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xoxknit Studio Field Guide
Every screen in Studio, what it is for, and where to find it — written from the app itself.
The five conventions
The app states these itself, in the Studio help overlay. A manual should quote them rather than reword them, because these are the facts every other number depends on.
| Convention | What the app says |
|---|---|
| Needles | Numbered outward from 0 at the centre — L1, L2, … to the left; R1, R2, … to the right. |
| Rows | Numbered bottom-to-top — row 1 is at the cast-on edge. |
| Zones | Alphabetical identifiers — Zone A, B, C… never numeric. |
| Rulers | Tap a ruler to toggle between cm and needles / rows. |
| Decimals | Italian input uses a comma — 18,25. |
What runs where
Your subscription lets you access Studio on any platform — desktop or laptop browser, tablet, or mobile — and all your designs are always available and always synced. So you can start a project on your desk, tweak it on your tablet, and see the knitting instructions on your mobile.
| Platform | You need |
|---|---|
| iPhone / iPad | iOS or iPadOS 15 or later. |
| Android | Android 7.0 (API 24) or later. |
| Web | A current Chrome, Edge, Safari or Firefox at app.xoxkn.it. Driving a knitting machine needs desktop Chrome — the app says so where it matters. |
| Everywhere | An account, and a knitted swatch. Your work syncs across every device you sign in on. |
Which device for which job
| Job | Best on | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Drawing and shaping | Desktop or a tablet | The inspector docks beside the canvas and shows every section at once; on a phone it docks along the bottom and shows one section at a time. Marquee selection, alignment and point editing all want the room. |
| Precise numbers | Desktop | A hardware keyboard types straight into the number boxes and drives the arrow-key nudges. On touch a floating keypad stands in — good, but slower. |
| Knitting from the instructions | Tablet, or a laptop at the machine | At 960 px and wider the follower becomes a bench: a browsable step list on the left, your place anchored on the right. Below that width it is one step at a time — which is perfectly usable, and what a phone propped on the machine gives you. |
| Checking progress, picking the next project | Phone | The projects list, tile progress and the resume card are all designed to read at a glance on a small screen. |
| Driving an electronic machine | Android, or desktop Chrome | iPhone and iPad cannot: the row is disabled and names the alternatives. Only AYAB over USB on Android reaches hardware today, and that path is beta. |
| Tracing from a photo you just took | Phone or tablet | Camera is offered as a source on device; the web build offers files only. |
| Buying, restoring or cancelling a plan | Wherever you bought it | A purchase made in the App Store is managed in Apple's settings, one made in Play in the Play Store, one made on the web in the web portal. “Restore purchases” exists on iPhone and Android only, because it does nothing elsewhere. |
Getting in
One card, 420 px wide, on every screen size. The language picker sits in the bar rather than a menu, so someone who cannot read the interface can change it before they have to.
Create account, confirm your email, choose a name
Three steps in sequence. The account is made (Apple, Google, or an email password and an agreement tick). As you type a password a four-segment strength meter reads Weak, Fair, Good or Strong, under a single line of advice — longer is stronger, try 12+ characters or a few words together. Three rules are enforced when you submit: at least eight characters, one capital, one digit. Then a hard gate: nothing works until the address is proved, with a resend button on a cooldown and a reminder to check the junk folder. Then a display name for anything you share — skippable, and the screen says what name you'd be shown as instead.
Your designs
The home surface. Every design you own, with the one thing each needs next written on its face.
Projects, Archive, Suspended
Three tabs with live counts. Projects is what you can work on; Archive is what you have shelved; Suspended holds designs locked behind a lapsed subscription — kept, not deleted, and a banner above them says so with a way to renew.
What a tile tells you
Every tile carries one coloured slug naming what a tap will do, so the list answers “where did I get to?” without opening anything. Planning (slate) — set up but nothing drawn. Edit design (pink) — it has shapes. Continue knitting (violet) — a knit is underway, and the tile shows the zone, the row and the percentage. Resubscribe — locked, and the tap goes to the plans rather than the design.
Finding a design: search, sort, filter, tags
Search looks through every tab, not just the one you are standing on, and says so — otherwise an Archive hit would read as a bug. Sort offers seven orders, each with a plain-language hint. Filters appear when they are worth having: by machine once your library spans two, by tag once you use them. Tags are your own coloured labels; editing one asks whether the change applies to this design or all of them.
Copies: duplicate, resize, reproject
Three ways to get a new design from an old one, and all three leave the original untouched and stop at one “name the copy” dialog. Duplicate is a straight copy. Resize takes a new width and height and scales everything — the size L stays, you get an M. Reproject moves it to another machine, showing a green or red dot per machine for whether it fits that bed; if it overflows you are offered rescale or cancel. There is deliberately no “leave it overflowing”, because a design wider than the bed cannot be knitted.
Archive, cancel a knit, delete
Archive shelves a design with an undo toast. Cancel knitting clears saved progress and makes the design editable again — the dialog offers “Keep progress” as the safe path, because that is the answer most people want. Delete is permanent and says so.
The + button, and what happens when a plan ends
Normally “New project”. When there is no plan to create under, it becomes a call to action rather than a dead button — “Start free trial”, “Renew to access designs”, “Resubscribe now” — because a disabled control says you cannot, while a call to action says what to do about it. If the app genuinely cannot reach the store to check, it says so and offers to check again rather than selling you something you may already own.
Starting a design
The most important section of any xoxknit manual, because the app enforces it: a design cannot reach the canvas without a name, a machine and a gauge. That is not a nag — every number the app later shows you is derived from your own knitted swatch.
Hand or machine
The first question, asked as two tiles: Hand (“No needle bed”) or Machine (“On a needle bed”). The note underneath is the sentence a manual should repeat verbatim: “Both need a swatch. On a machine, the shape also has to fit the needle bed.”
Measure, count, weigh your swatch
Three short steps that turn a knitted square into the gauge everything else depends on: measure it edge to edge in centimetres, count the stitches across and the rows up, and weigh it. A knitter who already has a saved swatch skips to the summary, prefilled and marked “From your last swatch”.
Say this plainly in the manual: the weight is optional for a gauge but required for any yarn estimate — it is what gives the app a density. Without it the Yarn display shows a prompt rather than a number.
Project settings, afterwards
The same four sections — name, machine, gauge, and optional details (yarn on hand, cast-on side, waste allowance, notes, tags, and importing a .k/.dat file) — reopened without entering the Studio, so a single field can be corrected in seconds.
Drawing the shape
Studio has two working modes. Shape is where you draw and arrange outlines. Perimeter is where you adjust the knitted edge one stitch at a time. A third, Decorate, exists but carries no tools in this version — stitches, motifs and colourwork land in v3.
Placing a shape S for shape modeEsc to cancel
The rail's tool band drops ready-made blocks on the bed: rectangle, trapezoid, triangle, right triangle, ellipse. The button shows the one you used last; long-press for the others. The pen places corner points one at a time — tap the first point again to close, or double-tap once you have three.
Moving a piece, and the four corner chips ← ↑ → ↓Shift+arrow = ×10
Drag a selected shape and four chips appear, one at each corner, each naming its own corner — the needle on the top line (L24, R18, 0), the row underneath. Anchor and value always name the same point, which is what makes them trustworthy. Arrow keys nudge by one needle or row, Shift-arrow by ten.
Resize, rotate, and what snapping does for you Shift while rotating = 15°
Eight handles resize; a tethered handle above the shape rotates, and holding Shift snaps rotation to 15°. Three helpers work while you drag, and they compose: edges and centres line up with other shapes and show a dashed guide; corners land on whole needles and rows when you let go, so a cell is always a stitch; and an edge within 3° of horizontal, 45° or vertical is held to it, with the captured angle shown on the readout chip.
Carving a neckline — the subtract tool ~
Arms the next shape you place to subtract instead of add — a neckline scoop, an armhole, a keyhole. The tool band inverts to solid colour while armed, so you can see you are carving. The carved shape draws as a dashed box with two-tone hatching: light where it overlaps nothing, dark where it actually removes fabric. The arming is spent by the next placement.
Flip, duplicate, group, align, stack HShift+H⌘D⌘AEsc
Flip the selection left-to-right or top-to-bottom, or duplicate it. Lock several pieces together so they travel as one — a grouped shape shows only its position, so ungroup to reshape a member. Align a selection on an edge or a centre, or space three or more evenly. Front-to-back order lives only on the right-click (or long-press) menu, which also carries copy, cut, paste and delete.
In perimeter mode the same buttons gain two verbs for the knitted edge: mirror right makes the left side a mirror of the right, and duplicate right repeats it.
Editing the points of a shape double-tapEEsc
Double-click or double-tap a shape to go inside it — there is no button, the gesture is the way in, and a chip says so before you have done it once. Green circles are corners; green squares in the middle of each edge bend that edge into a curve; two yellow circles then tune the curve asymmetrically. Right-click a corner to add, delete, smooth or sharpen it. The panel lists every corner as a typeable row, so a corner can be placed by number rather than by eye.
The rulers
Bands around the canvas. Tap a ruler to flip its unit — top and bottom swap between centimetres and needles, left and right between centimetres and rows — and your choice is remembered. Centimetre ticks draw in magenta, so a metric length is recognisable at a glance against the calm needle-and-row grid. A thin magenta strip on an outer edge means there is content off-screen that way.
Hand knitting differs: on the unbounded “Human” machine the horizontal ruler counts stitches 1…N from the cast-on-side edge instead of L/R from centre.
The tape measure M
A throwaway measurement. Press on the canvas and drag: it draws a circle with a right triangle inside it and labels all three sides — the diagonal in centimetres, the horizontal leg in stitches, the vertical leg in rows. A fresh press starts a new one; there is no way to grab and move an existing measurement.
Getting around: zoom, pan, fit, undo FSpace-drag⌘Z / ⌘⇧Z
Pinch to zoom, or Ctrl/⌘ with the scroll wheel to zoom at the pointer; plain scroll pans, and holding Space and dragging pans with a mouse. F fits everything. The zoom button shows the current percentage and offers 25–200%, fit to content, and fit to selection. The range runs from 25% up to a ceiling derived from your gauge — always enough to see a single stitch clearly.
Tracing over a picture
Put a photo or a sketch behind the canvas and draw over it. Tap to show and hide it; long-press once an image is loaded to replace or remove it. Contrast and greyscale controls sit in the panel.
The numbers
Two surfaces carry every figure in Studio: the inspector panel, which describes the selected piece, and the band of small displays along the bottom, which describe the project.
The inspector panel
One collapsible section per topic — Project, Tracing image, Shapes, Pattern, Zones — with counts in the heading (“Shapes · 5”). Empty sections explain themselves rather than sitting blank. Motifs and Issues appear but are placeholders; their own text says they arrive in v3.
With one shape selected you get its name (type over it to rename, clear it to go back to “Rectangle 1”), its position as a bed address and a row, and its width, height and rotation. Position X reads as L43 or R43 because needles count outward from the centre. A group shows position only — ungroup to reshape its members.
Typing and nudging a number
Number boxes have no arrows of their own. Each section carries one shared bar — [−] [1×] [5×] [10×] [+] — that acts on whichever box has focus, so you pick a step size and nudge. On a touch screen a number box deliberately does not raise the system keyboard; a small floating keypad is summoned instead and can be dragged out of the way, so you can watch the design change while you change it.
The band of displays
Small framed displays along the foot of the Studio, each showing one fact about the project: gauge, machine, cast-on side, units, yarn needed, plus Gallery and Ravelry as tools. Tap flips a display to its next view; press and hold opens its panel, where the thing itself can be changed. You choose which displays sit in the band and in what order; the rest stay in the ⋮ menu, and at least one always stays visible.
Gauge, and the calculator behind it
Shows stitches and rows per 10 cm; tap to see the same gauge as the width of one stitch and the height of one row. Hold it open and, before you apply a change, the panel tells you what the new gauge does to your design in stitches — your shapes keep their real-world size, so the counts change — and warns in red if the design would then be wider than the bed.
Behind the back arrow is a proportion solver: choose stitches or rows, fill any three of four boxes, and it works out the fourth — because a swatch that measured 32 stitches over 14 cm is still a usable gauge.
Yarn needed
A live estimate of the yarn the whole design will take, shown green, amber or red against what you say you have. Tap to flip between “yarn needed, N of M on hand” and “stash used, with X to spare or X short”. Long-press the yarn estimator to open a panel that lets you name the yarn, drag a wastage allowance, type what is in the basket, and step deeper into how the figure was worked out.
With no swatch weight recorded there is no number at all — the display becomes a prompt, and both tap and hold take you to the weigh-a-swatch step, because that is the one missing input.
Units, machine, cast-on side
Units decides how every size in the inspector is written — stitches and rows, or centimetres — and centimetres draw in magenta throughout the app so a metric length is recognisable. It governs the inspector only: rulers keep their own per-edge units, and needle counts stay counts. Machine shows which machine this design is for and lets you move it to another, through the same fit check the rest of the app uses. Cast-on side says which end the knit starts from, and locks once knitting is underway, because changing it would invalidate your progress.
Zones
A zone is one continuous band of knitting that can be worked in a single run of passes, with other needles typically on hold in machine knitting. You never create zones. The app scans your shape upward from the cast-on edge, works out where the fabric splits, rejoins, starts and finishes, and names the bands A, B, C… in the order you will knit them. You change zones by changing the shape.
What a zone tells you hold Z (or Fn) to peek
Pick a zone in the inspector panel and you get its knitting facts: where it sits in the order (“2 of 5”), which rows it covers, how many stitches are working and across which needles, how many are on hold for a later zone to pick up, how many are bound off here for good, and the yarn it uses. It is a readout, not a settings form. After the last zone comes a synthetic Cast off entry with the final needle range and stitch count.
Knitting it
One screen lists every way a finished design can leave the app; one screen walks you through the knit itself. This is the half of the manual a knitter reads standing at the machine, so it matters most that it is true.
Knitting instructions — the output hub
Chips across the top give the design's size, gauge, zone count and a time estimate. Below them, every destination in five groups: follow it on screen, share a link, human-readable formats (machine PDF, hand PDF, spreadsheet), machine files (.k, .dat), and connect to an electronic machine. If you already started knitting, it opens with a card offering to resume from your row, restart elsewhere, decide later, or cancel the sequence.
What comes out: PDFs, spreadsheets, machine files
The machine PDF is what you prop on the machine: a cover, then needle-by-needle step cards per zone with row-counter settings and needle ranges, in your language's notation. The hand PDF is the same design as a chart and a written pattern. The spreadsheet gives the step list as CSV or Excel, optionally with a sheet per zone grid, for anyone who wants to annotate or re-sort it. .k and .dat are machine files for Kniterate and Shima Seiki. You can also import a .k or .dat as an editable shape, from project settings.
Machine notation or hand notation — one tap, any time
The follower speaks two languages. Machine gives carriage direction, needle addresses and holding positions. Hand gives knit and purl rows, right side and wrong side, and stitch counts. Two tabs at the top flip the whole screen between them at any moment, mid-knit included — it is not a mode you are locked into. The app opens on whichever suits the design.
Following the knit, row by row
One screen per step. A diagram of the whole piece with the current block lit in violet — zones below muted, zones above still bright — and the instruction underneath: “Zone C · knit 14 rows · L22–R22”, plus the carriage side, or a plain sentence in hand notation (“Decrease 1 at each edge, then purl to the end. Now 188 stitches.”). One big button advances. Row 1 is always cast-on; the last row is bind-off.
Moving to a zone that starts on held stitches
Some zones do not cast on — they pick up needles another zone left on hold, higher up the piece. When you reach one, a violet banner tells you to move to that fabric row and what to set your machine's row counter to: “Start working this zone from row 47 — set your row counter to 46.” The counter is deliberately one below, because it describes the fabric already hanging there.
This is the strongest single candidate for a worked example in the manual: it is the most confusing physical moment in machine knitting and the app has a purpose-built answer for it.
Chart and written views
Chart shows the whole piece as a stitch grid, zone by zone, so you can read ahead; tapping a row jumps the follower to it, and very wide rows can be collapsed to stay readable. Written is the same pattern as prose, grouped into runs — “Rows 12–25: knit 14” — with a line at each zone's end. Concise collapses identical rows; Verbose spells out every one.
Going back a step, pausing, finishing
On a wide screen the step list carries a ⋮ per step: mark complete, redo that step, redo the whole zone, or redo the design. Browsing the list never moves your place. Leaving always asks first — save and pick up later, discard, or keep knitting — and your place is saved automatically a couple of seconds after each advance, so a closed tab does not cost you rows. The last row gives a “Finished!” card with the totals.
Advancing with your foot
Both hands are on the carriage, so the instructions can be advanced without touching the screen. Any Bluetooth device that sends keystrokes works — a foot pedal, a page-turner, a keyboard. Most commercial Bluetooth pedals will do: the ones sold to musicians for turning sheet music are the usual choice, and cost around €30–€50. Pair it with your device as normal, then a short wizard listens for the key each pedal sends and binds one to advance and one to back.
Connecting a Brother electronic machine (K-DRIVE)
A five-step wizard: pick a driver, confirm the model and bed width, choose the cable or Bluetooth bridge, run a connection test, then either start a live tethered session (AYAB — the app feeds each carriage pass as you knit) or key the pattern into the machine's own memory and unplug (the disk-drive port).
One combination touches hardware: AYAB, over USB, on Android — and it is beta, never yet tested against a real machine. Everything else is a faithful walk-through that sends nothing, and the app says so itself: a preview badge, and the line “no machine is connected and nothing leaves this device”. The disk-drive screen states plainly that the machine has not received anything.
iOS and iPadOS cannot reach the wizard at all; the row is disabled and names Android or desktop Chrome. Web is told at step 1 that driving needs a cable.
Sharing, settings and your plan
Everything around the craft: sending a design to someone, keeping the account, and the plan that decides which machines you can use.
Sending a design to another knitter
Makes a short link and opens a popover with an editable message — “<your name> has shared a knitting design with you on xoxknit !!” — and named channels: email, WhatsApp, SMS, copy link, or the system share sheet. Whoever opens it is asked “Save shared design?” with the sender named, and gets their own copy; yours is untouched. Someone without an account registers first and the import resumes afterwards.
It is deliberately never tier-locked: sharing is how the app spreads.
Posting to Ravelry
Publishes the open design as a project in your Ravelry notebook. Tapping the Ravelry disc opens the post surface immediately in a connecting state while a Ravelry sign-in window opens; after you allow xoxknit, you compose the post — project name, pattern, craft, made for, status, tags, notes — and place photos, where the generated thumbnail is joined by any you imported. If the design was posted before, it asks first: update that project, or post a new one.
Settings
Four cards — account, preferences, machines and sync, help and about — and what you see depends on who you are: signed out shows two rows, signed in without a plan shows five, entitled shows everything. Preferences hold the app language (thirteen, with a beta chip on the ten that are machine-translated and a one-tap way to report a bad one), units, currency and dark mode. Machines and sync hold your machine list and a live sync status with a “sync now” button. Account holds your name, biometric unlock, sign out, and delete account — which requires typing DELETE and can optionally wipe local data too.
Your plan, and what a lock looks like
One selling surface: a ladder of four rungs — no plan, Hand knitting, Premium, Pro — each with its benefits, and your own rung badged with when the money next moves and a link to billing. Manage subscription sends you wherever you are actually billed: Apple's settings, the Play Store, or the web portal, because a purchase made on one store cannot be managed from another. Cancel is a page rather than a bare dialog: it names the date access ends, says designs are kept for a year, and offers “keep subscription” alongside.
A locked capability opens a full screen, not a nag: “this is part of a paid plan”, with see-plans and not-now. For something in a tier that is not on sale yet, it inverts — it says what it comes with and when that opens, and makes “not now” the prominent button, because there is nothing to sell.
Help inside the app, and getting a human ? in StudioH elsewhere
Two help surfaces: the Studio overlay (?) lists every shortcut and gesture plus the five knitting conventions, and the global panel (Settings → Help, or H) is a searchable set of topics on projects, account, subscription and settings. Contact support can never disappear from Settings, in any state: signed out it opens your mail app, and a plan that lacks in-app tickets drops you to email rather than to a paywall — the one gate in the app that downgrades instead of selling.