Getting Started

Try Online

OpenPencil runs in the browser — no installation required. Open app.openpencil.ink to start designing.

If you want to build on top of it instead of only using the default app, see the Programmable section and the Vue SDK.

Download Desktop App

Pre-built binaries for macOS, Windows, and Linux are available on the download page.

Platform	Download
macOS (Apple Silicon)	.dmg (aarch64)
macOS (Intel)	.dmg (x64)
Windows (x64)	.msi / .exe
Windows (ARM)	.msi / .exe
Linux (x64)	.AppImage / .deb

System Requirements

OpenPencil renders with CanvasKit on WebGL and relies on current web platform features, so it needs a recent browser engine. The web app supports Chrome 111, Edge 111, Firefox 128, and Safari 16.4 or later; Chromium-based browsers such as Brave and Opera follow their Chrome version. The desktop app renders in the system WebView, so its floor is the operating system's engine:

Platform	Requirement
macOS	macOS 13 Ventura or later with the current Safari updates installed (Safari 16.4 shipped with macOS 13.3).
Windows	Windows 10 or later with the Microsoft Edge WebView2 Evergreen runtime, which updates itself.
Linux	WebKitGTK 2.40 or later (webkit2gtk-4.1).

When the engine is too old, OpenPencil shows what to update instead of a blank window. If you see that notice on a system that meets the requirements, use its "Report a problem" link, which prefills the browser and engine details.

macOS via Homebrew

brew install --cask openpencil

This installs the signed macOS app (Apple Silicon and Intel) from the official Homebrew cask. Homebrew updates are reviewed upstream and may lag behind GitHub releases. For a release not yet available through Homebrew, use the direct download.

The desktop cask does not install the CLI; install it separately with npm install -g @open-pencil/cli.

If you used the archived custom tap, migrate with:

brew uninstall open-pencil/tap/open-pencil
brew install --cask openpencil

Building from Source

Prerequisites

• Bun (package manager and runtime)
• Rust (for desktop app only)

Installation

git clone https://github.com/open-pencil/open-pencil.git
cd open-pencil
bun install

Development Server

bun run dev

Opens the editor at http://localhost:1420.

Available Scripts

Command	Description
bun run dev	Dev server with HMR
bun run build	Production build
bun run check	Lint (oxlint) + typecheck (tsgo)
bun run test	E2E visual regression (Playwright)
bun run test:update	Regenerate screenshot baselines
bun run test:unit	Unit tests (bun:test)
bun run docs:dev	Documentation dev server
bun run docs:build	Build documentation locally (fast validation build)
bun run docs:build:production	Build deployable documentation, including LLM files

Desktop App (Tauri)

The desktop app requires Rust and platform-specific prerequisites.

macOS

xcode-select --install
cargo install tauri-cli --version "^2"
bun run tauri dev

Windows

1. Install Rust with stable-msvc toolchain:

   rustup default stable-msvc

2. Install Visual Studio Build Tools with "Desktop development with C++" workload
3. WebView2 is pre-installed on Windows 10 (1803+) and Windows 11
4. Run:

   bun run tauri dev

Linux

Install system dependencies (Debian/Ubuntu):

sudo apt install libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev build-essential curl wget file \
  libxdo-dev libssl-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev librsvg2-dev

Then:

bun run tauri dev

Build for Distribution

bun run tauri build                                    # Current platform
bun run tauri build --target universal-apple-darwin    # macOS universal