ANSIpants

Retro text art for the future!

$5.99

Retro text art for the future! Layers, 256 & true color, TDF and FIGlet fonts, Apple Pencil support — on iPhone, iPad, and Mac. ANSIpants is a full-featured ANSI and ASCII art studio for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Draw retro text art with modern tools: pressure-sensitive brushes, layers, true color, and a canvas that feels like a paint app. Whether you're recreating the BBS art scene of the '90s or discovering textmode art for the first time, ANSIpants gives you serious drawing tools built for the medium. GET COZY • Pen, paint, smudge, dodge & burn, fill, box, oval, and text tools • Adaptive line width and stitch modes for crisp diagonals • Box and oval thickness controls tuned to the 2:1 character cell • Velocity-sensitive brush size, scatter, and color shift • Apple Pencil support on iPad COLOR WITH OR WITHOUT LIMITS • Classic ANSI 16, 256-color, and 24-bit true color modes • Bulk palette selection: grab the whole color cube or grayscale ramp in one tap • Color cycling and random pools for organic texture • Reference image sampling that respects your color depth TEXT IS THE POINT • TDF and FIGlet font rendering with a fast built-in font browser • Import your own font collections • Full ASCII and extended character set access BUILT FOR CREATIVITY • Up to 7 layers with offsets, visibility, and flattening • Deep undo with full history • Reusable tool presets • Status bar with cursor position, layer, and selection info SHARE IT ANYWHERE • Import and export .ANS files — compatible with the classic art scene • Export images to your photo library • iCloud document support across all your devices • Native document-based app: your art lives in Files One purchase, all three platforms: iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

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Many bug fixes and improvements. The soft launch continues! Canvas • The canvas draws CP437 characters from the IBM VGA 8x16 bitmap, matching the terminal and browser editions. A switch in About turns it off. • New app icon. Characters • The Unicode, CP437 and ASCII pickers use one scrolling grid. Picking a character keeps the picker open. Dragging across the grid adds characters to a Random pool. • ASCII document mode, alongside Unicode and Classic. • F1-F10 stamp glyphs from four banks on Mac and on iPad with a keyboard. • Hovering a character shows it enlarged with its name and code point. Save & Export • Formats are listed by extension: .ansipants, .png (optionally a 1920x1080 frame), .ans, .txt. Clicking an extension writes that one format without closing the sheet. • Save to Photos works on Mac. Save As opens the Mac save panel. • Saving does not overwrite an imported .ans file. Signed art opened for viewing cannot be changed. • A project file carries its presets. Tools • Mirror draws the mirrored side during the stroke. Smudge and Spray mirror too. • Velocity sensitivity has its own slider. Slider values can be typed. • Panspect inspects the cell under the pointer or a hovering Apple Pencil. • Dodge, Burn, Prism and Scatter have a Grays toggle. • With the background set to no color, drawing over a solid block keeps the visible color. • Smudge has FG, BG and Character toggles and a pick-up interval. Tangent is back in the oval options. Half-cell and quarter-cell brushes use the same resolver as the terminal editions. Presets and color • The app opens with preset 1 applied. Picking a tool ends a preset cycle. Presets exchange with the terminal editions. • Colors outside a cycle or random pool are dimmed. • True color documents have a 256 / 16M switch in the color bar. Hex codes and slider numbers can be typed. Layout • The sidebar, labels and status bar use the same layout and wording as the terminal editions. • On Mac and on iPad with a pointer, the status bar describes the control under the pointer. Coordinates follow the pointer. • iPad: the whole canvas is visible at launch. Fullscreen has a bottom bar with Colors, Tools and Presets pages. • iPhone: the Toolbox includes Velocity and color depth for every tool. • In a narrow window, a tab switches the bottom bar between colors and presets. Fixes • The canvas no longer jumps when Clear is armed, a Pencil hovers or a pinch is slow. • A stroke that leaves the canvas stops at the edge and resumes where it re-enters. • Backspace in the Text tool restores what the typing covered. • Fixes to blink, mono and 16-color export, very large exports and 1080 frames of tall art.

The developer, Arlo Fishman, 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 Collected

    The developer does not collect any data from this app.

    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
    Arlo Fishman
    Size
    6.2 MB
    Category
    Graphics & Design
    Compatibility
    Requires iOS 16.0 or later.
    • iPhone
      Requires iOS 16.0 or later.
    • iPad
      Requires iPadOS 16.0 or later.
    • Mac
      Requires macOS 13.0 or later.
    • Apple Vision
      Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
    Languages
    English
    Age Rating
    4+
    Copyright
    © 2026 Arlo Fishman