New in Art Supplies: • The Fine Brushes — the Detail Round, the Rigger and the Spotter. Try each one on scrap paper before you buy. • The Highlighter Set — white gouache, masking fluid, the craft knife and coloured washi tapes: every way to keep the white of the paper. If you already had the gouache and the knife, they stay yours. Better painting: • Masking fluid now protects wet paper. Paint, water, salt and spray stop at the fluid, and rubbing it off reveals clean paper. • A blunt tip for the white gouache, beside the pointed one. • Masking fluid strokes can start off the edge of the paper. • The mist sprayer lays a fine dusting of droplets, and water can wake up dry paint a little. • Pick up a mix by tapping a puddle in the mixing basin. • Colours in the paint tin are arranged in colour order. • Paintings open faster, and wet paint is finer on older iPads. • Ready for iPhone Duo.

Inktober is easier to find: while it runs, a ribbon on your sketchbook shows today's prompt. Tap it and the Inktober book opens on today's page. New to Line Lift this October? You'll start in the Inktober book once you've had your first try.

The Drafting Set is here: a ruler, a shape guide, a folding rule, an ellipse guide and a French curve, $0.99 each or $2.99 for all five. Open Art Supplies and try each one on its page before you buy: lay it on the paper, turn it, and draw along it with the fineliner. If you've used Line Lift before this version, the Drafting Set is yours for free, as a thank-you for being here early. Also new: the folding rule clicks into a symmetric roof, the Art Supplies list shows at a glance what's yours and what's for sale, and you can take back an "I'd use this" vote.

Inktober, smoother: • A drawing you scan from a day's page now lands on that day. Before, it could end up at the back of the book and leave the day empty. • Scan straight from the page: open an Inktober page, tap "…" and choose "Scan a drawing onto this page". If the page already has work on it, you're asked first, and the page you had is kept at the back of the book. Also in this update: • The eraser rubs out paint again, and you choose what it takes: Ink, Paint or Both. Paint alone keeps your linework while you tidy around it, and new Softness and Strength sliders go from a crisp edge to a feathered one. • Masking tape now always puts back exactly what was under it. Peeling a strip could sometimes fill it with the last color you painted.

An Inktober 2026 sketchbook is on your shelf: 31 pages, each with the day's prompt in the corner, and a welcome page before Day 1. In October it opens on today's page. Draw on paper and scan it in, or paint straight onto the page. Sharing a page offers a ready caption with #inktober and #inktober2026. Used with Jake Parker's permission. Also new: • Colors mix like paint: blue and yellow make green in the pots and the basin, just as they do on the paper. • The paint in the mixing basin is liquid glass on iOS 26: drag one drop into another and watch them flow together. Carry paint to the trash can to throw it away, or pour a pot into the basin. • The water glass is real glass on iOS 26, and mixing keeps your brush's water, so a dried brush picks up a mix at full strength. • Tap the water droplet beside the paper for a small menu: dry the paint now, keep it wet, or wet the whole paper. • Paint from a reference like an open sketchbook: turn an iPad sideways and the photo sits on the left page, with a grid and a photo-sized tape frame. • Reference photos stay photographs, and the capture button asks: take a photo or choose one. • The magnifier looks closer when you pick it up and move it. • Remove a sketchbook you no longer need; its pages move to your first book. And a new cover cloth: Ink. • Pages that went missing across devices come back by themselves. • Time-lapse videos show the watercolor stroke by stroke.

Line Lift 1.3 is the biggest update since launch. A drafting set for your ink pens. Pick the fineliner or the reservoir pen, tap the new button on the ink desk, and four instruments fan out: a ruler, a folding rule, an ellipse guide and a French curve. Lay one on the page and your line follows its edge. The ruler also hatches: tap its dial and each line you draw steps it back for the next, perfectly parallel. Art Supplies, a new room. Tap the paint tin by your sketchbook to see everything in your box, with a page for each tool: what it is, when artists reach for it, and a tip. "Try it on your page" puts it straight in your hand. Nothing in the room is for sale. New on the desk: white gouache, to bring light back onto the page, and a graphite pencil for the drawing that comes before the paint. On iOS 26 and later the loupe is a dome of real glass. Wetter watercolor. Paint now spreads on its own into clean water on wet paper, washes stay wet for about 40 seconds, and the droplet beside the canvas drains as your wash dries. Holding a second color on your brush works again, and undo on wet paper goes back six steps instead of two. Line Lift now speaks Japanese and Korean. You choose whether anonymous screen recordings are shared to help improve the app, and photos never appear in them. Fixed: reopening a painting keeps everything, undo takes back the newest thing first, a fourth color no longer switches undo off, pinned references show on iPad, the desk fits iPads with a Home button, and the app fits the screen with Display Zoom.

Watercolor just got wetter. Line Lift 1.2 introduces a completely new paint engine. Wet the paper, add pigment, and watch color bloom, creep and mix naturally as the paper slowly dries. Also new: - Dry-brush texture now follows the direction of your stroke - Apple Pencil Pro barrel rotation correctly follows your hand - Smoother, more accurate loupe movement - Better page rotation on iPad - New drawings in the “Try Line Lift” sketchbook to help you get started Your existing paintings remain safe and work just as before.

- Colours now mix like real paint. Lay one wash over another and the overlap goes to a colour — blue over yellow gives green — instead of just going darker. It is the biggest change here and it touches every stroke. - Faint washes are far easier to reach: nine even steps from full strength down to a whisper, one dip each, and the meter finally matches what lands on the paper. Scrub the brush in the glass for a proper deep clean. The studio also teaches itself now, labelling each tool in masking tape that peels off once you have used it a few times. Line Lift runs on iOS 17 and later, so it installs on far more iPhones than before. Fixed: tape masking works again (it had been quietly broken for weeks), the feedback sheet sends, the loupe stays where you put it, and the app no longer freezes when you lay a long strip of tape. On iPad the bottom toolbar is back in landscape and the paint tin is a sensible size, and on Apple Pencil Pro the barrel roll finally turns the brush the right way.