Pixen

Pixel art and animation editor for iOS

Pixen is a native pixel art editor for iPhone and iPad, designed for working with low-resolution raster art like the 8-bit sprites found in old-school video games. It packs all the tools pixel artists need into an intuitive, native interface, with support for high zoom levels, animation editing, color palettes, and more.

Projects Gallery

The Pixen experience starts in the projects gallery, which allows you to manage all of your creations in one place.

Pixen on iPad showing the document library

You can import and export files in a variety of formats, including PNG, JPEG, GIF, ICO, BMP, TIFF, SVG, and PSD. Files can be imported from your Photos library, the Files app, or the clipboard.

Pixen for macOS users can also take advantage of seamless iCloud sync. When you're ready, you can share your creations with friends.

Tools and Apple Pencil

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.

All of Pixen's tools are fully compatible with Apple Pencil on iPad. Use the double-tap gesture on Apple Pencil 2 to quickly switch to your last tool, switch to the eraser, or bring up the color picker. Pixen also supports hover with Apple Pencil Pro, so you can preview what you're about to draw before your Apple Pencil touches the screen.

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 like sorting colors and removing duplicates directly in the app.

Pixen on iPad showing the color palette panel

Animations

Create and arrange image frames in the filmstrip view to piece together animations. Pixen can import animated PNGs, animated GIFs, and sprite sheets. It can export animations as animated GIFs, animated PNGs, movies, image sequences, and sprite sheets!

Pixen on iPad showing the animation timeline

Grid

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.

Animated example of a Pixen drawing pattern

Preview

While editing at high zoom levels, use the Preview feature to see the canvas scaled out. You can play back animations and tile small images, handy when working on repeated patterns.

And a lot more...

iCloud Sync

Sync your creations with Pixen for Mac over iCloud and resume your work right where you left off, regardless of device.

Layers

Take advantage of the flexibility of layers and change opacities, blend modes, and more to compose creative effects.

Filters

Invert colors, convert to grayscale, dither, apply sepia tone, remove alpha components, palettize, adjust hue, exposure, brightness, contrast, and more.

Pixel Perfect

Pixel Perfect mode removes extra pixels as you draw, so every path is at most 1 pixel wide. In other words, it removes the middle pixel of an L shape.

Custom Backgrounds

Pick a flat, striped, or checkered background to be drawn beneath the canvas, or set a reference image.

Keyboard Shortcuts

If you use your iPad with a keyboard, increase productivity with Pixen's wide array of keyboard shortcuts.

Wide Format Support

Export your artwork in PNG, JPEG, GIF, ICO, BMP, TIFF, SVG, and PSD file formats.

Sharing

Share your creations quickly and easily via AirDrop, Messages, email, and more!

Customizability

Adjust the size and position of Pixen's sidebars, customize the Apple Pencil 2 double-tap gesture, personalize the default tools, and more.

Native iOS App

Pixen is carefully designed for iOS and built with native technologies like Core Animation, Core Image, and UIKit to take full advantage of what iPhone and iPad have to offer.

Pixen Beta on TestFlight

Help shape the future of Pixen by signing up for our beta releases on TestFlight. Just download TestFlight from the App Store and join our preview program to get started.

★★★★★
Amazing for a new artist, deserves your attention

I just recently got into pixel art. As a software developer I've always wanted to make games but felt lost when it came to creating assets. Pixen takes that fear away. It provides a great workflow when switching between the mobile and desktop versions, and all of the tools you need are just right there.

- App Store review

We hope you enjoy Pixen, the best pixel art editor for iOS! Be sure to also check out Pixen for macOS.