Pixen

An open-source desktop image editor, ideal for screenshots — crop, annotate, hide private information, and make quick edits.

Pixen is a small desktop shell around the Unlayer Image Editor. The editor does the editing. Pixen owns the window, the native file dialogs, the encoding, and the keyboard shortcuts.

What it does

• Opens PNG, JPEG and WebP images by dropping them on the window, pasting from the clipboard, or through a native file dialog
• Captures a region of the screen straight into the editor (macOS only)
• Edits them with @unlayer/react-image-editor — crop, resize, filters, draw, text, shapes, stickers and frames
• Saves as PNG, JPEG or WebP with ⌘S / Ctrl+S, asking where to write the first time and reusing that destination afterwards
• Saves to a new file with ⌘⇧S / Ctrl+Shift+S
• Copies the edited image to the system clipboard with ⌘⇧C / Ctrl+Shift+C
• Hides private data — an address, a token, a face — behind a mosaic, by dragging a box over it
• Numbers a screenshot for a step-by-step guide: click each spot and the badge counts itself up
• Cuts the background away from the subject with a local segmentation model, previewing the result before it is applied

Tech stack

• Tauri 2 for the native shell, windows and filesystem access
• React 19 + TypeScript + Vite for the UI
• Tailwind CSS 4, with shadcn/ui primitives in src/components/ui/
• @unlayer/react-image-editor as the editing engine
• @imgly/background-removal on onnxruntime-web for background removal — see License, it is AGPL
• Vitest for unit tests

Supported platforms

Platform	Status
macOS	10.15+, unsigned .dmg from the tag workflow
Windows	Unsigned NSIS installer from the tag workflow
Linux	Unsigned .deb and AppImage from the tag workflow

Requirements

• pnpm 10
• Node.js 20+
• Rust 1.77.2+ (rustup)
• Platform build tools: Xcode Command Line Tools on macOS, MSVC on Windows, webkit2gtk and libayatana-appindicator on Linux

Development

pnpm install
pnpm assets:bg-removal
source "$HOME/.cargo/env"
pnpm tauri:dev

assets:bg-removal downloads the segmentation model into public/bg-removal/ (76 MB, gitignored). It is needed once per checkout, and only for the background removal tool — everything else works without it. tauri:build runs it for you.

Rust must be on your PATH. If cargo is missing in an already-open terminal, run source "$HOME/.cargo/env" or open a new tab.

pnpm dev starts the Vite UI only. Every Tauri call fails there, so use pnpm tauri:dev for the real app.

Pixen loads the editor engine from cdn.unlayer.com, so the first launch needs an internet connection.

Scripts

Script	Description
tauri:dev	Run the desktop app
tauri:build	Build the installers for the current platform
dev	Vite UI only (no native shell)
build	Type-check and build the frontend
assets:bg-removal	Download the background removal model to public
test	Run Vitest
typecheck	tsc --noEmit
lint	ESLint
format	Prettier
icons	Regenerate app icons from the SVG
clean	Remove dist, node_modules, Rust target, …
check:fix	Format, lint, type-check, and test

Build

pnpm tauri:build

Bundles land in src-tauri/target/release/bundle/: .app and .dmg on macOS, an NSIS installer on Windows, .deb and AppImage on Linux. Builds are unsigned, so on macOS the first launch is right-click the app → Open, and on Windows SmartScreen may warn.

Pushing a v* tag runs the release workflow on macOS, Ubuntu 22.04 and Windows. Each job attaches its installer to the same GitHub Release.

How it works

Why a drop is not an HTML5 drop zone, why encoding is in Rust, and what a flattened save costs: docs/how-it-works.md.

Keyboard shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
⌘S / Ctrl+S	Save
⌘⇧S / Ctrl+Shift+S	Save As
⌘O / Ctrl+O	Open an image
⌘V / Ctrl+V	Open the image on the clipboard
⌘⇧C / Ctrl+Shift+C	Copy the image to the clipboard
⌘Q / Ctrl+Q	Quit, guarding unsaved work
⌘W / Ctrl+W	Close the About window
Escape	Close the About window

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Background removal uses @imgly/background-removal, which is AGPL-3.0. Pixen's own source stays MIT, but that dependency's terms apply to anyone distributing a build of Pixen that includes it — IMG.LY sells a commercial licence for use that AGPL does not cover. Nothing else in the dependency tree is copyleft.