Getting started

CrowDraw is a free drawing and painting app for iPad and Apple Pencil. This guide covers everything in the app, starting here: make a canvas, find your way around, draw, undo and save.

Your first canvas

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   Step 1: Make a canvas

   In the gallery, tap +. Pick a size from New canvas, or tap Custom canvas (the button at the top of the list) to set your own.

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   Step 2: Pick a brush

   Tap the brush button (Paint) in the top bar, then tap it again to open the library. Try a pencil from Sketching or an oil brush from Painting.

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   Step 3: Pick a colour and draw

   Tap the colour circle at the top right, choose a colour and draw with Apple Pencil. Pressure and tilt shape the stroke. Your finger draws too, until you first use Apple Pencil: from then on, fingers pan and zoom (see painting with your finger).

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   Step 4: Undo, zoom and keep going

   Tap with two fingers to undo and three fingers to redo. Pinch to zoom and rotate. There's no save button: CrowDraw saves as you go. Tap Gallery at the top left when you're done.

Canvas sizes

The rotate button at the top of New canvas turns every preset the other way round, portrait to landscape. Once you have made a custom canvas, its size is listed too, as Last custom size.

Custom canvas takes a name, a width and height in pixels, inches, centimetres or millimetres, the DPI (resolution for printing) and a background colour. Swap width and height turns it round. It starts at 2400 × 1800 px at 300 DPI, or at the last custom size you made.

How big a canvas can be depends on your iPad's memory: up to 16384 px on the longest side on iPads with 8 GB of memory or more, 8192 px on iPads with 6 GB, and 6144 px on others, with a cap on the total area. The form shows the limits for your iPad. Bigger canvases allow fewer layers (see the layer limit).

Finding your way around

The top bar has the tools; the sidebar has the brush size and opacity. Everything else opens in a panel from the top bar. CrowDraw works in portrait and landscape, and in Split View and Stage Manager windows.

The sidebar

• Size and Opacity sliders for the current tool, each with a small icon above it. While you use Smudge, the second slider is Strength: how much each smudge stroke blends the colours (see Smudge and blending).
• The sliders move relative to where you touch. For finer steps, slide your finger sideways away from the slider as you drag; the value bubble then says Fine.
• The square modify button between them picks a colour from the canvas: tap it, then touch the canvas. Or hold the button while you touch.
• Undo and Redo. Hold one to step through many changes quickly.

Left-handed? Turn on Sidebar on the right in Actions › Prefs, and use Sidebar position to move it up or down. You can also switch to a Light interface there.

Undo and redo

Tap with two fingers to undo and with three fingers to redo, or use the sidebar buttons (⌘Z and ⇧⌘Z on a keyboard). CrowDraw keeps up to 250 steps for the open canvas, fewer if the steps are very large. Each step shows what it undid. The history is cleared when you close the canvas; to take back a single stroke later, use the stroke eraser.

Saving

There's no save button. CrowDraw saves your canvas by itself:

• a couple of seconds after you stop drawing or editing;
• at least every 30 seconds while you keep drawing, when you next lift the Pencil (a save never interrupts a stroke);
• when you switch to another app or lock your iPad;
• when you tap Gallery.

If a save fails, for example because your iPad is out of storage, CrowDraw says Couldn't save with the reason and tries again by itself a little later. If it can't save when you tap Gallery, the canvas stays open with Couldn't save your changes: free some space and tap Try again, or choose Close without saving to close it and lose the changes since the last save.

Crop, resize, flip and canvas information

Open Actions › Canvas:

• Crop & resize: drag the crop box, or drag it past the edges to make the canvas bigger. Or type a width, height and DPI; the lock between width and height keeps the proportions. Turn on Resample canvas to scale the artwork with the canvas, and use Anchor to choose which side grows or shrinks.
• Flip canvas horizontally and Flip canvas vertically flip the whole artwork, a quick way to check proportions with fresh eyes.
• Fit to screen (or a quick pinch) fits the canvas to the screen.
• Canvas information shows the size, print size, resolution, layers used out of the maximum, layer memory, colour profile (sRGB), dates and the time spent on the artwork.

What you need

• An iPad with iPadOS 26 or later. CrowDraw is made for iPad only.
• Apple Pencil is recommended for pressure and tilt, but not required: you can paint with your finger.
• No account and no internet connection.

Stuck? Actions › Help lists the gestures and keyboard shortcuts, opens the welcome guide again (Gestures and tips), links to this guide, support and privacy, and shows the CrowDraw version. The support page has answers to common problems. Or email [email protected].

In this guide