MS Paint for the Mac.
Preview markup will not number a step, pixelate a token, or let you drag the result into Slack. ItsPaint will. Blank canvas at the size you asked for, paste one image on top of another, crop it, mark it up, drag it out. Free on the App Store. MIT. 3.45 MB.
brew install --cask joshlin2201/itspaint/itspaint
Or grab the notarised disk image from Releases. Signed, stapled, opens offline.
Why people end up here
The list people write out when they go looking.
Preview cannot make a blank canvas. Paintbrush has not kept up with macOS. Krita is a gigabyte and built for painters. Pixelmator and Photoshop cost money. Preview is already on your Mac and will not number a step. Here is the list, and where each one lives in ItsPaint.
- A blank canvas at the size I choose⌘N, then Image ▸ Canvas size… for exact pixels. Set the size you usually want and ⌘N is already right.
- Drop an image on top of another imageDrag it in from the Finder, or paste with ⌘V. A dropped image lands centred on the pointer.
- Move and scale it before it sticksIt arrives floating. Drag the image, or drag its corner handles.
- Don't crop it when it's bigger than the canvasThe canvas grows to hold it, and the window follows.
- Crop, and zoom out far enough to see it allDrag a selection then ⌘K. ⌘9 fits the whole thing to the window, well below 100%.
- A colour picked off the image, as hexEyedropper, or hold ⌥ from any tool. Every swatch shows its hex.
- Show up in right-click ▸ Open WithRegistered as an editor for PNG, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF and HEIC.
- Be free, and stay freeMIT licensed. No account, no telemetry, no trial, no upsell.
Beyond Preview
The markup jobs the built-in tools skip.
Markup cannot number the steps of a bug report or hide a token. Those two are the reason to open something else.
Step badges
Click, click, click. Numbered circles that turn a screenshot into a walkthrough, and renumber themselves through undo.
Pixelate
Drag a box over the token and it mosaics, so it does not read at a glance. For an actual secret, cover it with a filled rectangle.
Spotlight
Drag a box over the part that matters and everything outside it dims, so the eye lands where you meant it to on a busy screenshot. It darkens rather than veils, so a background you already removed stays removed.
Clone and Soften
Copy pixels from one part of an image to another, which is how you put back a chunk a generator left out of a shape. Click a part that is intact, then drag over the part that is missing. Soften hides the join.
Remove Background, and real transparency
One command keys the page out from behind the subject — no model, no network, nothing uploaded. It declines rather than guessing when the page is not separable, and Instant Alpha is there with a tolerance you control when it does.
Fifteen shapes, thirteen tools
Arrows, callouts, stars, polygons. Solid, dashed, or dotted, with fills. Plus brush nibs from pencil-hard to airbrush.
Nine export formats
PNG, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF, HEIC, AVIF, PDF and ICO. Formats without alpha flatten onto Colour 2 rather than onto black. The native document is a lossless PNG with a JSON sidecar, so it still opens in anything that reads a PNG.
No account. No telemetry. No network code at all.
The claim is checkable, not marketing: the sandbox declares no network entitlement, and there is no URLSession anywhere in the source. MIT licensed, zero third-party dependencies, plain AppKit and SwiftUI. Read the source.
sandbox · user-selected files · app-scoped bookmarks — no network entitlement
every entry is an Apple framework — no CFNetwork, no Network.framework
no matches
Answers
Questions people arrive with.
Is there an MS Paint for Mac?
Not from Apple. macOS ships Preview, which annotates an image you already have but will not create a blank one. ItsPaint is the missing half: a new canvas at any size, the familiar tool rail, and an export that takes one keystroke.
How do I make a blank canvas on a Mac?
In ItsPaint, ⌘N. Pick exact pixel dimensions in Image ▸ Canvas size…, or set the size you usually start from once and every new document opens at it.
How do I paste one image on top of another?
Drag the file straight onto the canvas or press ⌘V. It arrives floating so you can drag it, scale it by its corner handles, and place it. If it is bigger than the canvas, the canvas grows rather than cropping it.
How do I remove a background without Photoshop?
Image ▸ Remove Background keys the page out from behind the subject in one command. It runs entirely on your Mac — no model, no upload, no account — and when the background is not separable it says so and leaves the picture alone rather than erasing it. Instant Alpha is the manual route, with a tolerance you control.
What about Paintbrush?
Paintbrush was the answer for a long time and it is still free, but it has not kept pace with recent versions of macOS. ItsPaint is a fresh, native build: Swift 6, AppKit and SwiftUI, universal for Apple silicon and Intel, notarised, and no third-party dependencies.
Is it actually free, or free for thirty days?
Actually free. MIT licensed, the whole source is on GitHub, there is no account, no telemetry and nothing to buy. It is also on the Mac App Store at no cost if you prefer installing that way.
Get it on your Mac.
Free on the App Store. Or the brew command at the top, or the disk image. macOS 14 or later, universal. If you already installed it, a star is how the next person finds it from search.
Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Apple silicon and Intel.
