Mojave Paint: A new macOS image editor for Apple Silicon
About
A new macOS image editor with familiar key bindings and a somewhat retro aesthetic. Keeping the dream of the '90s alive!
No AI tools here – plenty of other apps do that. We focus on deterministic and mathematical mutations rather than stochastically generated slop.
Built for Apple Silicon. Requires macOS 15 Sequoia.
This free download offers a 14-trial period, after which
it's a $9.99 one-time purchase to buy a perpetual license.
Blog
Features
These tiles were, big surprise, all made in Mojave Paint.
What can you do with Mojave Paint?
Design a flyer!
Design App Store screenshots!
Draw an icon!
Color change specific areas of a photograph!
Feature highlights
Click a link for a short 5-10s video preview.
- Layers
- Blend modes
- Selections
- Channels
- Multiple documents in tabs
- Spring-loaded tabs
- Text tool
- Paintbrush
- Gradient tool
- Adjustment layers
- Free transform
- Filters
- Adjustments
- Image/canvas resize
- Cropping
- Guides and snapping
- Exporting (paid version)
- Connect to external services
- Quickmask
- Layer masks
- Magic wand
Video gallery
Recent releases
1.5.2 – August 14, 2026
New
- Added all the contrast blend modes: Soft Light, Hard Light, Vivid Light, Linear Light, Pin Light, and Hard Mix
- Pass Through blend mode for folders
- High Pass filter
- There's a shortcut to the most recently used filter at the top of the Filter menu, also accessible with ctrl-cmd-F.
Changed (3)
- Option-clicking the Layer Mask button creates an inverted layer mask
- Layer cut/copy/paste now works across documents
- You can cmd-click recent documents to select multiple for opening
Fixed (3)
- Magic wand and paint bucket tools weren't extending out to the full document edge when a pixel layer has transparent margins. Related: Paint bucket tool wasn't working at all on a fully transparent layer.
- Magic wand tool now works correctly on a Type layer. Previously it silently fell back to "Sample all layers" mode.
- Improved memory usage in the undo/redo stack. Now small brush strokes and filters applied to small selected areas use far less memory.
1.5.1 – August 13, 2026
Fixed
- The Export dialog was showing the first document's preview image even after switching to another document
1.5.0 – August 12, 2026
This release moves away from the "crippled but use forever" model to a "100% functional but with a time-limited trial" model. This means that after this upgrade, non-paid users will only have 14 days to be able to use the app until it requires purchase to keep working. The upside is trial users get all the functionality including Export as PNG and JPEG and any other supported format.
New
- Enhanced File > Export dialog that includes a quality preview on the main canvas and a navigator view to pan and zoom
Fixed (4)
- The Curves adjustment was double-applying the RGB curve on top of the selected channel curve
- You could delete the last root node if it was a folder node, leaving you with no layers
- The checkerboard background was fixed in screen coordinates instead of scrolling with the document
- Performance issue with drag-through on the SliderDropdown control that's used everywhere, such as for opacity and brush size
Interactive roadmap
What missing features are your biggest pain points in Mojave Paint right now?
Shape layers
Such as square (with adjustable corner radius), circle, other primitive shapes. Ability to set fill and stroke and stroke width.
Smart objects
Ability to set a bitmap as immutable, such that transforming it leaves the original copy non-destructively in tact. This makes sizing up and down not lose detail.
Dodge and burn tools
Brush that lightens and darkens.
Warp tool
Warp on a grid, or fancier options like Liquify.
Camera Raw features
This has nothing to do with raw files, it means photo retouching controls such as sliders for exposure, color balance, shadows, highlights, etc.
PSD import and export
And layered TIFF while we're at it. Pixel layers and type layers (with styles) should come across in high fidelity, other features will have to be lossy.
Pattern fill
Repeating patterns you can use as a fill anywhere you'd otherwise use solid color or gradient fills.
Brush support
We currently just have circle and square. This would let you use arbitrary bitmaps as brushes, and import Photoshop ABR brushes.
Character and paragraph styles
Character style would include kerning and tracking. Paragraph style would include alignment and leading.
Snap to guides
Dragged element snapping to guides. Affects the move tool and the rectangle marquee and crop tool regions, among possibly other things.
Layer styles
Color and gradient overlay, drop shadow, outline, outer glow, etc.
Dark mode
Configurable in settings to be "Light", "Dark", or "System (OS)"