Webverse

About

Webverse - The Collaborative Canvas to Annotate the Web

WHAT IS WEBVERSE?

Webverse lets you draw collaboratively on any website in real-time. Annotate webpages, share ideas, and see what others are drawing—right in your browser.

HOW IT WORKS

Every webpage gets its own shared canvas. Your drawings are linked to the page's URL, so when you revisit a page, you'll see all the annotations you and others have made there.

GETTING STARTED

1. Login
Click the Webverse extension icon and log in with your Google or GitHub account. This is required so the app can:
- Identify your drawings
- Let you see annotations across your devices
- Enable real-time collaboration with other users

2. Open the Drawing Toolbar
After logging in, click "Launch Webverse" in the popup. A floating toolbar will appear on the current page, giving you access to all drawing tools.

3. Start Drawing
With the toolbar open, you can:
- Draw freehand lines in any color and width
- Use the eraser to remove parts of your drawings
- Undo your strokes (and then redo)

All your drawings appear instantly to other users viewing the same page, and you'll see theirs in real-time too.

UNDERSTANDING LAYERS

The toolbar has three layer modes:

PUBLIC LAYER (Globe)
- Your drawings are visible to everyone
- You can see drawings from all users
- Default layer for open collaboration

MINE LAYER (Person)
- Only shows your own public drawings
- Filter out the noise and focus on your annotations
- Still visible to others (just filtered to show only yours)

PRIVATE LAYER (Lock)
- Only you can see them
- Drawings are encrypted end-to-end
- Perfect for personal notes and sensitive annotations

PRIVATE LAYER SETUP

To use the Private layer, you first need to set a password in the extension popup. This password is used to derive an encryption key to encrypt your private drawings. Each time you draw on the Private layer, your annotations are encrypted with this key before they leave your device.

The encryption happens locally on your device. Our servers never see your private drawings or password—they only store encrypted data that only you can decrypt. In fact, even the URLs of private drawings are encrypted, so we don't even know which pages you have private annotations on.

LOCKING AND UNLOCKING

Once you've enabled the Private layer, it will stay unlocked while your browser is open. When you close and reopen your browser, you'll need to unlock it again by entering your password.

You can also manually lock the Private layer at any time by clicking "Lock Private Layer" in the popup. To unlock it again, simply enter the same password you used to enable it.

FORGOT YOUR PASSWORD?

If you forget your Private layer password, you can reset it by clicking "Forgot Password?" in the unlock screen. However, resetting your password will permanently delete all of your existing Private layer drawings—we can't decrypt them without your original password.

CHANGING YOUR PASSWORD

When your Private layer is unlocked, you can change your password by clicking "Change Private Layer Password" in the popup. This will derive a new encryption key and re-encrypt all of your existing Private layer drawings with the new password—your drawings are preserved because your current encryption key is still in memory.

DELETING YOUR ACCOUNT

You can delete your entire account at any time from the extension popup. Scroll down to the "Danger Zone" section and click "Delete Account". This will:

- Immediately remove your account data from our servers
- Delete all of your public annotations
- Delete all of your encrypted Private layer data

The deletion process typically completes instantly, but may take a couple of minutes to remove all of your public annotations if you have a very large number of drawings. This action cannot be undone.

OPEN SOURCE

Webverse is open source software. You can view the source code, report issues, and contribute on GitHub: https://github.com/zlnvch/webverse