Draw and paint with a pen, a mouse or your fingers. This page covers the tools, layers, selections, the flipbook, shortcuts, the full version and updates.
Getting started
Start a canvas: on the home screen pick a size (square, A4 at 300 dpi, Full HD, 4K, a phone wallpaper, a social post or your own) and press Create. Open… opens a drawing (.airdraw), a layered PSD or any image; your recent drawings are listed below.
Draw: the brush (B) is ready. The two sliders on the left set the size and opacity; the circle at the top right picks the colour.
Move around: drag with two fingers to move, pinch to zoom, twist two fingers to rotate. 0 fits the canvas to the window, R straightens it.
Save:Cmd+S keeps every layer in an .airdraw file; Cmd+E exports a picture.
The drawing screen
The bar at the top holds the menu (☰), undo and redo, and the tools. Size and opacity sliders are on the left. The layers button and the colour circle are at the top right. Tab hides everything but the canvas.
The selected tool’s options appear in a bar at the bottom: the fill mode, the selection shape, the liquify kind and so on.
Brushes and pen pressure
Tap the brush tool again to open the brush library: pencil, ink, fine liner, marker, airbrushes, charcoal, paint, calligraphy, watercolour, pastel, spray and more, each with a live preview. Change a brush’s smoothing, hardness, grain, roundness and angle there, or duplicate it to make your own. Tap the eraser again to pick the brush it erases with.
Pen pressure works with Windows pens and tablets. If strokes come out too thick or too thin, move Pen pressure in the menu between soft and firm.
Fingers paint (menu): turn it off to paint only with the pen and move the canvas with your fingers.
QuickShape: hold the pen still at the end of a stroke and it becomes a clean line, ellipse, rectangle or polygon. Shift-click draws a straight line from the last stroke.
Symmetry (menu): vertical, horizontal, four quarters, or radial with 3 to 12 parts.
Layers
The layers button (top right) lists every layer with a thumbnail. Tap a layer to work on it, tap its eye to hide it. Under the list are the selected layer’s name, opacity, blend mode (13 modes), Lock alpha (paint only where there is paint), Clipping mask (show only over the layer below), Lock layer and Reference, and buttons to duplicate, merge down, move up or down, clear and delete it.
A reference layer is the one the paint bucket reads: keep line art on it and fill colours on the layers under it.
Drop an image on the window to add it as a new layer.
Selections
Select (M): rectangle, ellipse, lasso or magic wand, chosen in the bottom bar. Hold Shift to add and Alt to subtract. The bar also has select all, invert, grow, shrink, feather and deselect. While something is selected, painting, filling, filters, Delete and copy stay inside it; Cmd+T moves just the selected pixels.
Fill and gradients
Fill (G) has four modes in the bottom bar: Bucket, Linear gradient, Radial gradient (drag) and Lasso fill (draw the shape to fill). The bucket’s Close gaps keeps colour from leaking through small breaks in the line art; Tolerance sets how alike the pixels must be.
Transform, adjust, blur and liquify
Transform (V or Cmd+T): move, scale, stretch, rotate (Shift snaps to 15°) and flip the layer or selection, then Apply.
Adjustments (top bar): Gaussian and motion blur, sharpen, noise, hue, saturation, brightness, contrast, warmth and invert, with a live preview.
Blur and liquify (U): a blur brush, and push, twirl, pinch and expand.
The menu also has canvas size, crop to selection, rotate and flip the canvas, flatten and a transparent background.
Reference image
Menu › Reference image… opens a picture in a small floating window next to your canvas. Tap it to pick a colour from it.
Flipbook animation
Menu › Flipbook turns the drawing into a short animation: every layer above the background is one frame. The strip under the canvas plays it, adds or duplicates a frame, sets the speed (1–30 frames per second) and the onion skin (earlier frames in red, later ones in green). Export › GIF saves the animation.
Save, export and recovery
Cmd+S saves an .airdraw file with every layer. Saving happens in the background, so you can keep drawing.
Export (Cmd+E): PNG, JPEG, WebP, layered PSD (opens in Photoshop and other apps), or GIF for a flipbook.
Airdraw keeps a copy of unsaved work every minute. If it closes unexpectedly, the home screen offers to open it again.
Shortcuts
Brush / eraser / smudge
B / E / S
Fill and gradients
G
Eyedropper (or hold Alt)
I
Transform
V
Select
M
Blur and liquify
U
Brush size smaller / bigger
[ / ]
Undo
Cmd+Z
Redo
Cmd+Shift+Z
New layer
Cmd+Shift+N
Select all / deselect / invert
Cmd+A / Cmd+D / Cmd+Shift+I
Clear the selection or layer
Delete
Copy / cut / paste
Cmd+C / Cmd+X / Cmd+V
Copy the whole picture
Cmd+Shift+C
Fit to window / actual size
0 / 1
Straighten the view / mirror the view
R / H
Hide the interface
Tab
Open / save / save as / export
Cmd+O / Cmd+S / Cmd+Shift+S / Cmd+E
Mac shortcuts are shown; on Windows use Ctrl for Cmd and Alt for Option.
Full version
Every feature is free for 7 days. After that everything keeps working and saving drawings stays free, but exported and copied pictures carry a small “Airdraw · trial” mark (PSD exports come out as one layer).
Mac App Store: the menu (☰, top left) › Buy full version. Bought it on another Mac? Use Restore purchase there.
Windows: buy at doublehash.app/airdraw. The licence key appears right after payment — paste it into the menu (☰, top left) and press Activate. The key works on your own computers and for future versions, offline. Keep it somewhere safe; if you lose it, email us your receipt.
Microsoft Store: the same as the Windows download — buy at doublehash.app and paste the key in the same place. Windows keeps the Store version's settings apart from the zip version's, so a key entered in one has to be entered once more in the other.
Updating
Mac App Store: the App Store installs updates (App Store › Updates, or turn on automatic updates).
Microsoft Store: the Store installs updates by itself (Microsoft Store › Library).
Windows download (zip): Airdraw checks once a day and shows Update to … at the top of the menu (☰) when a new version is out. Download the new zip, quit Airdraw, and replace the old folder (or just airdraw.exe) with the new one. Your settings and licence key are kept — they live in your user settings folder, not next to the app.
Flipbook (menu › Flipbook): every layer above the background is a frame. Play it, use onion skins, and export an animated GIF.
The menu has a link to this guide, the version line (click to copy it) and, in the Windows download, a daily update check.
1.0.0 — October 2026
First release: 14 brushes with pen pressure, layers with 13 blend modes and clipping, selections, fill with gap closing, gradients, QuickShape, symmetry, adjustments, blur and liquify, PSD in and out, autosave, ten languages.
Help & refunds
Ideas and bugs: the Airdraw feedback board (also Send feedback in the app). Click the version line in the app to copy it, then paste it into your post.
Refunds: Windows purchases — within 14 days, no questions asked (email us your receipt). App Store purchases — through Apple at reportaproblem.apple.com.