ZenPaint, a pixel-perfect MacPaint recreation for the browser
Details
- External ID
- 45940087
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- ZenPaint, a pixel-perfect MacPaint recreation for the browser
- Website domain
- zenpaint.org
- Launched
- Nov. 15, 2025
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 18
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.6703056768558951
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:25 p.m.
Description
I've been recreating the original MacPaint in the browser on and off for a few years. It's still alpha quality, but I'm finally ready to share it more widely.The goal was pixel-perfect accuracy, so I spent a lot of time with Atkinson's original QuickDraw source code, emulators, and my iBook G3 to get details like font rendering and the shape tools exactly right.Some technical notes:- Font rendering was surprisingly tricky; understanding the original pipeline's quirks took lots of experimentation, and avoiding canvas smoothing/aliasing required careful handling.- Written declaratively with React; performance is kept reasonable with a buffer pool and copy-on-write semantics. - You can share links to artwork from within the UI.E.g.: https://zenpaint.org/#p=KQumBQ5x- Mobile support was not considered here (for obvious reasons). It might still be usable on a larger phone or tablet but I have not tested this at all.There's something magical about making art within MacPaint's constraints: the 1-bit graphics, the limited resolution, the peculiar set of tools that still feel surprisingly expressive.Still some rough edges and missing features, but I'd love feedback from anyone who remembers the original.
Enrichment
- Theme
- niche creative and graphics software
- Vertical
- Media & entertainment
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- macpaint recreation for the browser
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
Partial While basic canvas drawing tools are easily vibe-coded, achieving a pixel-perfect recreation of Bill Atkinson's original MacPaint algorithms and QuickDraw patterns requires specialized retrocomputing reverse engineering.
What it would actually take: The frontend is built with HTML5 Canvas and JavaScript/TypeScript simulating a 1-bit monochrome display with precise dithering patterns and aspect ratio scaling. The challenge lies in porting or accurately emulating original 68k QuickDraw rasterization routines, specific line drawing, flood fill, and lasso math without modern anti-aliasing. A builder needs deep knowledge of retro graphics algorithms and access to original Mac System software reference implementations.
Discussion
6 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: NextGen Tools
Feature requests: blog post about the project
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 280 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #120 of 281 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 17 days after the earliest competitor.
- Compositor · github · 2026-09-16 · 3456 upvotes · similarity 0.52
- I built a browser-based 3D editor since I didn't want to learn Blender · hn · 2026-03-01 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.48
- HUD-like live annotation and sketching app for macOS · hn · 2025-10-29 · 56 upvotes · similarity 0.46
- Compositor · ph · 2026-09-19 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.45
- Open-source pixel art editor with animation and auto-tiling tilesets · hn · 2026-08-07 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- ComfyUI-Krea2-Pixel-Art-Refiner · github · 2026-09-16 · 9 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- GrobPaint: Somewhere Between MS Paint and Paint.net · hn · 2026-03-14 · 54 upvotes · similarity 0.44
- Pixels.style · hn · 2025-12-28 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.44
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