Organize large workflows with Canvas Groups 
Anyone who’s worked with large workflows knows how hard they can be to manage. Knowing at a glance exactly what each node does or how they fit together can get tricky, especially when you’re reviewing a workflow someone else created, or even one you made a long time ago.
Canvas Groups let you collapse a set of related nodes into a single named block on the canvas. It’s an easy way to abstract away the complex parts of a workflow, or break a large one into smaller, labeled sections you can manage on their own.
It’s available now, from version 2.28.3, on both cloud and self-hosted.
How it works:
- Select the nodes you want to group. Drag a selection box around them, or hold
Ctrl/Cmd and click each node.
- Select the Group nodes icon in the toolbar above the selection, or press
Ctrl/Cmd + G.
- n8n creates the Canvas Group and highlights the name field so you can type a name straight away.
- Use
Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + G to ungroup (or the ungroup icon)
- The nodes you select have to form a valid group: a connected run of nodes with no trigger among them. You can’t group a scattered set of nodes that aren’t linked together.
- Name the group, collapse it down to just its title, and expand it again whenever you need more detail.
- A Canvas Group saves with the workflow, so anyone who opens it sees the same structure. Collapsing is a personal view preference, saved in your browser.
Here’s a workflow before adding canvas groups:
Converting some of the nodes to a canvas group:
Same workflow after adding three canvas groups in the expanded state:
This is what it looks like in the collapsed state:
Read more in the Canvas Groups docs.
This is an early release and we’re still working on improvements.
Try it out and let us know what you think in the comments!
Ophir & the rest of the n8n team
thumbnail
15 Likes
Awesome stuff.
Is it correct that stickynotes do not work yet? They seem to block the grouping feature when selecting nodes.
2 Likes
That’s correct. Sticky notes cannot be part of groups, yet. We are working on some improvements to include stickies in a group too. Stay tuned.
4 Likes
This looks like a really useful improvement, especially for larger workflows that become difficult to navigate over time. Being able to collapse related nodes should make reviewing and maintaining existing automations much easier. One question though: when a collapsed group contains an error or a failed node, is there any visual indicator on the group itself, or do you need to expand it first to spot the issue?
3 Likes
Amazing! I’ve been wanting something like this for SO LONG! Thank you!
If these groups can also be color coded like sticky notes that would be so good!
After playing with it for a bit a couple notable things:
The collapsed groups push content around them when expanded which is just 
At first, I thought I would have to account for their expanded size, but that’s not an issue.
The group expansion pushes the neigbouring nodes/groups.
Expanding a group only seems to push some nodes back if they would intersect
But not near misses.
I think pushing back the whole chain would make more sense to avoid loops backs like above.
I do wish the wires would go behind the group though as sometimes with multiple instersections it’s hard to hit the right one
Collapsed groups cannot be Ctrl Clicked, but can be drag selected.
Expanded groups can’t be either Ctrl Clicked nor drag selected.
The nodes inside get selected instead which drags the whole group (if all selected) or changes the groups size if only some are.
I hope keyboard shortcuts will be added for Collapse/Expand (All/Selected).
Great work though! Excited to see where this goes!
2 Likes
Weird, I have latest and Next running and in none of them i am able to group. The tooltip doesn´t show up, either.
@Jackson43 When one of the nodes in a group throws an error, we show an indication in the collapsed group.
1 Like
@Kool_Baudrillard we have some restrictions on which nodes can be grouped. Could that be a reason why you not seeing the option?
Can you DM me your instance ID so we can have a look? You can find it under “About n8n”
1 Like
To wrap up on the discussion with @Kool_Baudrillard , the feature will be disabled if you have telemetry disabled. This is because it’s gated behind a feature flag.
2 Likes
Nice feature!
I’m in the same situation as @Kool_Baudrillard, It wasn’t working because, as @nikhilkuria mentioned, I have telemetry disabled:
N8N_DIAGNOSTICS_ENABLED=false
I did find a temporary workaround that made it work for me:
Open your browser’s developer console and run:
featureFlags.override('083_canvas_nodes_grouping', true)
Then reload the page. After that, the Group Nodes icon should appear and the feature should work. 
3 Likes
