---
title: "What is a Portal"
description: "A Portal is a frame on the canvas that runs your real app, so you can design on live pages and capture them."
url: https://help.modeinspect.com/en/articles/43-what-is-a-portal
collection: "Canvas"
updated: 2026-10-29
language: en
---

# What is a Portal

A Portal is a frame on the canvas that runs your real app, so you can design on live pages and capture them.

A Portal is a frame on the canvas with your real app running inside it. It shows one page of the app, on the canvas's branch, in a dev environment Modeinspect hosts for you.

![The demo canvas zoomed to its Portal, a live page of the demo shop with its name label above it](https://staticfiles.gleap.io/p6a1872808f187689a3937fa3/7PMmlkyEyctvKjFR8ebfHATp2ntjSgAv6pWjZtMkbqb3LpEubyAcErdaqNWWvZp5u5potNcVFyi.png)

## How it fits

Every new canvas starts with one Portal on the app's start page. You add more with the Portal tool, `P`, one per screen or route you want next to each other. Each Portal has its own preview resolution, so the same page can sit on the canvas as **Mobile** and **Desktop** at once. See [Add a Portal to the canvas](https://help.modeinspect.com/en/articles/31-add-a-portal.md).

The page inside a Portal is live. Select the Portal and click **Open preview** to browse the app in a window over the canvas, with a back button and an address bar. Close it and the Portal stays on the page you reached.

A Portal is the source for captures. **Capture page** puts the whole page on the canvas as real layers, and **Capture selection** puts one part of it there. Every captured layer keeps a pointer to the component and file it came from, which is what lets Build Mode write a change on that frame back into the code. See [Capture a live page or selection](https://help.modeinspect.com/en/articles/33-capture-a-live-page.md).

While the app starts, the Portal is a dark frame with a spinner. **Capture page** and **Open portal** in its right-click menu stay greyed out until the page is up.

## What it does not do

-   You cannot restyle a Portal or the page inside it with the canvas tools. Capture the part you want and edit the capture.
    
-   A Portal shows one codebase: the one the canvas belongs to.
    
-   A Portal is not a preview link. To share the page, use the **Preview link** row in the design panel or **Share** in the header.
    

## Next

-   [Add a Portal to the canvas](https://help.modeinspect.com/en/articles/31-add-a-portal.md)
    
-   [Capture a live page or selection](https://help.modeinspect.com/en/articles/33-capture-a-live-page.md)
    
-   [Canvas controls and keyboard shortcuts](https://help.modeinspect.com/en/articles/32-canvas-controls-and-shortcuts.md)

## Related

- [Create a canvas](https://help.modeinspect.com/en/articles/35-create-a-canvas.md)
- [Rename, duplicate and delete canvases](https://help.modeinspect.com/en/articles/40-rename-duplicate-and-delete-canvases.md)
- [Duplicate a canvas](https://help.modeinspect.com/en/articles/37-duplicate-a-canvas.md)
- [Start a canvas from a branch or pull request](https://help.modeinspect.com/en/articles/38-start-a-canvas-from-a-branch-or-pull-request.md)
- [Canvas controls and keyboard shortcuts](https://help.modeinspect.com/en/articles/32-canvas-controls-and-keyboard-shortcuts.md)