Software for Android

Krita is intended for digital painting, but its pixel brush presets, indexed color filter and animation timeline make it a capable pixel art tool once configured.

GrafX2 was made for DOS and has been ported everywhere since. It has tools no other program does, constraints for retro platforms, and an antiquated interface.

LÖVE is a small, well documented Lua framework with nearest-neighbour filtering and canvases that make pixel-perfect rendering easy.

Resprite is a pixel art and animation editor for iOS, Android, Windows and macOS, built around a touch interface without losing the tools a desktop editor has: pixel-perfect lines, alpha lock, dithering patterns, custom brushes, gradients and symmetry. It imports and exports GIF, sprite sheets, PSD and APNG.

Pixly is a game-oriented pixel art and animation editor for Android, with the gestures worked out for a touchscreen: two fingers to pan and zoom, three to change the brush size. It covers layers, onion-skinned animation, symmetry, real-time tiling and cloud sync. Its own site is still up and still points at Google Play as the only way to get it, but that listing no longer resolves.

Core Editing & Selection Tools

Drawing Tools: Includes Brush, Eraser, Flood-fill, Gradient, Line, Rectangle, Ellipse, and Pipette.

Pixel-Perfect Algorithm: Applies to drawing tools to ensure single-pixel-wide lines without unwanted extra pixels.

Selection: Supports copying, cutting, moving, pasting, rotating, and flipping selected image sections.

Layers: Supports layer management for organizing artwork elements.

Animation & Reference

Frame-by-Frame Animation: Includes dedicated tools for creating frame-based animations.

Onion Skinning: Displays overlay previews of preceding frames relative to the active frame.

Reference Images: Loads gallery images onto the canvas for comparison while drawing.

Color Palettes

Preset Palettes: Includes built-in palettes based on hardware profiles like Atari 2600, NES, and Game Boy.

Custom & Imported Palettes: Supports custom color palettes as well as importing palettes from Lospec.

Import, Export & Compatibility

File Import: Opens Aseprite project files (.ase, .aseprite) alongside standard raster formats (.png, .jpeg, .gif).

Export & Upscaling: Exports animations and images to formats including MP4 video, standard raster formats, or local storage/social sharing, with upscaling options to prevent interpolation blur on standard displays.

DefleMask targets the Mega Drive, Game Boy, NES, PC Engine, Master System, C64 and more, exporting files that run on real hardware.

TIC-80 is an open source fantasy console in the PICO-8 mould with a larger screen, several scripting languages, and built-in sprite, map, sound and music editors.

Pixel Studio is a pixel art editor that runs on desktop, phone and tablet with the same project open on all of them. It covers layers, animation with onion skinning, tilesets and palettes, and reads and writes Aseprite files, which makes it a practical way to keep drawing away from a desk.

Goxel is a free voxel editor with layers, a procedural renderer and unlimited scene size, available on every platform.

Divoom is a pixel art editor for Android and iOS devices, letting you create and import pixel art for display on Divoom devices such as the Ditoo speaker or the Pixoo picture frame.

It can be used without these devices just as a portable pixel art program and features the ability to import and resize images, as well as layers and animations.

There is also a text display function with many animated effects and palettes, as well as some audio features such as a keyboard and simple DJ mixer.

Divoom also features a pixel art gallery and community, allowing you to display images from community members on your devices and interact with pixel artists across the globe.

MilkyTracker recreates the FastTracker II workflow for XM and MOD files, with sample editing and playback on every platform.

Nanoloop is a music sequencer built around a grid rather than a tracker's note list, which makes it quick to sketch a pattern and hard to write anything conventional. It started as a Game Boy cartridge, where it synthesises sound on the console's own hardware, and also exists as a phone app.

SunVox combines a pattern tracker with a modular synthesizer, and runs the same on desktops, phones and the web.

dotpict is a phone app for drawing pixel art, built around a community that posts and comments on what it makes. The canvas is deliberately small and the tools are few, which suits short sessions and daily practice more than long production work.

raylib is a no-dependencies C library with bindings for dozens of languages, well suited to small low-resolution games.