GIMP for Mac

New

• Cheesequake has added code so you can use Cut on a layer group. This will allow you to cut the same section of all layers in the group, provided they are rasterized and not locked. Jehan made further improvements to this code.
• The Sample Merged option for the Color Picker tool should now include any filters applied to a single layer when selecting colors. This was originally ignored due to an older optimization used for single layer images.
• Balooii made many improvements to boost performance when loading a large number of fonts. While some lag remains and will likely require us to update to GTK4, the initial GIMP start-up, typing in the text tool, and closing font lists should be much faster!
• Ondřej Míchal and Jehan have begun making changes to GIMP’s codebase to support an eventual GTK4 port. This includes swapping out the deprecated gtk_widget_show () functions with gtk_widget_set_visible (), replacing direct access to GdkEvent types with getter functions, replacing GDK_WA_CURSOR flags for explicit gdk_window_set_cursor () calls, and more. Even though we are not yet planning a GTK4 port, it doesn’t hurt to start preparing for it!
• New contributor Ryan McDonald and Idriss Fekir have fixed an issue where the end of a line might be hidden on the left/right side when the text layout is set to “fixed”. When loading older XCFs, the problem will still be visible, but any changes to the text layer will update it to the correct view.
• Kaushik B. has fixed an issue with the Heal Tool where you might get dark smudges if you move outside the bounds of a layer that’s smaller than the image canvas.
• New contributor Manu Cornet and Jehan fixed a crash that could happen in certain circumstances when pressing keys too quickly after releasing the spacebar when panning.
• Brandon Henderson reduced the sensitivity of the pan gestures when using the touchpad on macOS. This should make it easier to make fine-grain adjustments while editing an image on that platform!
• Richard Gitschlag has adjusted the Text Tool so that you can still select the text to edit even if it has a layer mask that partially covers it.
• Jacob Boerema resolved a bug in our metadata code that prevented GIMP from loading the Licensor metadata for an image.
• Alx Sa added a maximum width of tooltips, preventing options with long descriptions from filling the entire screen.
• Rodrigo Lledó Milanca updated our information on the ART Camera RAW plug-ins.
• Several bugs related to rasterized vector layers have been resolved. Thanks to BobsDaughter, teapot, and Richard Gitschlag for their testing and feedback!

New Rotation Stylus Dynamics Input:

• Jehan recently implemented a new dynamic input for painting - Rotation (also known as Barrel Rotation). This feature is prominently used in the original Wacom Art Pen and newer Wacom Art Pen 2 pens, and allows GIMP to react to how you have rotated the brush in your hand as you draw.
• You can adjust this value for custom brushes in the Dynamics editor. The MyPaint Brush tool is integrated with this feature as well, so it will automatically pass the rotation on as you paint if your stylus supports it.

OS and Platform Specific Improvements:

• GIMP uses GTK3, a cross-platform library for GUIs, to display its windows, widgets, and more. While it does a very good job of this, GIMP requires a lot of very complex interactions, and sometimes this can expose bugs that are only visible on certain platforms.

Bruno Lopes has been hard at work making a staggering number of platform-specific improvements to make GIMP work better. These include (but are not limited to):

• Using “Server-side Decorations” for dialogs on KDE instead of GNOME-style “Client-side Decorations”. (In other words, the buttons appear at the bottom of the dialog instead of the header bar).
• Secondary “pop-up” windows such as the resource selection and metadata editor dialogs should now appear in front of the first dialogue on Windows and macOS.
• The System theme now uses your system’s defined accent colors on Windows and macOS.
• Many improvements to proper focus setting on Windows and macOS.
• Improvements to multi-window mode operations on Windows and macOS.
• More system theme leaks caught on KDE Breeze system themes. This should help with graphical glitches in the UI.
• We now depend on winflexbison on Windows for building the Image Map plugin. This fixes an issue where Windows users couldn’t reopen their image maps, even when created with GIMP.
• Send to Email now works on MS Windows too using MAPI (works with Thunderbird and Outlook Classic).
• Windows users can now use “Open With” on multiple files on start, without creating multiple instances of GIMP. This is consistent with how Linux and other platforms operate.
• Because these improvements are wide-ranging, it is possible that we missed some interactions during testing that could cause a regression. If you notice any problems in GIMP 3.2.6, please let us know!

New macOS Package:

• Starting with GIMP 3.2.6, the .dmg package is now created at the same time as the Linux and Windows packages. This has not been possible for many years!
• We used to create binaries for macOS on a separate GitLab repository, which was mirrored to another repository on GitHub, which was connected to a proprietary CI service (CircleCI) which then was connected to a MacStadium runner. All of that with dozens and dozens of additional patches, scripts etc! As you can see, this was extremely complicated, but it was the only way to ship macOS binaries back then.
• Thanks to your donations, we were able to sponsor a MacBook Pro M5 for Bruno Lopes, who has been working since December 19, 2025 to fix that situation. As a result, GIMP can now be easily built on macOS with both MacPorts and Homebrew packages.

The macOS version of GIMP is now much more integrated with system-specific features, similar to the Linux and Windows version. A few examples:

• Titlebars on macOS now follow the dark/light mode settings of the current theme.
• Scrollbars now follow the macOS preference for whether they should be always visible or not.
• The more standard ~/Library/Caches/ location is used for storing caches of GIMP resources, fixing a bug of brushes directory not being created on macOS.
• GIMP’s number input buttons now respond to Cmd on macOS, like they do to Ctrl on other platforms. Some standard Mac shortcuts like, Ctrl + F2, Cmd + Shift + //Cmd + Ctrl + Space and Cmd + ` work as well.
• Meta and Hyper modifiers now work.
• Incorrect offsets when drag-n-dropping colors and layers/channels/paths have been fixed.
• Filters now accept negative values regardless of your system language settings.
• Plug-ins are treated as children of the main GIMP application, so they do not appear in the dock anymore.
• GIMP custom cursors are now properly set for all tools (previously, they were being overwritten by the macOS arrow).
• “GIMP”, “Windows” and “Help” menus now match the standard macOS menus with proper localization.
• Dialogs that shouldn’t be minimized (such as the search actions dialog shown with /) no longer show a minimize button on macOS.
• Remote files can be opened thanks to using the native macOS API, since GIO does not support HTTPS on this platform.
• Dashboard Backtraces are now supported using libunwind from libSystem.
• In the process of implementing all these improvements, the separate macOS “developer package” was dropped. It was created due to the limitations of the previous macOS build infrastructure and became unnecessary now that it is way easier to build GIMP on macOS.
• Plug-in and script developers should use the new GIMP SDK instead, or build GIMP directly.
• Again, this is a brand new package. So, if you notice any problems in GIMP 3.2.6, please let us know!

Security updates:

• GIMP has added support for importing many different file formats over the years. In recent years, security detection tools have improved and found more and more potential exploits in open source software. Jacob Boerema and Alx Sa have been busy testing and patching these.

For reference, the following Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) have been patched in this release:

• CVE-2026-18301, CVE-2026-18304, CVE-2026-18302, CVE-2026-18303, CVE-2026-18305, CVE-2026-18306, CVE-2026-18307, CVE-2026-18308, CVE-2026-18309, CVE-2026-62438, CVE-2026-62439, ZDI-CAN-29400, CVE-2026-59087, CVE-2026-59088, CVE-2026-59089, CVE-2026-66757, CVE-2026-59090, CVE-2026-59091, CVE-2026-66758, CVE-2026-66759, CVE-2026-78465, CVE-2026-78475, CVE-2026-79902, CVE-2026-80101, CVE-2026-82324, CVE-2026-82328, CVE-2026-82330, CVE-2026-82343
• We want to thank Jace, Brent Hull, Tristan Madani, Florent Saudel, bb1abu, Yukihiro Nakamura, Securin Disclose, and Zero Day Initiative for their security reports and suggestions. We also want to thank Michael Catanzaro for his help in organzing these reports and requesting CVEs for them.

For Plug-in/Script Authors and Builders:

• Our GdkPixbuf dependency minimum version has been updated to 2.32.0 due to an issue with Glycin printing a bunch of unnecessary messages on start-up related to a deprecated to-pixdata function.
• PDB commands now only show error/warning messages when run in interactive mode. For non-interactive modes, you won’t see anything printed in the console on PDB function failure. Instead, you can check the return values of the function and provide any messages you want to users.
• Jehan improved our method for checking if a plug-in has been updated since the last time you opened GIMP. Now we check creation time (ctime) instead of just modified time (mtime) since it might be always 0 on certain packages like flatpak. This should mean that changes you make during development are more likely to be loaded if you’re testing on flatpak.
• Kamil Burda fixed documentation for integer and double types in the Procedure Browser.
• Pranav P corrected a build issue that caused a freeze on s390x systems.

GIMP SDK:

• You can now build C plug-ins and GEGL filters from all the official packages we distribute by using the gimptool commandline tool. That is because we now ship all required headers and libraries for compiling (in total, less than 20MB).
• Before now, this was possible only on flatpak and Snap. So, Bruno Lopes extended it to the AppImage, Windows and macOS packages. We call this new feature the “GIMP SDK”.
• Take a look at the build instructions if you are interested.