Tools

The tool ribbon runs down one edge of the editor (or across the top on small phones). Long-press any button to see what it does.

Tool options

Some tools have their own settings — the gradient, the shading ink, replace colour and the text tool, for example. When the active tool has options, a gear button appears at the top of the tool ribbon. Tap it to show or hide those options. Tools without options leave the slot empty, so the gear is also the sign that "this tool can be configured".

• On a phone, the gear opens the Options tab of the bottom panel and scrolls straight to the tool's settings.
• On a tablet or the unfolded inner screen, the gear opens a small panel in the top-right corner. Tap the gear again, or the × on the panel, to close it. The panel starts closed and stays closed until you ask for it, so it never sits on top of your canvas.

Brush size, opacity, pixel-perfect and symmetry apply to every tool, so they stay on the Options tab (phone) or the left rail (tablet) — not behind the gear.

Your brush size and opacity now persist across closing the editor and restarting the app. A Settings ▸ Input toggle turns on per-tool memory — each tool (Pencil, Eraser, Line, Rect, Ellipse, Bucket) remembers its own size and opacity, so a fat eraser and a 1-px pencil coexist without re-dragging the slider — or keeps a single global value.

Drawing tools

• Pencil — freehand drawing with the current color. The brush is 1 to 32 px, and its tip can be round (the default) or square — set the shape and size in the gear (see Tool options). Turn on pixel-perfect mode to remove the L-shaped corners that diagonal strokes leave behind.
• Eraser — removes pixels on the active layer (its button is a block-eraser icon). It shares the round/square tip and size with the pencil, and it respects alpha lock. Lower the opacity slider to erase partially — fading or lightening content instead of cutting a clean hole; at full opacity it clears completely.
• Bucket fill — floods the area under your finger that shares the same color. Its options (the gear on the ribbon, or the Options tab on a phone) set a tolerance (0 = exact colour only, higher = include similar colours), a mode (contiguous or global), connect corners (8-connected), and a sample source (active layer or all visible layers). The same options drive the Color selection, and they persist between projects.
• Eyedropper — samples the color under your finger and makes it the current color. You can also long-press the canvas with any tool to sample. Its gear sets a Sample source: Active layer (the default) or All visible — the second picks the colour you actually see, blended from every visible layer at that point, the way Aseprite's "sample merged" works. This is its own setting, separate from the Bucket's sample source. The eyedropper also picks colours from reference layers: in All visible, and when a reference layer is the one selected. It works on locked layers and on read-only projects. A long-press no longer picks the dot the brush just painted.

Three lower-frequency tools — Replace colour, Shading ink, and Text — share a single expandable More tools button in the ribbon; see More tools below.

Stylus pressure

With an S-Pen, the Pencil and Eraser respond to how hard you press. Two per-tool toggles under the gear (see Tool options) map that pressure onto your stroke:

• Pressure → size (on by default) — press harder for a wider stroke, up to your brush size; a feather-light touch still paints a 1-px dot.
• Pressure → opacity (off by default) — press harder for a more opaque stroke (or, with the Eraser, a stronger erase); a light touch stays faint but visible, never nothing.

Pressure is stylus-only — a finger or mouse draws at the slider size and opacity. In Indexed projects size still varies, but opacity does not (pixels are on or off there). To switch all of it off at once, use Settings ▸ Input ▸ Pressure sensitivity; the opacity slider still works. Everything here is free.

Shape tools

Anchor with a touch, drag to size, release to commit. A live preview shows the final shape as you drag.

• Line — its gear offers an angle snap: Off, Straight (horizontal, vertical, 45°), Iso (locks to the isometric 2:1 lattice, so the line draws a clean staircase parallel to the isometric grid), or Persp (locks to the nearest vanishing-point ray or ruler of the perspective guides). The snap also follows symmetry and tiled copies.
• Rectangle — tap the button to switch between outline and filled.
• Ellipse — tap the button to switch between outline and filled.

Move

Shifts every pixel on the active layer. Pixels dragged off the canvas are dropped; the space they leave becomes transparent.

Select a reference layer and the Move tool, then drag to put the reference where you need it. While you drag, the part outside the canvas shows faded. One undo puts it back. A locked or read-only reference tells you why it does not move. See Reference layers.

Gradient

Drag from a start point to an end point to lay down a gradient between the primary and secondary colors. Tap the gear at the top of the tool ribbon (see Tool options) to show its settings:

• Linear or radial.
• Dither — off, or a 2×2, 4×4, or 8×8 Bayer pattern for a retro banded look instead of a smooth blend.
• Perfect angle — snaps the direction to the nearest 45°.
• Swap — exchange the primary and secondary colors.

The gradient shows a live preview; lift your finger to commit, or start a two-finger gesture to cancel.

More tools

To keep the ribbon short, three tools live together behind one More tools button: Replace colour, Shading ink, and Text. The button shows the icon of whichever of the three you used last, with a small ▾ badge in the corner.

• Tap the button to re-activate the last of the three you used — so returning to, say, Shading is a single tap.
• Tap the ▾ badge (or tap the button again while one of the three is already active) to open a small menu and switch between Replace colour, Shading, and Text.

Shading ink

Shading does not paint the current color. Instead it shifts each pixel you touch one shade along a color ramp — darker or lighter — so you can build up highlights and shadows without picking each shade by hand. This is the same idea as Aseprite's Shading ink.

Pick the tool (the brightness icon in the tool ribbon), then tap the gear (see Tool options) to set it up:

• Direction — Darken or Lighten. It is absolute: Darken always makes pixels darker, Lighten always lighter.
• Ramp — the run of palette colors shading steps along. By default it is the whole active palette, sorted from dark to light. To narrow it, tap a start swatch and then an end swatch in the ramp strip; a preview below shows the resolved ramp. Whole palette resets it. Your ramp is remembered per palette.

Each pixel steps one shade per stroke — drag back over it and it does not step again. The ends of the ramp clamp (a pixel already at the darkest color stays put when you Darken). Shading ignores the current color and the opacity slider, so the opacity control is disabled while it is active. In Indexed mode every step lands on a palette color; in RGBA mode a pixel that is not already a ramp color snaps to the nearest one, then steps.

Custom brush

Copy a piece of your artwork and stamp it like a brush. Select an area (or use a region you copied), pick the Custom brush in the tool ribbon, then drag to stamp that little bitmap along your stroke — the pixel-art version of "new brush from selection" in Aseprite and Pixquare. Free.

Set the brush from its gear (see Tool options):

• Set from selection — use the current selection as the brush (select an area first).
• From pasteboard — use the last region you copied.

The stamp keeps the copied pixels' own size and colours, so the shared brush-size and opacity sliders don't apply while the Custom brush is active.

Dither ink

The Dither ink paints two colours at once — your active colour (A) and a second colour (B) — in a repeating ordered (Bayer) pattern, so from a distance the two blend into an in-between shade. It's the classic dither ink from Aseprite and Pixquare, as a brush you can scribble with. Free.

Pick it in the tool ribbon, then use its gear (see Tool options) to set the second colour. The pattern is anchored to the canvas, so re-touching the same pixels always lands on the same cell — strokes tile seamlessly instead of shifting under your finger.

Replace colour

Tap a pixel and Dixel swaps that exact colour for the current colour everywhere on the active layer — every matching pixel at once, in one undo step. It is the quick way to recolour a whole shape or restyle a sprite without reselecting. In Indexed mode the replacement colour snaps to the palette. Replace colour lives in the More tools button.

Text

Place pixel-art text on the active layer with a built-in pixel font. Pick Text from the More tools button, then:

1. Tap the canvas where you want the text. A text box appears with a docked input bar at the bottom of the screen.
2. Type in the bar (it opens the keyboard; press return for a new line).
3. Drag the box to position it. Set the size and alignment (left / centre / right) from the gear (see Tool options).
4. Tap ✓ to place it, or ✕ to cancel.

Placing the text stamps it onto the active layer as a single undo step. It uses your current colour, respects a selection and alpha lock, and snaps to the palette in Indexed projects. Nothing is written to the layer until you confirm, so you can retype, resize, and reposition freely first.

Selections

Cycle the selection button through four modes:

• Rectangle — drag a box.
• Lasso — draw a freehand loop.
• Polygon — tap corner points, then tap near the first point to close.
• Color — select pixels matching the one you tap. It shares the Bucket's options — tolerance, contiguous or global, connect corners, and the sample source — so you can select a whole anti-aliased shape, not just one exact shade.

Selections combine with add and subtract modifiers, so you can build up a complex selection from several shapes or trim pieces out of one.

While a selection is active, a context bar offers deselect, invert, expand, contract, clear, cut, copy, and paste as a floating selection. A pasted selection floats above the layer so you can move, flip, or rotate it in 90° steps before you commit it. The selection edge is drawn with marching ants so you can always see what is selected.

Refine a selection

The gear for the Rectangle, Lasso, and Polygon selection tools — and the context bar — offer four ways to reshape what is selected. They act on crisp, whole-pixel edges (there is no soft feather), which is the right fit for pixel art:

• Select all — select the whole canvas.
• Invert — swap selected and unselected. With nothing selected, this selects all.
• Expand — grow the selection outward by one pixel (a 4-connected step), repeatable; it stops at the canvas edge.
• Contract — shrink the selection inward by one pixel, repeatable; contract far enough and the selection clears.

These are quick, non-undoable edits to the selection itself — they never change your pixels. Free.

Transforms

Applied to the active layer: rotate (90° steps or a free angle), flip horizontal and vertical, scale, and translate.

In Indexed color mode, transforms are limited to the ones that keep every pixel on the palette exactly: 90° rotation, flips, whole-number scaling, and moves. Free-angle rotation and fractional scaling are disabled in Indexed mode — switch the project to RGBA to use them.

The transform box handles follow your finger exactly: the rotate handle turns by the angle you drag around the pivot, an edge handle ignores sideways motion, and the pivot dot stays under your finger when the image is scaled.

Import an image

Two ways to bring a picture into your art:

• Open image as a project — from the gallery (see Getting started). The picture becomes the canvas.
• Import as a layer — inside the editor, the import button (the Options tab on a phone, the left rail on a tablet/foldable) adds the picked image as a normal, exportable artwork layer, centred and fit to the canvas. This is different from the reference image button next to it, which adds a trace-over guide that never exports.

Both keep the image's proportions and use nearest sampling, so a photo is never squashed and pixel art stays crisp. In an Indexed project you are asked first whether to quantise to the current palette, switch the project to RGBA, or (when opening) extract a palette from the image — no off-palette pixel is ever written. A picked GIF uses its first frame.

Tiled mode

Draw seamless, repeating art — tiles, patterns, and textures. The Tiled control (the Options tab on a phone, the left rail on a tablet/foldable) offers Off, Horizontal, Vertical, and Both. Strokes near an edge wrap to the opposite side, and a dimmed, repeated preview around the canvas — with a frame on the centre tile — shows the tiling live as you work. The mode is saved with the project. Free.

Drawing aids

These help you place pixels precisely; they apply across tools and are not tied to any one tool.

• Symmetry — mirror your strokes live across a horizontal, vertical, or both axis. Drag the axis handle to move the mirror line. Turn it off to draw normally.
• Pixel grid — a fine grid on every pixel boundary, so you can count cells.
• Tile grid — a coarser grid every N pixels, for laying out tiles or sprite cells. Both grids have their own colour and spacing, and both hide automatically when you zoom too far out for them to be useful.
• Isometric grid — a diamond grid for isometric pixel art, using the 2:1 convention (a ±1/2 slope, about 26.57°). It has its own colour and spacing, hides when you zoom too far out, and pairs with the Line tool's Iso angle snap. Pick a 2:1 canvas preset in the New-artwork dialog to start at a matching size.
• Perspective guides — construction guides for perspective drawing (a display aid only; they never change pixels). Choose a 1-, 2-, or 3-point setup — each vanishing point shows a ray fan, and a 2/3-point setup adds a horizon line — and add up to 8 straight rulers. Turn on edit on canvas to drag the vanishing-point and ruler handles (a drag on empty space adds a ruler). Pair them with the Line tool's Persp snap.
• Pixel-perfect — removes the L-shaped corners diagonal pencil strokes leave behind.

Brush size, brush shape, opacity, pixel-perfect and symmetry live on the Options tab (phone) or the left rail (tablet), so they stay reachable whatever tool is active.

Canvas view rotation

Turn the whole canvas to a comfortable angle — the way an artist turns a sheet of paper to draw a diagonal or a curve. It rotates only how the artwork is shown; it changes no pixels, so your export, thumbnail and file are identical before and after. Free.

• Two-finger twist — turn the view about your fingers, together with pinch-zoom and pan in the same gesture. When you let go near an upright angle (0°, 90°, 180°, 270°) the view snaps to it; otherwise it keeps the free angle.
• Rotate view left / right and Reset view rotation buttons sit next to Fit — on the Options tab (phone) or the left rail (tablet). Each button turns the view exactly 90°; Reset returns it upright and is greyed out when you are already upright.
• Fit to screen also returns the view upright and re-centres in one tap.
• A small degree read-out shows the live angle while you turn, then fades.

The grids and the live CRT preview hide while the view is tilted and return when you snap back upright; everything else — layers, selections, the transform box — turns with the view.

Pixel aspect ratio

Give a project non-square pixels — for CRT- and arcade-style art where one pixel is meant to be wider or taller than it is tall. Open the ⋮ (more) menu and choose Pixel aspect…. Free.

• Pick a ratio like 1:1 (square, the default), 2:1 (wide), 1:2 (tall), or presets such as 8:7 (NES), 5:4, 4:3. Each side is a whole number from 1 to 8.
• You keep editing on a square grid — the ratio changes no pixel, and the canvas keeps its width and height. Only how the art is shown and exported changes: the canvas draws stretched, but every tool, selection, and the grids stay correct under the stretch.
• Export and the thumbnail carry the stretch by default (a crisp nearest-neighbour bake), with a one-tap native square pixels escape in the Share dialog.
• The timelapse video can carry the stretch too — see Export and sharing.

Effects

Effects are apply-once actions, not brushes. Open the ⋮ (more) menu at the top of the editor and choose Effects. Each opens a small dialog; Apply commits the change as one undo step, so a single undo reverts the whole thing.

Effects act on the active layer, or — when a selection is active — on the selected pixels. They are greyed out with a reason when the active layer can't take them (a reference layer, a locked layer, or a pasted selection you have not committed yet). Both effects are free.

Outline

Adds a border around the opaque shapes on the active layer, in place.

• Color — the outline color (opaque).
• Thickness — 1 to 8 pixels.
• Place — Outer (outside the shape), Inner (inside it), or Both.
• Corners — 8-way encloses diagonal corners (a solid square outline); 4-way leaves them open for the thin classic look.

On an alpha-locked layer only Inner is available — it recolors the shape's edge and keeps each pixel's exact transparency; Outer and Both are turned off because they would paint into empty pixels.

In Indexed mode the outline color snaps to the palette, so the result always stays on-palette.

Drop shadow

Drops an offset copy of the layer's silhouette onto a new layer placed below the active one, and keeps your original artwork active so you can keep drawing.

• Color — the shadow color (black by default).
• Offset X / Y — how far to shift the shadow, −64 to 64 pixels.
• Opacity — 1 to 100%.

The shadow layer counts toward your layer limit (3 on Free, 32 on Pro); at the limit you get the usual upsell (Free) or a "maximum layers" message (Pro). In Indexed mode the shadow pixels stay on-palette and the opacity is applied as the new layer's opacity, so nothing goes off-palette.

CRT effect

A retro CRT-screen look — scanlines, phosphor glow, a curved tube, an aperture or shadow mask, and a darkened vignette. Open it from the ⋮ (more) menu at the top of the editor, under CRT…. Free — no Pro gate, and it even works on a read-only over-cap project.

Unlike the Effects above, CRT is a display effect: it changes no pixels. Turn it on and the whole canvas shows through the CRT while you keep drawing; turn it off and your art is exactly as it was. Controls in the dialog:

• Quality — Low / Med / High supersampling. Higher is smoother but uses more memory; High is limited automatically on large canvases.
• Scanlines and Line spacing — how dark the horizontal lines are and how many rows apart.
• Curvature — how much the screen bows outward.
• Glow radius and Glow strength — how far bright pixels bloom and how much.
• Mask — None, aperture Grille, or Shadow mask, with a Mask strength.
• Vignette — how much the screen edges darken.
• Reset returns every value to the default.

When you export or share, an Apply CRT checkbox lets you save the CRT look (upscaled) — on the still image and on the timelapse video too — or uncheck it for the clean sprite. In Indexed mode CRT never touches your indexed pixels — it is only a screen look.

Canvas size

Change the canvas boundary itself — without recreating the project, and as a single undo step. Open the ⋮ (more) menu and use the Canvas group. No canvas operation rescales your art: pixels keep their exact colour and just move or drop, so all three are safe in Indexed projects. Layer groups and reference layers are kept. On an animation, every frame, static layer, and reference layer moves with the canvas, in one undo step, and Trim keeps the content of every frame.

Resize canvas

Choose Canvas ▸ Resize canvas… to open the dialog.

• Width / Height — the new size in pixels.
• Lock ratio — keep the original width-to-height ratio while you type.
• Anchor — a 3×3 grid that decides where the existing pixels sit inside the new canvas (top-left … center … bottom-right). Center is the default.
• Offset X / Y — nudge the existing pixels by this many pixels after anchoring.

A live old → new summary shows the change before you apply it. Growing the canvas pads the new space with transparency; shrinking clips whatever falls outside. Growing past the free size limit offers the Pro upgrade instead of clamping.

Crop to selection

Choose Canvas ▸ Crop to selection to set the canvas to the current selection's bounding box. It is available when a selection exists.

Trim

Choose Canvas ▸ Trim to shrink the canvas to the tight box of the visible artwork, removing transparent margins on every side. It is available when the canvas is not blank.

Undo restores both the pixels and the dimensions together in one step. A resize, crop, or trim restarts the timelapse recording from the new canvas size.