, and press Enter again to confirm.

3. To remove floating text:

   • Click the text (it selects separately from the arrow) and press Delete.

For custom shape libraries:

To save arrows that behave as expected:

• Add text via the main shape label (not floating).

• Remove any floating text before saving to your custom library.