Pixen

Pixel art and animation editor

Only for Mac

Free · In‑App Purchases

Mac

Pixen is a native pixel art editor designed for working with low-resolution raster art, such as those 8-bit sprites found in old-school video games. Pixen packs all the tools pixel artists need in an intuitive, native interface including support for high zoom levels, animation editing, color palettes, and a lot more. LAYERS AND FILTERS Take advantage of the flexibility layers provide when working with complex pixel art. Change opacities, blend modes, and more to compose creative effects. Use filters to adjust colors and post-process your artwork. Invert colors, convert to grayscale, dither, apply sepia tone, remove alpha components, palettize, pixellate, adjust hue, exposure, brightness, contrast, and more. TOOLS Leverage Pixen's wide array of tools when composing pixel art: Pencil, Eraser, Brightness, Text, Eyedropper, Zoom, Rectangular Selection, Magic Wand, Lasso, Move, Fill, Line, Rectangle, and Ellipse. You can even assign a different tool to the left and right mouse button. For example: pencil on the left; eraser on the right. COLOR PALETTES With Pixen, you can add and organize commonly-used colors into palettes. Pixen can also import and export color palettes in the Adobe Color Table, Microsoft Palette, JASC Palette, and GIMP Palette formats. You can even perform palette operations such as sorting colors and removing duplicate colors directly in the app. ANIMATIONS Create and arrange image frames in the filmstrip view to piece together animations. Pixen can import animations from animated GIFs, animated PNGs, and sprite sheets! It can also export animations as animated GIFs, animated PNGs, movies, and sprite sheets. GRID AND ALIGNMENT CROSSHAIR Take advantage of Pixen's grid and alignment tools and create pixel-perfect artwork. PATTERNS Define custom patterns to use while drawing with the Pencil, Line, or Eraser tool (instead of a single pixel). You can even import patterns from 1-bit images. PREVIEW While editing at high zoom levels, use the Preview feature to view the canvas scaled out. You can play back animations and tile small images, useful when working on repeated patterns. CUSTOM BACKGROUNDS Pick a flat, striped, or checkered background to be drawn beneath the canvas. You can even set a reference image as a background. AND A LOT MORE... - Sync documents with Pixen for iOS over iCloud and resume your work right where you left off, regardless of device. - Pixen works great with Sidecar and Apple Pencil. You can even customize the double tap gesture. - Pixel Perfect mode removes extra pixels while drawing such that any drawn paths are at most 1 pixel in width. In other words, it removes the middle pixel of an L shape. - The Welcome window makes it easy to start a new image or animation project, open recent documents, browse the documentation, and more. - Focus on your content with Dark Mode in Pixen. - Work with all your favorite tools in full screen mode. - Customize tool hotkeys to ease the transition from other image editors. - Export your artwork in PNG, JPEG, GIF, ICO, BMP, TIFF, SVG, and PSD file formats. - Share your creations quickly and easily via AirDrop, Messages, email, and more! - Pixen has been around for over 15 years as a native Mac app and we'd like to keep it that way. - Pixen is compatible with both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs and takes full advantage of what macOS has to offer. Pixen is also available for iPhone and iPad and syncs documents over iCloud!

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- Pixen is now available on the iPhone! - Added additional Apple Pencil double-tap actions when using Apple Pencil with Sidecar - Bug fixes

The developer, Furnace Creek Software LLC, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .

  • Data Not Linked to You

    The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:

    • Diagnostics

Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More

The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More

Seller
  • Furnace Creek Software LLC
Size
  • 4.7 MB
Category
  • Graphics & Design
Compatibility
Requires macOS 12.0 or later.
  • Mac
    Requires macOS 12.0 or later.
Languages
  • English
Age Rating
4+
In-App Purchases
Yes
Copyright
  • © 2026 Furnace Creek Software