Draw.io from the command line

Draw.io Desktop can be used from the command line.

On macOS, if the application is installed in the Application folder you can defined following alias to the ~/.bash_profile file:

alias draw.io='/Applications/draw.io.app/Contents/MacOS/draw.io'

Commands

With version 11.1.1:

Help

List all the commands:

$ draw.io --help

Usage: draw.io [options] [input file/folder]

Options:
  -V, --version                      output the version number
  -c, --create                       creates a new empty file if no file is passed
  -x, --export                       export the input file/folder based on the given options
  -r, --recursive                    for a folder input, recursively convert all files in sub-folders also
  -o, --output <output file/folder>  specify the output file/folder. If omitted, the input file name is used for output with the specified format as extension
  -f, --format <format>              if output file name extension is specified, this option is ignored (file type is determined from output extension) (default: "pdf")
  -q, --quality <quality>            output image quality for JPEG (default: 90)
  -t, --transparent                  set transparent background for PNG
  -e, --embed-diagram                includes a copy of the diagram (for PNG format only)
  -b, --border <border>              sets the border width around the diagram (default: 0)
  -s, --scale <scale>                scales the diagram size
  --width <width>                    fits the generated image/pdf into the specified width, preserves aspect ratio.
  --height <height>                  fits the generated image/pdf into the specified height, preserves aspect ratio.
  --crop                             crops PDF to diagram size
  -a, --all-pages                    export all pages (for PDF format only)
  -p, --page-index <pageIndex>       selects a specific page, if not specified and the format is an image, the first page is selected
  -g, --page-range <from>..<to>      selects a page range (for PDF format only)
  -h, --help                         output usage information

Svg

To convert a .drawio file to svg:

draw.io -x -f svg -o Diagram.svg Diagram.drawio 

Png

To convert a .drawio file to png:

draw.io -x -f png -o Diagram.png Diagram.drawio 

Convert multiple files

The drawio CLI also works with folders:

Given this tree of file (multiple .drawio files in one folder) and an empty folder called out/:

.
├── files
│   ├── Diag.xml
│   ├── Diagram1.drawio
│   └── Diagram2.drawio
└── out

All the diagrams can be converted to PNG with:

draw.io -x -f png -o out/ files/

Console output:

files/Diag.xml -> out/Diag.xml.png
files/Diagram1.drawio -> out/Diagram1.drawio.png
files/Diagram2.drawio -> out/Diagram2.drawio.png

One png file is created for each diagram in the input folder.