Piskel is an easy-to-use sprite editor . It can be used to create game sprites, animations, pixel-art... It is the editor used in piskelapp.com. It was created with Javascript and Typescript, along with the HTML and CSS content and styling. Piskel has been used in many ways such as the sprite editor of code.org. It is also available on the Multi-Bit-Catalogue.
Piskel Sharp is available on the releases page (latest, for Windows, OSX (MacOS) Intel and Arm, and Linux. These builds are the most complete version of Piskel: Sharp in many ways, but there are more ways to use Piskel Sharp. The latest stable developement version of Piskel Sharp will almost always be up on the Multi-Bit-Catalogue, which will state it's current version. To minimize the chance of crashing, try sticking to the desktop version of Piskel Sharp.* Piskel Sharp will always be free, with no ads, and most likely no GoFundMe or Patreon.
*Piskel Sharp Web hasn't really crashed much except for my own mistakes... It should work fine.
Piskel Sharp is a fork of Piskel: For Playdate, the first mod of Piskel that was made for the community by the community. Based off of PFP, it has the same features listed here, along with many others.
To start, it has more canvas backgrounds to support an even darker dark mode, along with a pre-installed dark mode theme. *Theme support is planned, but so far the current theme is the only one available. Themes are not the main focus of Piskel Sharp at this moment, but should be supported by the full release.
At the moment, the main focus is adding language support for Piskel Sharp, along with a way to switch it with the in-built GUI instead of the devtools console. Another misc. thing added was filled shapes for both the rectangle and circle tools. Made by holding ctrl, creating filled shapes has never been easier (I know its corny)! The final feature that... doesn't really work yet is the changelog tab! The dialogs have not been added yet, but in the near future there will be a changelog dialog for both Piskel and Piskel Sharp, as both are being updated to this day. There is also a future plans and credits button too.
Piskel Sharp is a community extension of Piskel that attempts to make the editor more accessible to every style of user, while also making sure it stays updated with the main branch (oh I can't wait for the massive typescript update. I really can't.). It is maintained by a sole person, that being me. I reccommend you check out another cool Piskel fork known as RetroPiskel if you are interested in retro systems and other cool things the community/people willing to spend time on Piskel have done!
I plan to have this fork updated with the base version of Piskel, and keep it sustained until it just gets too hard. By that point, this tool will be pretty cool I bet. I barely have an idea of what I'm doing, but atleast I'm doing it in a very unproffesional way.
Install Volta to install the projects required node version.
Open CMD and run npm install -g grunt-cli
Next, run npm install -g casperjs
And finally run npm install to finish the building dependencies.
To build for a platform, select one of the following and run the the script below. At this moment, building for Linux has not been implemented into the script shortener thing.
Windows
npm run build:win
macOS (Intel)
npm run build:mac
macOS (ARM)
npm run build:mac-arm
The Piskel editor is purely built in JavaScript, HTML and CSS.
We also use the following libraries :
- spectrum : Awesome standalone colorpicker
- gifjs : Generate animated GIFs in javascript, using webworkers
- supergif : Modified version of SuperGif to parse and import GIFs
- jszip : Used to create, read, and edit .zip files with Javascript
- canvas-toBlob : Shim for canvas toBlob
- jquery : Used sporadically in the application
- bootstrap-tooltip : Stylized tooltips
As well as some icons from the Noun Project :
- Folder by Simple Icons from The Noun Project
- (and probably one or two others)
Piskel supports the following browsers:
- Chrome (latest)
- Edge (latest)
- Firefox (latest)
- Opera (latest)
- Safari (latest)
- Internet Explorer 11
There is no support for mobile yet, but is planned.
Help is always welcome ! Especially with this project.
- Issues : Found a problem when using the application, want to request a feature, make an issue here.
- Development : Have a look at the official wiki to set up the development environment or look at the building from source section above.
Copyright 2026 That-One-Bit Copyright 2023 Matt Sephton Copyright 2017 Julian Descottes
Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.
The Readme was last updated for version 0.2.0 on 7/12/2026