Hello everyone! I’m Korbs, the developer of the community software known as Penpot Desktop.
Penpot Desktop provides a desktop-like experience for Penpot users, with the additional features like tabs, offline usage by choosing your own Penpot instance, and some other minor stuff.
Penpot Desktop v0.2.0 Beta is presently under development and will be a complete overhaul of the base code. A lot of how the app is developed is being cleaned up and restructured during this development, as is its update server, which delivers vital updates for other apps I’ve written.
Is there something you would like to see in Penpot Desktop? Aks here.
Feel free to also ask questions about Penpot Desktop here as well and I’ll answer them.
About the icon, my preference would clearly be the one without the pencil. It gives more space to the icon to “breath” and it seems that will be easier to recognize.
Hi @Korbs , I appreciate your efforts and dedication to the Penpot Desktop app. This is the first time I’m hearing about the desktop version, which means I’ve never used it. Where can I download it and does it have an option to save files to your local drive?
Hi @Korbs I am looking at the repo and under Deployments trying to download an appimage for my laptop. It opens up to a 404 though. Is there another place I can get the installable at?
You can install Penpot Desktop from the Snap store on Linux.
If you’re wanting to build a DEB file, you can add “deb” as a target in electron-builder.yml then run the build command: npm run build
I do plan to start supporting DEB, RPM, and more in the future. The reason why I haven’t done this yet is because auto update is not supported in these formats.
Just the reason I signed up for the forum to ask about desktop app. Really amazing to see it’s already being worked on.
It’s inferior experience for me to work in a web browser. Web browser is for other specialized tasks and when I want to work on design, I need to be in a separate app to avoid unnecessary distractions. So good to see the desktop app is happening.
I don’t need much. If it can be close to the general Figma desktop experience and support dark theme, I’ll be happy. Probably the only feature I really miss in Figma is the good hot keys manager and ability to reassign keys.
Some older habits are dying hard, and sometimes it’s difficult to retrain new muscle memory, especially when switching between a few other apps. It’s really beneficial for UX to reassign some hotkeys to what makes more sense to me.
Really rooting for your guys to succeed! Keep up the great job!
Why? I explain this in the README file on why I choice ElectronJS:
Penpot Desktop README (FAQ section)
Q: Why Electron and what is it?
A.1 (Why): I, Korbs, am mostly comfortable and knowledgeable with web coding languages such as HTML, CSS/SCSS, and JavaScript, along with APIs by ElectronJS. Using Electron was the right approach for me, and I’ve acquired a huge amount of experience with it over the last four years thanks to development I’ve done at FalixNodes Limited. The process of doing cross-platform support was also shortened and easier for me to do. I’ve also gotten very attach to Electron and am also most comfortable using technology built specifically for the framework like Electron Builder, Glasstron, and more.
I tried switching to Tauri, but their WebView component is different from what I’m use to and is not as powerful as Electron’s WebView.
Please enable the functionality to drag and drop media files in our projects. Many Mac apps already allow this convenient feature, so it would greatly enhance our workflow. Avoiding the tedious process of manually importing assets would greatly benefit us. We kindly request your consideration on this matter.
I hope there isn’t a performance issue with the app, it is Electron after all and I do try to follow best practice in performance and security where I can.
Hi @Korbs
I am experiencing an issue with the penpot desktop. It I cannot load penpot in it. It stays like this.
This is Debian 12, it’s not a snap package.
snap, that rules me out then. Otherwise great app. Thanks.
