Pixpop

A TUI paint application built with the Textual framework.

Pixpop was originally built to export pixel art as ANSI escape sequences, but evolved into a simple multi-layer, multi-canvas pixel drawing app.

I mainly use it now to create fun images to spice up my terminal MOTD via jestsay.

Documentation

Features

• Multiple canvases
• Fixed-size canvases with scrollbars (independent of terminal size)
• Multiple layers
• Full mouse and keyboard support (drawing is mouse-only)
• Configuration file for application defaults
• Save and export as .ans, .png, and .pix session files
• Open and load .ans, .png, and .pix session files
• Undo-redo stack
• Help screen and tooltips

Usage

pixpop

• Draw with the mouse (see Caveats for single-pixel drawing)
• Press ? for the help screen and full keybindings
• Ctrl+S to save, Ctrl+E to export, Ctrl+O to load (.ans, .png, .pix)
• Try to cat your .ans file in the terminal

See the documentation for details.

Screenshots

Installation

Terminal requirements

Pixpop needs two environment variables for full color support:

• TERM must be a 256-color variant (e.g. xterm-256color)
• COLORTERM=truecolor to enable 24-bit true color

Most modern terminals (kitty, alacritty, foot, ghostty, wezterm, GNOME Terminal, Konsole) set these correctly out of the box. If colors look off, check with:

echo $TERM       # should end in -256color
echo $COLORTERM  # should be truecolor

With uv (recommended):

uv tool install pixpop

With pipx:

pipx install pixpop

From source:

git clone https://github.com/umbsublime/pixpop.git
cd pixpop
uv sync
uv run pixpop

Pixpop session format (.pix)

Pixpop supports saving and loading full sessions as .pix files. These are gzipped JSON files that capture:

• Tabs (canvas names and order)
• Canvas size per tab
• Layers, visibility, and pixel data
• Undo/redo stacks per tab
• Shared tool state and palette selection

The .pix format is intended for restoring a working session rather than exporting artwork. For artwork exports, use PNG or ASCII.

Caveats

This application is designed to draw in the terminal, which comes with limitations. We are able to draw pixels (half-characters), but there is no way to know if the mouse is positioned on the top or bottom pixel. To work around this, set the pen to brush size 1 (a single pixel) and hold Alt to offset the cursor down by one pixel — painting the bottom half of the cell under the pointer. The Alt offset also applies to the cell, eraser, shape, and light/dark tools.

Powered by

• textual: TUI framework powering the app shell and widgets.
• textual-canvas: Pixel canvas widget used for drawing operations.
• textual-fspicker: File picker dialogs for save/load flows.
• textual-slider: Slider widget used for the light/dark step control.