Related Pages
palette
Colors
Choose quick colors, sample colors, shift hues, tint artwork, and recolor selected areas.
select_all
Selections
Select pixels with boxes, color matching, or polygons, then copy, paste, move, clear, or adjust them.
layers
Layers
Separate, merge, reorder, lock, and link transparent cursor layers.
Toolbar & Tools
The toolbar on the left holds the drawing tools, three across: freehand tools, shapes, then Fill, Picker and Move, then the three selection tools. The letter in each button's corner is its keyboard shortcut. Click a tool's button again to open its settings, if it has any.
Freehand pixel drawing. Paints with the active color. Supports adjustable brush size (1px to 16px) and opacity. Hold Shift while drawing for a straight line from where the stroke started; it snaps like the Line tool.
At size 1, turn on Pixel-perfect (1px only) in the settings bar to keep freehand curves and diagonals one pixel thin. It is off by default, and the editor remembers it. See Pixel-perfect below for how it works.
Paints round, antialiased strokes with transparent edge pixels. Choose a size from 1px to 32px, adjust opacity, and use Hardness to control how quickly the stroke fades toward its edge. At 1px and 2px there are not enough pixels to form a visibly round fade, so those sizes behave much like a lower-opacity Pencil; use 3px or larger when you want a distinct soft edge.
Removes pixels from the active layer. Shares the hard-edged size slider (1px to 16px). You can lower the opacity for a softer erase effect or for gradient cleanup work.
Draws straight pixel lines on the active layer. Hold Shift to snap to flat, upright, 45° or the pixel-art slopes 1:2 and 1:3 (one step for every 2 or 3 pixels, either way round). A snapped line steps evenly from where you started: a 1:2 line is 2, 2, 2… pixels, and only the last step is short, where you stop. Lines drawn without Shift are not changed, so most angles still mix step lengths.
Draws outline rectangles on the active layer. The border thickness is driven by the current brush size settings.
Draws outline circles or ellipses on the active layer. Hold Shift while dragging to lock the proportions into a perfect circle. Line, Rect and Circle share U: press it again to move to the next one.
Fills connected pixels of a matching color with your active color. If a selection is active, the fill area is constrained inside the selection boundaries.
Samples any existing pixel color from the canvas. Click on a pixel to capture its exact RGBA color and automatically set it as the active drawing color.
Moves elements around. Dragging on the canvas shifts the active layer. You can enable Move all layers together or Apply move to every frame in its flyout options when making global shifts. Arrow keys nudge by 1px; hold Shift for 5px. Arrow keys stop at the canvas edge until you press again.
You can drag past the canvas edge. While you drag, moving back restores everything. Pixels left outside the canvas when you let go are clipped, so the editor asks first, in the notice in the middle of the screen, and says how many pixels are affected, including any on frames or layers you cannot see. Choose Move anyway or Cancel (or press Enter or Esc); until you do, the rest of the editor waits.
Drag a rectangle to select it, or switch it to Ellipse in its panel (or press M again) to select ellipses; the button then shows a dashed ellipse. Press Shift during the drag for a square or circle. Drag inside a selection to move its pixels. See Selections.
Click points around an irregular shape; click the first point, double-click or press Enter to close it. Drag inside a selection to move its pixels.
Click a color to select the matching pixels around it. Set Tolerance in its panel to include near matches. Dragging draws a box instead.
Auto Crop is not a tool: it is in the size list on the right of the canvas, beside Delete Size. See Auto Crop below.
Auto Crop
Auto Crop trims empty transparent margin from around your artwork onto a smaller square canvas. It reads every frame and every layer, hidden layers included, so nothing is clipped off a frame you are not looking at. The artwork is never resized or resampled: only the canvas around it shrinks, and hotspots move with it.
Click the crop button beside Delete Size, in the size list on the right of the canvas, or press C. The panel opens beside the button and your tool stays as it was. It reports the artwork's real size, previews Before against After crop at a matching display size, and offers a single button that names the size it will produce.
Crops to the smallest Windows accessibility pointer size that holds the artwork across all frames and layers, including hidden layers. The 15 sizes run from 32×32 to 256×256 in 16px steps. See the full size table and site presets.
Imported images sometimes carry nearly invisible pixels far from the artwork, often in the corners. Auto Crop counts every pixel that is not fully transparent, so one of these can keep the canvas at full size. When faint pixels are what stops a smaller crop, the panel offers Ignore faint pixels. It is off until you tick it.
Once ticked, the crop is sized without them, and the pixels that would be removed are marked on the canvas with the new crop outlined. The panel also says how many there are and on which frames. Only faint pixels outside the new crop are removed; faint pixels inside it, such as soft edges, stay. The slider sets how faint counts as faint, up to 10% opacity.
Appears when an artwork-sized square would be smaller than the Windows crop target. Crops to the artwork's own square size instead, which can be a custom canvas size rather than a preset.
Scaling warning: Windows may resize a custom canvas to match the pointer size and display scale, making pixel art look softer or uneven. Keeping the default crop matches a Windows size, but other settings may still resize it. See how Windows scaling affects a tighter crop.
Appears only when this cursor already has a size matching the crop target. The panel loads that existing version and shows it beside the preview so you can compare before agreeing. Until you tick the box, the crop button stays disabled.
Test Your Cursor with Live Preview
Click Preview on the right toolbar to open the Live Cursor Preview flyout. Move into its test area to apply your artwork as the actual browser cursor. Opening the panel alone does not generate anything; cursor images are created lazily on first pointer entry and cached until the artwork changes.
Brush Settings & Opacity
Pencil, Eraser, Line, Rect, and Circle share hard-edged size and opacity controls up to 16px. The separate Brush supports round sizes up to 32px and adds Hardness from 0% for a wide transparent fade to 100% for a solid center with a narrow antialiased boundary. The on-canvas outline shows the full footprint that will be painted or erased. At a canvas edge, the part outside the canvas is clipped while the preview retains its real size and shape.
Pixel-perfect (1px only)
When you draw freehand at 1px, the mouse rarely moves exactly diagonally. Each step often goes across and then down, which leaves an extra pixel in the corner (an L shape) and makes curves look 2px thick where they turn. Turn on Pixel-perfect (1px only) in the Pencil's settings bar to remove those corner pixels as you draw.
The Pencil looks at each new pixel together with the two before it. If the three make an L, the middle pixel goes back to what was there before the stroke: the empty canvas or the artwork underneath, never a hole. Straight lines and diagonals are never changed, and a pixel the stroke already painted earlier, where it crosses itself, stays.
It only works at 1px, and is greyed out at larger sizes. A thicker Pencil paints a square at each step, and the squares overlap, so the corner of a thick line is meant to be solid. Removing the corner square would cut a notch, and removing only its own pixels would just round the corner.
Pointers Panel
The Pointers panel contains high-quality pre-designed cursor silhouettes (classic arrows, loading frames, help indicators). Drag one onto your canvas, or click to place it centered. The pointer scales and recenters in an import preview, allowing you to align it perfectly before committing.