Dottie

Native pixel art editor with tons of features

Requires macOS Monterey 12.4 or later

CG Course: What Is Pixel Art?

What is a pixel? Imagine the tiniest square of colour you can see on your screen. Now imagine painting an entire world out of nothing but those squares, one by one, dot by dot. That is pixel art, and it is one of the most exciting forms of digital creation happening right now!

An App for Pixel Art: Hello, Dottie!

Dottie is a brand-new native Mac application built from scratch to make pixel art feel as natural as picking up a pencil. Forget clunky web apps and awkward Windows ports. Every tool has been designed to feel right at home on your Mac: trackpad gestures, keyboard shortcuts, and an interface that gets out of your way while you create game sprites, icons, portraits, or whatever. It feels good to draw!

Drawing Tools

Pencil, pen, airbrush, smudge, fill, eraser, line, etc
Layer System

Full layer support with opacity, onion skin modes
Animation

Frame-based animation with FPS speed and live preview
Custom Palettes

Use presets, create your own, or import from Lospec
Brush Settings

Multiple shapes, sizes, dither, pixel perfect mode
Selection Tools

Magic wand, marquee, lasso, and polygon selections
Import & Export

20+ import formats, export PNG, GIF, SVG, sprite sheets
Multiple Previews

Floating or docked previews with their own settings
Apple Native

Multi-window, Dark Mode, Quick Look, Univeral App

Drawing Tools

Your creative journey starts here! Every tool is assigned to a single key so your hands never leave the keyboard.

Tool	Key	Description
Pencil	N	Toggle-style classic Mac drawing
Pen	P	Smooth strokes
Airbrush	A	Soft spray for shading
Smudge	B	Blend adjacent pixels together
Fill	K	Flood fill with multiple variants
Eraser	E	Remove pixels in a single stroke
Line	L	Perfect geometric shapes
Rectangle	R	Perfect geometric shapes
Oval	O	Perfect geometric shapes
Eyedropper	D	Pick any colour from your canvas

Selection Central

Selecting parts of your artwork is just as important as drawing them!

Tool	Key	Description
Magic Wand	W	Select areas of similar colour
Rectangle Marquee	M	Precise rectangular selections
Oval Marquee	I	Circular and oval selections
Freehand Lasso	U	Draw your own selection boundary
Polygon	Y	Click point by point around complex shapes

Brush Collection

Here is where things get really interesting!

Shapes—Circle, Square, Diagonal
Sizes—1 to 8 pixels (keys 1–8 for instant selection)
Dither—17 levels (0 to 16)
Pixel Perfect mode—Toggle with F, automatically cleans up jagged corners

Palette Organiser

Colour is everything in pixel art!

Three active colours: Primary, Secondary, Eraser
Quick switch with X and Shift+X
Built-in presets including GB Studio, PICO-8, Playdate, and Macintosh
Gradient generation, Lospec import, and custom palette management
Multiple sorting modes including hue, brightness, and usage

Layer System

Layers are the secret weapon of serious pixel artists!

Per-layer visibility and opacity (0–100%)
Modes: Normal, Onion Skin, Solo
Duplicate, merge, rename, centre, and reorder
Auto-generated thumbnails

Canvas & Transform

Start with any canvas size you like!

Resize canvas with 9-position anchoring
Scale image up or down
Custom pixel aspect ratios for authentic retro looks
Flip horizontally or vertically
Rotate left or right
Nudge layers pixel by pixel with arrow keys

Animation Fun

This is the really exciting part!

Frame-based animation where each layer is one frame
Configurable FPS with live preview
Sidebar and floating preview windows
Export as sprite sheet or animated GIF

Import & Export

Dottie speaks every format you need!

Import
PNG, JPEG, AVIF, BMP, GIF, HEIF, ICNS, ICO, PSD, TGA, TIFF, WebP, PEP, Piskel, and more
Export
PNG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, SVG, XPM, and PEP
Sprite sheets
All layers composited into a single PNG
Native share sheet and Open With support

macOS Integration

Dottie is a true Mac application!

Document-based multi-window architecture
Full Screen and Dark Mode support
Quick Look previews and thumbnails for .dottie and .pep files
Window position and zoom restored per document
Full AppleScript support for automation

Optimised

Only 2 MB app download size
Less than 120 MB base memory footprint
A professional pixel art studio that fits on a floppy disk!

How It Compares

	Dottie	Pixen	Aseprite
Native Mac app	✓	✓	Hybrid
Animation	✓	✓	✓
Layers	✓	✓	✓
Onion skinning	✓	✓	✓
Sprite sheet export	✓	✓	✓
Custom palettes	✓	✓	✓
Lospec import	✓	–	–
PEP support	✓	–	–
Dither ink (all tools)	✓	–	–
Multiple previews	✓	–	–
Tile map editing	–	–	✓
Scripting	AppleScript	–	Lua
App size	2 MB	~20 MB	~70 MB

Back To The Future

Some of Dottie’s ideas aren’t new at all! They’re borrowed from or inspired by vintage software for classic Macintosh or Japanese computers. These long-forgotten apps got a lot right that could still be useful today.