100 Best Apps for Designers
Design work often moves across multiple tools, from early ideas to polished handoff. This first group covers widely used foundations for digital and visual design.
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop provides pixel-based image editing, compositing, retouching, and generative tools for visual design. It helps designers refine photographs and complex graphics when raw assets need precise visual adjustments.
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator creates and edits vector artwork for logos, icons, illustrations, typography, and scalable graphics. It helps designers avoid blurry artwork by producing graphics that remain sharp at any size.
Figma
Figma enables collaborative interface design, prototyping, design systems, and developer handoff within shared browser-based files. It helps distributed teams reduce version confusion by letting collaborators work in the same design file.
Sketch
Sketch is a macOS design application for creating interface layouts, reusable components, and interactive prototypes. It helps product designers organize repeated interface patterns through symbols, libraries, and focused vector editing.
Canva
Canva offers template-based tools for creating social graphics, presentations, documents, simple videos, and marketing materials. It helps non-specialists produce consistent visual materials without starting every layout from a blank canvas.
Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign designs multi-page publications including books, magazines, brochures, reports, and print-ready layouts. It helps designers manage long documents where typography, page flow, and print preparation require control.
Affinity Designer
Affinity Designer combines vector drawing and pixel editing tools for illustration, branding, interface assets, and print. It helps designers switch between vector and raster work without moving assets between separate applications.
Affinity Photo
Affinity Photo is a photo editing application for retouching, compositing, color correction, and layered image work. It helps visual designers correct and combine imagery when source photos need polished campaign-ready treatment.
Procreate
Procreate is an iPad illustration app offering brushes, layers, drawing tools, and animation assistance. It helps illustrators capture ideas naturally with touch and stylus tools while away from a desktop.
Framer
Framer lets designers build responsive websites and interactive prototypes using visual editing and code components. It helps teams test polished web experiences without translating every design concept into production code first.
Webflow
Webflow provides a visual platform for designing, building, and publishing responsive websites with CMS capabilities. It helps designers launch structured marketing sites while reducing dependence on manual front-end implementation.
Miro
Miro is an online whiteboard for workshops, mapping, brainstorming, diagramming, and collaborative planning sessions. It helps remote teams make early-stage thinking visible when ideas are scattered across meetings and notes.
FigJam
FigJam is Figma's collaborative whiteboard for brainstorming, diagrams, workshops, sticky notes, and team feedback. It helps design teams connect exploratory discussions with their existing product design workflow.
Adobe XD
Adobe XD is a design and prototyping application for creating interface screens, flows, and interactive demonstrations. It helps designers communicate user journeys when static screens alone cannot explain interaction behavior.
Penpot
Penpot is an open-source design platform for collaborative interface design, prototyping, and reusable component libraries. It helps teams seeking open workflows collaborate on product interfaces without relying on proprietary file formats.
Lunacy
Lunacy is a graphic design application for interface layouts, vector editing, prototyping, and shared design files. It helps designers create and edit interface assets when they need an alternative desktop design environment.
InVision
InVision supports prototype presentation, feedback collection, design reviews, and collaboration around product screens. It helps stakeholders give contextual feedback instead of sending vague comments through disconnected communication channels.
Marvel
Marvel helps teams create clickable prototypes, gather feedback, and test interface concepts with shared links. It helps designers validate basic user flows before investing time in detailed visual production.
Axure RP
Axure RP creates detailed wireframes and prototypes with conditional interactions, documentation, and user-flow modeling. It helps teams specify complex product behavior when simple clickable mockups cannot represent required logic.
Balsamiq
Balsamiq creates low-fidelity wireframes that emphasize structure, content hierarchy, and interface flow over polish. It helps teams discuss product structure early without stakeholders becoming distracted by visual styling.
Principle
Principle creates animated interface prototypes for exploring transitions, gestures, motion, and microinteractions on macOS. It helps designers demonstrate interface motion when static prototypes fail to convey timing and feedback.
ProtoPie
ProtoPie builds high-fidelity interactive prototypes using sensors, variables, logic, and device-specific interactions. It helps teams test advanced mobile interactions without requiring a fully coded application.
Spline
Spline is a collaborative 3D design tool for creating scenes, objects, animations, and interactive web content. It helps designers explore three-dimensional visuals without beginning in a traditional complex 3D software environment.
Blender
Blender is a 3D creation suite for modeling, animation, rendering, compositing, simulation, and visual effects. It helps designers produce custom 3D assets when stock imagery cannot match a concept.
Cinema 4D
Cinema 4D is a 3D graphics application for modeling, animation, rendering, simulation, and motion design. It helps motion designers create dimensional branded visuals for campaigns, explainers, and product presentations.
Adobe After Effects
Adobe After Effects creates motion graphics, composited visual effects, and animations using layered timelines and keyframes. It helps designers turn static artwork into polished animated assets for videos, presentations, and social campaigns.
DaVinci Resolve
DaVinci Resolve combines video editing, color grading, visual effects, and audio post-production in one application. It helps designers avoid switching between separate tools when finishing video projects with consistent color.
LottieFiles
LottieFiles lets designers preview, share, test, and deploy lightweight Lottie animations across digital products. It helps teams hand off scalable interface animations without relying on bulky video or GIF files.
Rive
Rive creates interactive vector animations that can respond to user inputs in apps, games, and websites. It helps designers prototype responsive motion states instead of delivering passive animation exports to developers.
Adobe Express
Adobe Express provides templates and quick editing tools for creating social graphics, flyers, videos, and documents. It helps small teams produce on-brand marketing assets quickly when advanced design software feels excessive.
VistaCreate
VistaCreate is a template-based design platform for producing social posts, advertisements, presentations, and promotional materials. It helps founders create frequent campaign visuals without starting every design from a blank canvas.
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite
CorelDRAW Graphics Suite provides vector illustration, page layout, photo editing, and production design tools. It helps print-oriented designers prepare illustrations and layouts while managing varied output requirements.
Krita
Krita is an open-source painting application built for digital illustration, concept art, comics, and animation. It helps artists access capable brush and drawing tools without needing a commercial painting subscription.
Clip Studio Paint
Clip Studio Paint provides drawing, inking, coloring, comic-layout, and animation tools for illustrators. It helps comic artists manage detailed linework, panels, and reusable materials within one workspace.
Concepts
Concepts is a flexible vector sketching app with infinite canvases, precision tools, and customizable brushes. It helps designers capture and refine ideas freely without being constrained by fixed canvas dimensions.
Autodesk SketchBook
Autodesk SketchBook is a digital drawing app offering brushes, layers, guides, and perspective drawing tools. It helps illustrators create clean sketches and studies with an interface focused on drawing.
Adobe Fresco
Adobe Fresco is a drawing and painting app featuring vector brushes, raster brushes, and live brushes. It helps artists combine scalable linework with natural-looking paint effects in a single canvas.
Linearity Curve
Linearity Curve is a vector design app for creating illustrations, logos, icons, and marketing graphics. It helps mobile and desktop designers edit vector artwork without carrying a traditional desktop setup.
Pixelmator Pro
Pixelmator Pro is a macOS image editor for photo editing, graphic design, painting, and layout work. It helps Mac-based designers make fast image adjustments and compositions in a streamlined workspace.
Photopea
Photopea is a browser-based image editor that works with layered files, vectors, raster graphics, and masks. It helps designers open and edit common design files on devices without installed desktop software.
GIMP
GIMP is an open-source image editor for retouching photos, creating graphics, and manipulating raster images. It helps budget-conscious designers perform detailed image edits without paying for proprietary software.
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom organizes, edits, and processes photographs using non-destructive adjustments and preset-based workflows. It helps designers maintain consistent treatment across large photo libraries used in brand work.
Capture One
Capture One is a photo editing and tethering application focused on raw processing, color control, and cataloging. It helps photographers and designers review studio shoots quickly while retaining precise color adjustments.
Unsplash
Unsplash provides a searchable library of photographs that designers can use under its published license terms. It helps designers find visually strong photography for concepts and content without arranging every shoot.
Pexels
Pexels offers searchable stock photos and videos for creative projects under its published license terms. It helps teams source supporting visual media quickly when original production is impractical.
The Noun Project
The Noun Project provides a large searchable collection of icons and photographs from contributing creators. It helps designers locate consistent symbolic visuals instead of drawing every interface icon themselves.
Google Fonts
Google Fonts offers a web library of font families with specimens, language support information, and embed code. It helps designers evaluate accessible type options that developers can readily implement on websites.
Font Awesome
Font Awesome supplies icon sets and implementation tools for websites, applications, presentations, and design systems. It helps teams use familiar, reusable interface symbols instead of creating and maintaining each icon.
WhatFont
WhatFont is a browser extension that identifies typography details on webpages by inspecting selected text. It helps designers quickly identify a webpage's font choices during research and visual audits.
Coolors
Coolors generates, explores, and saves color palettes with tools for adjusting and exporting color values. It helps designers move beyond arbitrary color choices by rapidly testing coordinated palette directions.
Adobe Color
Adobe Color creates color themes and extracts palettes from images using configurable color harmony rules. It reduces manual palette experimentation by generating coordinated colors from a selected base color.
Khroma
Khroma uses selected color preferences to generate searchable color combinations, palettes, and visual examples. It helps designers find appealing combinations faster when broad color libraries feel overwhelming.
Color Hunt
Color Hunt provides a browsable collection of curated color palettes for creative projects. It gives designers quick palette inspiration when starting a project without an established color direction.
ColorSpace
ColorSpace generates color palettes, gradients, and matching shades from a chosen starting color. It helps designers build related color systems without manually calculating compatible variations.
Paletton
Paletton creates color schemes based on traditional color-wheel relationships and adjustable palette settings. It assists designers who need balanced complementary or analogous schemes for interface and brand work.
Realtime Colors
Realtime Colors previews color palettes within sample website interface layouts as designers adjust values. It helps designers assess contrast and visual balance before applying colors to a live interface.
Fontpair
Fontpair suggests font combinations and displays examples of typefaces used together in layouts. It reduces the uncertainty of pairing headings and body text from large font catalogs.
Fontshare
Fontshare offers downloadable fonts for personal and commercial creative projects under its licensing terms. It helps designers locate usable typefaces without beginning every project with a broad web search.
Adobe Fonts
Adobe Fonts provides a library of typefaces that can be activated for use in compatible applications. It simplifies font access and synchronization across design files instead of managing separate font installations.
MyFonts
MyFonts is a typeface marketplace and font discovery platform with browsing and identification tools. It helps designers identify or source specific type styles when a project requires a precise look.
Typewolf
Typewolf showcases typography examples, font recommendations, and resources for web-focused designers. It gives designers practical references for choosing typefaces and observing them in real website contexts.
Fontjoy
Fontjoy generates font pairings by adjusting visual contrast between suggested typefaces. It helps designers explore contrasting yet compatible typography combinations without testing every pairing manually.
Icons8
Icons8 provides icons, illustrations, photos, and other visual assets in multiple styles and formats. It helps designers find visually consistent supporting assets instead of creating every small graphic from scratch.
Flaticon
Flaticon offers a searchable library of icons and icon packs in downloadable formats. It speeds up interface and presentation work when designers need recognizable symbols for common actions.
Iconfinder
Iconfinder is a marketplace and search platform for icons, illustrations, and design assets. It helps designers source specialized icons when general icon libraries lack a required subject or style.
SVG Repo
SVG Repo offers a large collection of SVG icons and vectors for download and reuse. It provides editable vector assets for designers who need scalable graphics without redrawing simple symbols.
Heroicons
Heroicons provides a set of SVG interface icons in outline and solid visual styles. It gives product designers a consistent icon set for common navigation and interface controls.
Phosphor Icons
Phosphor Icons supplies flexible SVG icons in multiple weights, fills, and visual variations. It helps designers match icon emphasis to interface hierarchy without mixing unrelated icon families.
Lucide
Lucide is an open-source library of customizable SVG icons for interfaces and digital products. It helps teams maintain recognizable interface symbols while adapting stroke and size to their system.
Favicon.io
Favicon.io generates website favicons from text, images, or emoji and exports required files. It removes the tedious setup of producing multiple favicon sizes for browser and device compatibility.
remove.bg
remove.bg automatically removes image backgrounds and produces cutout subjects for further editing. It saves designers time when isolating people or products from simple backgrounds for layouts.
TinyPNG
TinyPNG compresses PNG, JPEG, and WebP images while aiming to preserve visual quality. It helps designers reduce asset file sizes before handoff or publishing without lengthy manual optimization.
Squoosh
Squoosh is a browser-based image compressor with format, quality, and resizing controls. It lets designers compare compression settings visually when balancing image quality against page weight.
ImageOptim
ImageOptim compresses image files on macOS by removing unnecessary data and optimizing encodings. It streamlines batch image optimization for designers preparing many web assets from a local folder.
Figma Community
Figma Community lets users browse and duplicate shared design files, plugins, widgets, and templates. It helps designers start from useful community resources instead of rebuilding common patterns and components.
Zeplin
Zeplin organizes design handoffs by publishing screens, specifications, assets, and implementation details for developers. It reduces ambiguous developer handoffs by centralizing measurements, exportable assets, and design annotations.
Abstract
Abstract provides version control and collaboration workflows for design files, particularly teams using Sketch. It helps teams avoid conflicting file versions by tracking changes and supporting structured design review.
Storybook
Storybook lets teams build, test, and document interface components in an isolated development environment. It solves inconsistent component implementation by giving designers and developers a shared component reference.
zeroheight
zeroheight creates design-system documentation that connects guidelines, components, tokens, and supporting resources. It addresses scattered design-system knowledge by collecting standards and usage guidance in one workspace.
UXPin
UXPin is a prototyping platform for creating interactive interface prototypes, including design-system-based experiences. It helps designers test realistic interface behavior when static screens cannot communicate interactions clearly.
Origami Studio
Origami Studio is a macOS prototyping tool for designing detailed interactive animations and interface behaviors. It solves the challenge of demonstrating complex interactions before developers commit time to implementation.
Justinmind
Justinmind creates interactive wireframes and prototypes for web and mobile product design projects. It helps product teams validate user flows early instead of relying on disconnected static mockups.
MockFlow
MockFlow provides wireframing, site mapping, and collaborative planning tools for digital product teams. It reduces early-stage planning confusion by making page structures and product flows easier to share.
Whimsical
Whimsical offers collaborative tools for flowcharts, wireframes, mind maps, and project documentation. It helps teams turn fuzzy product ideas into visual plans that stakeholders can discuss together.
Overflow
Overflow turns design screens into interactive user-flow diagrams for presenting product journeys clearly. It addresses hard-to-follow prototype navigation by mapping screens into understandable customer journey presentations.
Maze
Maze supports usability testing and research by collecting participant feedback on prototypes and products. It helps teams identify usability problems before launch through structured testing tasks and participant responses.
Lyssna
Lyssna provides user research tools for testing designs, gathering feedback, and recruiting research participants. It reduces uncertainty about audience preferences by collecting structured reactions to designs and concepts.
Hotjar
Hotjar analyzes website behavior using heatmaps, session recordings, surveys, and feedback widgets. It helps designers find confusing page experiences by showing how visitors actually interact with websites.
Optimal Workshop
Optimal Workshop offers research tools for card sorting, tree testing, surveys, and qualitative analysis. It solves information-architecture guesswork by testing whether users can find and categorize content intuitively.
UserTesting
UserTesting enables teams to collect recorded feedback from participants completing tasks on digital products. It helps reveal why users struggle with interfaces by capturing spoken reactions during real tasks.
Stark
Stark provides accessibility tools for checking contrast, simulating vision conditions, and reviewing interface designs. It helps designers catch accessibility issues early instead of discovering them after product development.
Able
Able provides tools and guidance for evaluating color contrast and accessibility in digital interfaces. It reduces the risk of unreadable interface colors by checking contrast against accessibility requirements.
Contrast
Contrast is a macOS color contrast checker for evaluating text and interface color combinations. It helps designers quickly verify readable color pairings without manually calculating contrast ratios.
Color Oracle
Color Oracle simulates common forms of color vision deficiency across desktop applications and designs. It helps designers spot indistinguishable colors before users with color vision differences encounter them.
Sim Daltonism
Sim Daltonism is a macOS utility that simulates color vision deficiencies on the screen. It solves limited visibility into color accessibility by previewing designs through different visual conditions.
Adobe Capture
Adobe Capture converts photos into color themes, patterns, brushes, shapes, and reference materials. It helps designers transform real-world inspiration into reusable creative assets without rebuilding them manually.
Material Symbols
Material Symbols provides customizable Google icon fonts and SVG icons for product interface design. It reduces time spent drawing common interface icons by supplying adaptable, consistent visual symbols.
Bootstrap Icons
Bootstrap Icons is an open-source library of SVG icons designed for web interface projects. It helps designers and developers maintain icon consistency without creating every standard symbol from scratch.
Streamline
Streamline offers icon, illustration, and emoji libraries for digital products and visual communication. It solves asset-search delays by providing coordinated visual libraries for common product design needs.
IconJar
IconJar is a macOS application for organizing, searching, and managing large icon collections. It helps designers find previously collected icons quickly instead of searching through scattered folders.
The right design stack depends on the work at hand, but these tools cover many essential creative and collaborative workflows.