10 best drawing apps for Mac [For simple tasks and advanced design]

Everyone needs a good drawing app at some point, whether it's for painting, creating a logo, or generating fonts. With numerous options to choose from, it's easy to find one that perfectly suits your needs.

Good news: you don't have to do it yourself. I analyzed forums, talked to fellow designers, and made a selection of the best free and paid drawing apps for Mac.

Best drawing apps for Mac: Comparison [2026 update]

First, let's clarify that everyone has a different understanding of the best drawing app. Is it one of the free drawing programs? Is it made for simple drawings or lets you paint on Mac beautifully? The level of skill has to be considered as well. 

Take a look at the quick comparison table, then dive into the full reviews below.

App	Best for	Price
Preview	Basic annotation, sketching	Free (built-in macOS)
Tayasui Sketches	General drawing, painting, illustration, graphic design	Free or from $9.99 for the Pro version
Paintbrush	Basic drawing	Free
Adobe Photoshop	Painting, photo editing, graphic design, and compositing	$22.99/mo
Sketch	Vector-based design, UI/UX, prototyping	From $12/mo (free for 30 days)
Sip	Color picking and palette management	Included in Setapp
Glyphs Mini	Edit and manage icon designs	Included in Setapp
Krita	Professional illustration, animation	Free or $12.99 one-time
Artstudio Pro	Painting and illustration, photo editing	$19.99 one-time
Diagrams	Visualize with diagrams	Included in Setapp

Now, let's figure out which of these best drawing apps you should choose to meet your needs.

Preview: Best drawing app for the simplest tasks

If you just want to do a rough sketch for Mac or a few simple drawings, you don't necessarily need to go about downloading lots of drawing apps, you can just use a drawing app for Mac you've already got — Preview.

While most of us think of Preview as an image or PDF viewer, it's also packs a basic toolset for annotating, drawing, and sketching. To see what you can do with Preview:

1. Open an image, document, or just a white sheet in Preview
2. Click Show Markup Toolbar in its top menu
3. From here you can choose tools, shapes, colors, thickness, type, and more to make necessary adjustments or create something completely new
4. Save and share your image

With Preview, you can draw using simple lines and adjust their thickness. It also lets you use simple shapes like squares, rectangles, or rounded rectangles, and choose from various colors using the color mixer. It’s definitely not built for serious design work, but if you just need to sketch something once in a while, it gets the job done — and honestly, I wouldn’t bother installing a separate app for that.

Best features:

• Basic drawing tools, including lines, shapes, and text annotation
• Color picker with customizable palette
• Line thickness adjustment for different stroke weights
• Works directly on PDFs and images without conversion

Pros:

• Preview works with existing files, so you can annotate or draw directly on PDFs or images
• It’s simple, always available, and built into macOS
• You can export your file as PDF, PNG, TIFF, OpenXCR, or HEIC
• Export options include Quartz filters like grayscale, blue tone, sepia, and more

Cons:

• You can’t create a blank canvas directly in the app — you’ll need to open a white image to simulate one
• The app doesn’t offer advanced drawing tools like brushes, pencils, or spray effects

Price: Free, built-in

Tayasui Sketches: Simple drawing app with pro-level features

Tayasui Sketches is one of the best drawing apps for iPad and Mac that is universally loved by painters, designers, illustrators, and art aficionados alike.

Tayasui Sketches makes it easy to bring what you have in mind to reality with its support for unlimited layers, infinite undos, smart rules, and a wide variety of painting tools. 

Users also mention its simplicity:

“Tayasui Sketches — a very user friendly, simple & fun drawing app. I liked it for Android but the IOS version has so many more features, its fantastic.  If somebody wanted a fun app with a gentle learning curve I would recommend this.”

For your future masterpieces, you’ll have access to markers, brushes, pens, erasers, and other essential illustration tools. Before putting them to canvas, you can preview how each tool will look — super helpful for getting the effect you want.

One of my favorite features is the wet watercolor brush. It simulates the real-life blending effect of watercolor painting. On top of that, there's a Zen Mode to minimize distractions so you can fully focus on your art.

If you want to paint on Mac, nothing else comes close to representing the physical experience of applying colors to paper than this drawing software for Mac. With just a bit of practice, you’ll see why Tayasui Sketches beats all the free drawing programs out there. 

Best features: 

• Unlimited layers with blend modes for complex compositions
• Over 20 realistic brushes including watercolor, acrylic, and oil paint
• Wet watercolor brush that simulates real paint blending

Pros:

• Minimalistic, uncluttered interface
• A variety of drawing tools for creating detailed art
• Easy learning curve
• Color mixing, gradients, acrylic brushes, and more
• Canvas rotation and a symmetry tool for mirrored drawing
• Platform variety: on macOS (MacBook), iPad, and Android

Cons:

• Can be pricey

Price: Free or from $9.99 for the Pro version

Paintbrush: Best free drawing app with Paint-like experience 

Lots of us remember the simplicity and versatility of Microsoft Paint. Macs used to have a similar app too called MacPaint (that’s been discontinued). Well, good news is some enthusiastic developers took the matter into their own hands and essentially recreated a Paint app for Mac — Paintbrush. 

This Mac equivalent of Paint will strike you as a complete duplicate of that old software you used to love. It features all the same tools, including rectangular and oval shapes, paint bucket, pencil, spray, lines, etc. You can also easily switch and add colors to your palette as you go.

Best features:

• Familiar Paint-style interface with classic tools
• Basic shapes including rectangles, ovals, and rounded corners
• Paint bucket, pencil, spray, and line tools
• Customizable color palette with easy color addition
• Transparency support for layered effects 

Pros:

• Supports various image formats, including GIF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP, and more
• Handles transparency
• Lets you paste copied images from most common Mac apps
• Lightweight and easy to use

Cons:

• Feature set is basic — only a few brushes and no layers (though still more advanced than Preview)
• The interface may feel a bit dated

Price: Free

Adobe Photoshop: Best all-in-one tool for professional illustration and photo editing

When designers and illustrators talk about industry standards, Adobe Photoshop inevitably comes up. It's been the go-to drawing and photo editing tool for decades..

Photoshop handles both raster drawing and photo manipulation, making it incredibly versatile. Whether you're painting detailed illustrations, retouching photos, designing marketing materials, or creating digital art from scratch, Photoshop has the tools you need. 

What I appreciate most about Photoshop is how it grows with your skills. Beginners can start with basic layers and brushes, while professionals dive into advanced masking, adjustment layers, smart objects, and automation through actions. The learning curve is steep, but the depth of capability makes it worthwhile for serious work.

“Photoshop has been used as a drawing tool since it first came out, it is the industry standard and all other programs are imitating it one way or another”, says a Reddit user. 

Best features:

• Thousands of customizable brushes
• Advanced layer system 
• Content-Aware Fill and other AI-powered editing tools
• Extensive plugin ecosystem for specialized workflows
• Cloud integration for seamless work across devices

Pros:

• Handles both illustration and photo editing
• Abundant tutorials and community support
• Regular updates with new AI-powered features
• Professional-grade color management and output options

Cons:

• Subscription pricing can be expensive 
• Requires powerful hardware for smooth performance
• Steep learning curve 

Price: From $22.99/month.

Sketch: Drawing tool for professionals working with vector-based designs

If you’ve already outgrown simple drawings you can do with Preview and Paintbrush, and want to move higher, try Sketch.

Sketch took the world by storm just a few years ago, when they essentially introduced a viable alternative to complex apps like Adobe Illustrator and targeted it specifically to digital design professionals. 

Everything you do in the Sketch program is done in vector, which means all shapes are infinitely resizable, in contrast to the raster graphics of Paintbrush. With this one of the best drawing app for Mac, you can design high-fidelity mockups for your website, prototype your iOS app, or just create complex illustrations. 

You can download and try the Sketch software for free, but after a month, you'll be required to pay the annual license fee, which is a big downside if you don’t plan to use the app regularly. In addition, Sketch is not the most accessible app for beginners, and it’s not exactly a drawing app for Mac due to its vector nature.

Best features:

• Vector-based design 
• Intuitive artboard system 
• Extensive plugin ecosystem 
• Symbol and style management 
• Export presets for different screen densities and formats

Pros:

• Packed with functions you'd expect from a top-tier design tool
• Supports real-time collaboration
• Offers a rich plugin ecosystem
• Ideal for professionals working with vector-based designs

Cons:

• Less suited for raster painting
• Steep learning curve for beginners
• May be less appealing to casual users or hobbyists

Sip: Essential tool for better color selection

Regardless of the best drawing app for Mac you choose to use in the end, one of the most difficult things to do is going to be finding the right colors out there. Sometimes, you might come across a beautiful color you might use in the future, but where do you save it? Sip. 

Sip is the most intuitive, handy, and non-intrusive palette organizer available for Mac. This little utility lives in your Mac’s menu bar, where it saves all the colors you like and simultaneously features a tiny color picker on the side of your screen, which makes Sip instantly available in any sketch program for Mac. 

What I personally love about Sip is how it removes friction from my design workflow. When I'm working across multiple apps ( say, designing in Sketch, then switching to Photoshop for image work) my color palettes stay consistent. I can pick a color from a website, save it to my palette, and instantly use it in any design tool without manually copying color codes.

“An essential tool for any web developer or designer!” shares a Setapp user.

Best features:

• Palette organization system with naming and categorization
• Multiple color format support (HEX, RGB, HSL, and custom formats)
• Automatic format detection 
• Universal shortcuts to send colors directly to design apps
• Contrast checker for accessibility compliance

Pros:

• Lives in menu bar without cluttering your workspace
• Syncs color palettes across all your design applications
• Custom color formats for specialized workflows
• Keyboard shortcuts eliminate repetitive clicking

Cons:

• Requires practice to integrate into existing workflow
• Menu bar space may be limited on smaller screens

Price: Available on Setapp, a subscription platform with 250+ apps. You can try it free for 7 days.

Glyphs Mini: Compact font editor for your Mac

If you've ever wanted to create your own fonts or icon sets, Glyphs Mini is an accessible entry point into type design. This compact font editor lets you quickly design and export OpenType fonts for desktop and web use.

I like its streamlined interface. You're not overwhelmed with advanced typography features — instead, you get the essential tools to shape letters, manage glyphs, and export usable fonts. It's perfect for beginners diving into type design or designers who need to create custom icon fonts for projects.

Best features:

• Vector editing with precise curve control
• Component system for efficient shape reuse across glyphs
• Pixel tool for creating component-based pixel fonts
• Built-in filters including Offset Curve and Round Corners
• Import SVG images and Adobe Illustrator outlines
• Export to OTF and WOFF formats 

Pros:

• Cleaner interface than professional font editors
• Perfect for learning type design fundamentals
• Supports Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, emoji, and icon fonts
• Consistent metric controls for professional results

Cons:

• Limited to single-master fonts
• Requires understanding of basic typography principles

Price: Available on Setapp, a subscription platform with 250+ apps. You can try it free for 7 days.

Krita: Free drawing app for Mac suitable for pros

Krita is another excellent open-source and free drawing app for Mac. It’s built for professionals — or those on the path to becoming one. 

This app is packed with advanced tools: an extensive brush library, color and shape tools, and everything you need to create artwork from scratch. 

It includes over 100 customizable brushes, complete with brush stabilizers and nine different brush engines. Despite its power, Krita isn’t as resource-hungry as some of its more well-known competitors like Adobe Express or Adobe Photoshop.

Krita is great for illustration, animation, comics, matte painting, textures, and concept art. While Krita is free and open source, you might also come across paid versions on platforms like App Store, Steam or the Windows Store. These paid versions exist to help support the developers and fund full-time work on the app.

That said, even if you're using the free version, you're completely free to use Krita commercially — for anything from selling your artwork to research, education, and more.

“Personally I use Krita, but that's because it's free, open source and I'm used to it. I don't like using tools that can be taken away from me, so I don't like Photoshop”, shares a Reddit user.

Best features:

• Over 100 customizable brushes 
• Brush stabilizers for smooth, clean lines
• Frame-by-frame raster animation tools
• Perspective grids and assistants for accurate drawing
• HDR painting support for advanced workflows

Pros:

• Training materials available on the official website
• Supports frame-by-frame raster animation
• Quick learning curve with a well-organized interface
• Cross-platform: available on macOS, Windows, and Linux

Cons:

• No dedicated customer support team
• Free version is not available on iPhones
• Occasional crashes reported on macOS

Price: Free or $12.99 one-time. 

Artstudio Pro: Painting + photo editing app

Artstudio Pro is a powerful painting and image editing app with an interface that resembles Photoshop, but feels easier to use in practice.

It offers a toolkit with 27 creative features, from crop and eyedropper to wet paint, smudge, dodge, and gradient fill. The app also features an advanced brush engine with over 100 built-in brushes and 80 customizable settings. You’ll find powerful tools for painting, sketching, inking, markers, dots, specks, and more. 

One standout feature is its flexible layering system, which lets you fine-tune layers using curves, color balance, hue, brightness, and other adjustments.

Best features:

• 27 creative tools, including wet paint, smudge, dodge, and gradient fill
• Advanced brush engine with 100+ built-in brushes and 80 settings
• Flexible layering with curves, color balance, and adjustment layers
• Ability to open and work with multiple files at once

Pros:

• Photoshop-like user interface
• Seamlessly syncs between MacBook and iPad
• Supports PSD files and exports in PSD, PNG, JPEG, and TIFF

Cons:

• Working with large PSD files may slow down your Mac
• Steep learning curve for beginners

Price: $19.99 one-time. 

Diagrams: Best app for flowcharts, mind maps, and technical diagrams

When you need to visualize processes, map out ideas, or document system architectures, Diagrams is the tool that makes complex information digestible. It's built specifically for macOS and optimized for Apple Silicon, so it runs smoothly even with large, complicated diagrams.

I use Diagrams for everything from quick mind mapping sessions to detailed software architecture documentation. The infinite canvas means you never run out of space, and the grid keeps everything aligned without feeling restrictive. What really speeds up my workflow is the preset shapes and palette options — I can create professional-looking diagrams in minutes rather than hours.

Best features:

• Infinite canvas that scales to any diagram complexity
• Custom shape library with preset palettes 
• Grid and alignment tools for precise positioning
• Element templates for recurring diagram patterns

Pros:

• Native macOS design 
• Handles everything from quick mind maps to complex system diagrams
• No learning curve if you're familiar with Mac apps
• Fast performance even with large, detailed diagrams

Cons:

• Limited collaboration features compared to cloud-based alternatives
• No real-time co-editing for team projects

Price: Available on Setapp, a subscription platform with 250+ apps. You can try it free for 7 days.

Final thoughts on the best drawing apps for Mac

The best drawing app for your Mac depends entirely on what you're creating and your skill level. 

For professional work, Adobe Photoshop delivers unmatched versatility for both illustration and photo editing, while Sketch dominates UI/UX design with its vector-based workflow. Krita proves you don't need expensive software to create professional artwork — it's powerful, free, and actively developed.

Don't overlook the supporting tools that enhance your creative workflow. Sip keeps your color palettes organized across every app, Glyphs Mini opens up type design possibilities, and Diagrams transforms complex information into clear visuals.

The challenge with creative software is managing multiple subscriptions and licenses. Setapp solves this by bundling Sip, Glyphs Mini, Diagrams, and over 250 other Mac apps into one subscription. Try Setapp free for 7 days and discover which combination of drawing and design tools works best for your creative process.