DrawThatThing turns an image into mouse strokes and plays them back, so it can draw the image in any paint program or browser drawing game.
It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux (X11). Building it needs the .NET 9 SDK.
On macOS, build and open the app bundle:
./build-macos-app.sh
open publish/DrawThatThing.appOn Windows and Linux:
dotnet run --project DrawThatThing.AvaloniaTo get a standalone copy that runs without .NET installed, use
dotnet publish DrawThatThing.Avalonia -c Release -r <runtime> --self-contained, where <runtime>
is for example win-x64, osx-arm64 or linux-x64.
The app needs two permissions under System Settings → Privacy & Security:
- Accessibility, to move and click the mouse. The app asks for it when it starts.
- Screen Recording (called Screen & System Audio Recording on macOS 15 and later), to pick colors from the screen. The app asks for it the first time you pick a color.
Restart the app after granting them. macOS ties the permissions to the exact build, so after rebuilding you have to grant them again.
DrawThatThing needs X11 with the XTest extension (libx11-6 and libxtst6 on Debian and Ubuntu).
Wayland is not supported.
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Open the program you want to draw in.
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Hover over each color in that program's palette and press the pick color hotkey. DrawThatThing stores the color and its position on the screen, and clicks there whenever it needs that color. Tick BG Color for the background color.
To pick a whole palette at once, hover the middle of one of its colors and press the pick similar swatches hotkey: every flat-colored swatch of about the same size around the cursor is added. For a palette that does not work with, set the grid size next to the palette (columns × rows), press the pick palette grid corner hotkey on the center of the first swatch and again on the center of the last one. Colors the palette already has are not added twice.
If the program's palette only appears after clicking a button, pick that button first and tick Opener on its row. Then open the palette and pick its colors. The opener is clicked before any color listed below it, up to the next opener row, so palettes behind different buttons work too.
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Choose a parser, click Parse Image (or drop an image onto the window) and check the preview.
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Hover where the top-left corner of the drawing should go and press the set start position hotkey. Then click PLAY >>. The stop hotkey stops the drawing.
Palettes can be saved and loaded as CSV files with Export and Import.
| Windows and Linux | macOS 15 and later | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Shift+Alt+C | Control+Option+C | Stop drawing |
| Shift+Alt+S | Control+Option+S | Set the start position to the cursor |
| Shift+Alt+A | Control+Option+A | Add the color under the cursor to the palette |
| Shift+Alt+F | Control+Option+F | Add all color swatches like the one under the cursor |
| Shift+Alt+G | Control+Option+G | Pick a palette grid: press on its first swatch, then on its last |
| Shift+Alt+D | Control+Option+D | Show or hide the debug panel |
| Shift+Alt+Q | Control+Option+Q | Add the cursor position as a debug point |
Older macOS versions use Shift+Option. The hotkeys work while another program is in front. A hotkey shown in red could not be registered, usually because another program already uses it.
- AbstractReader fills areas of the same color with strokes. It needs a background color.
- DetailedReader joins neighboring pixels of the same color into strokes and skips white.
- LinearReader draws every dark pixel with the black palette color.
- PointReader clicks every pixel separately.
More parsers can be added as DLLs with an IBitmapReader implementation, put into a Plugins
folder next to the executable. In the macOS bundle that folder is
DrawThatThing.app/Contents/MacOS/Plugins; sign the bundle again afterwards with
codesign --force --deep --sign - DrawThatThing.app.
dotnet build DrawThatThing.sln
dotnet test DrawThatThing.TestsThe project page is at https://egeozcan.github.io/DrawThatThing/.
GPL-3.0, see LICENSE.txt.