Does Photopea work offline?

TL;DR · Short answer

No, not right now: Photopea runs client-side once the page has loaded, but our own browser check found no active service worker, so nothing is cached for reuse. Close the tab, lose the connection, or come back later with no network, and the editor has to reload from photopea.com before it opens again. What does stay local for that session: PSD, XCF and Sketch files are read and edited on your machine, not uploaded to a server.

What actually happens without a connection

Photopea registers no service worker — verified by browser check, not by what the app's own marketing claims. That means it is not cached the way an installed offline-capable PWA would be: there is nothing stored locally for the browser to reuse.

Close the tab, lose the connection mid-session, or reopen the page later with no network, and Photopea has to fetch itself from photopea.com again. Until that finishes, it will not open.

Mentioned here: 🖼️ Photopea, 🗜️ Squoosh, ✏️ Penpot

Installing it as a windowed app

Open photopea.com in Chrome or Edge and click the install icon at the right of the address bar. You get a standalone window with no tabs and no address bar, plus an icon in your dock, taskbar or Start menu.

On Safari 17 and later, use File → Add to Dock. Either way, installing changes the window it opens in — not whether it needs the network. The shortcut still loads photopea.com each time.

Your files stay on your machine

Photopea processes images locally. When you open a PSD, the file is read by code running in your browser, not uploaded for server-side processing. That privacy property holds regardless of the connection — it is a separate thing from offline support.

The exceptions are explicit and visible: opening a file from a URL, or using a feature that fetches an external resource. Those need a connection, same as loading the app itself.

Frequently asked

Is Photopea free?

The full editor is free and ad-supported. A paid tier removes the ads and raises the undo history; it does not unlock editing features, and neither version works without a connection to load the app.

Can I edit PSD files offline?

Not with Photopea itself: it has no service worker and caches nothing, so it needs a live connection each time the page loads. For editing PSDs with no network at all, a desktop app such as GIMP is the closer fit.