Tutorial

OpenClaw Control UI and Canvas Overview

February 21, 20263 min readReviewed March 8, 2026

OpenClaw exposes both CLI and UI workflows. The dashboard provides runtime visibility, while the macOS Canvas panel provides a lightweight interactive workspace for agent-created HTML/CSS/JS artifacts[1][2].

Control UI via Dashboard

The dashboard command opens runtime inspection and operational controls from your local install.

openclaw dashboard

Canvas Model on macOS

Canvas stores session files under Application Support and serves them through a custom openclaw-canvas:// scheme. It supports live reload and per-session window state[2].

~/Library/Application Support/OpenClaw/canvas/<session>/...
openclaw-canvas://main/

When to Use Dashboard vs Canvas

Dashboard: health checks, channel status, lifecycle tasks.
Canvas: generated mini-UIs, prototypes, and session-specific visual outputs.

Validation Commands

openclaw health
openclaw channels status --probe
openclaw logs --follow

Security Notes

Canvas can be disabled in app settings. If disabled, canvas node commands return a disabled status to prevent unintended rendering flows[2]. Keep that toggle off in high-control production desktops where no visual panel is needed.

Operator Recommendation

Use dashboard for reliability, Canvas for UX output. Keep session scope and channel policy strict so UI experiments do not relax messaging controls[3].

References

OpenClaw Docs: CLI Dashboard - Accessed February 21, 2026
OpenClaw Docs: macOS Canvas - Accessed February 21, 2026
OpenClaw Docs: Session Scope and Isolation - Accessed February 21, 2026
OpenClaw Docs: CLI Health - Accessed February 21, 2026