🖼️

Photopea

In-depth review

Free

Full-featured photo editor in your browser — opens and saves PSD, XCF, Sketch files. Layers, masks, filters, blend modes. A genuinely free Photoshop replacement that needs no install.

Catalogued April 15, 2026 · Curated by PWA Directory team

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🖼️Photopea

photopea.com

Photopea, as it opens in a browser tab.

Online Only

Installable

Cross-Platform

✓

Free

Not sure how to add Photopea to your home screen? Step-by-step for Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Edge — it takes about ten seconds, and there is no app store involved.

Own Photopea? Have us re-run this measurement — we open it in a real browser, cut the network, and send you what survived.

How to install Photopea as a PWA

Chrome / Edge

Menu (⋮) → Add to Home screen

Safari (iOS)

Share (↑) → Add to Home Screen

Firefox

Menu (⋮) → Install

Screenshots

Why we recommend Photopea

Photopea is the closest browser-based clone of Photoshop's interface that exists — and that's the deliberate point. The keyboard shortcuts are identical, the panels (Layers, Channels, Paths, History) sit exactly where you'd expect, and the file-format support is genuinely impressive: native PSD read/write (including layer styles, smart objects, masks, adjustment layers), GIMP's XCF, Sketch's .sketch, Affinity's .afphoto, plus the obvious PNG/JPEG/SVG/AI/PDF. For freelancers, students, and anyone who needs to open a client's PSD once a quarter without paying $20.99/month for a Creative Cloud subscription, it's a genuine replacement. The single creator (Ivan Kutskir) has maintained it solo since 2013 — that's both the charm and the risk: no roadmap committee, but everything ships when one person decides. It installs as a windowed PWA from Chrome or Edge, but it registers no service worker, so it does not cache itself for offline use — each load still needs a live connection to photopea.com. The only limitation is that the codebase is closed-source (it's free as in beer, ad-supported), which differentiates it from GIMP/Krita.

Best use cases

Best for: opening a PSD a client sent you when you don't own Photoshop, making quick layer-based edits to product photos, batch-resizing images with the script panel, removing backgrounds with the magic-wand+refine-edge workflow, and teaching a Photoshop class without making students pay for licenses. The PWA installs cleanly on Chromebooks, which is a unique fit for K-12 design education.

Honest limitations

Not for: anyone needing the latest AI features (Generative Fill, Neural Filters) — Photopea's AI tools are competent but lag Adobe by a generation. Not for: agency teams who need shared libraries, version history, or commenting (no collaboration features). Performance on huge files (>4GB PSDs with hundreds of layers) is constrained by browser memory limits, typically maxing around 2-3GB. The site is ad-supported on the free tier — Premium ($5/mo) removes ads.

Are you the maker of Photopea? Claim this listing →

Photopea in our guides

Photopea Local: Can You Run or Self-Host It?No: Photopea edits on your device but needs a connection to load, and offers no self-hosted version. The Photopea site says files never leave your device and that it runs on your CPU and GPU. It installs as a windowed app from Chrome or Edge, but it registers no service worker, so each load still needs a live connection. Check the official page before assuming you may host your own copy.Read the answer →

Is Remove.bg Free to Use? What the No-Cost Tier CoversYes, remove.bg advertises free background removal; limits on resolution, volume and commercial use sit on its pricing page. Its homepage promises automatic cut-outs in 5 seconds with one click, and its description says hair and semi-transparent edges are handled rather than clipped. For finer manual control, Photopea is a free browser editor, though it needs a live connection to work.Read the answer →

A list of progressive web apps worth installingThere is no App Store for progressive web apps, which is why a list is the only way to find them. The ones worth installing cluster in a few places: drawing and design (Excalidraw, Photopea, Penpot), developer references (DevDocs, regex101, Squoosh), notes and documents (Notesnook, AppFlowy, CryptPad), games (Lichess, PROXX, 2048), and maps (Organic Maps, OpenStreetMap). Install from the browser's address bar — there is nothing to download.Read the answer →

Websites that install like appsA progressive web app is a website that can install itself: it declares a manifest, registers a service worker, and the browser then offers it a home-screen icon and its own window with no address bar. Unlike a bookmark, an installed site can cache its own code and keep running with no connection. Excalidraw, Photopea, DevDocs, Lichess and Organic Maps are all ordinary websites by URL and installed applications once you accept the prompt.Read the answer →

Photo editors that run in the browserPhotopea is the closest thing to Photoshop in a browser tab: it opens PSD, XCF and Sketch files, has layers and masks, and the muscle memory transfers. Squoosh compresses images entirely on your device, so nothing is uploaded. Polarr and Pixlr E cover adjustments and quick edits. All install from the browser with no download and no account.Read the answer →

We read 386 PWA manifests. One was complete.We fetched the web app manifest of all 386 apps in the discovered catalogue: 373 responded. Of those, 41% declare a maskable icon, 11% declare an `id`, 8% declare shortcuts, and only 11% ship any screenshot at all. Exactly one manifest in 386 filled in every field we checked. The median manifest declares 3 icons, tops out at 512px, has no screenshots, no id, no shortcuts, and no language — which is enough to install, and not enough to look like software anyone maintains.Read the answer →

PWA examples: 578 tested, 243 kept working with the network offOf the 578 installable web apps catalogued here, 243 keep working with the network disconnected — 42%. The rest install, show an icon, open in their own window, and then show nothing useful offline. So a PWA example is only an example of the format; whether it delivers the format's defining promise is a separate question, and it has to be tested app by app. The 243 that pass span every category: development tools, utilities, games, productivity, education.Read the answer →

3,800 AI citations, zero visits: which assistants actually send peopleIn six months of analytics, ChatGPT sent 136 sessions and Gemini sent 4. Microsoft Copilot sent none — despite Bing Webmaster Tools reporting 3,800 citations of this site over three months. Google's AI Overview appears on 46.7% of the queries this site ranks for and cites it in 0% of them, including queries where the site ranks first. So citations and visits are not the same measurement, they do not move together, and the engine that publishes citation data is not the one sending readers.Read the answer →

Where to submit your PWA — and which directories a machine can still readSubmit to store.app, pwastore.io and pwa.directory. Those three serve an inventory a crawler can read without running JavaScript: roughly 1,350, 818 and 550 entries respectively. The fourth, findpwa.com, still answers with HTTP 200 but returns 33 bytes and zero links — its catalogue exists only after JavaScript runs, and the one machine-readable feed it publishes is blocked in its own robots.txt. Submitting there costs you nothing but buys you nothing either.Read the answer →

Your PWA does not work on iPhoneFour iOS-specific behaviours explain almost every case. There is no automatic install prompt — the user must use Share then Add to Home Screen, and nothing on the page can trigger it. Every browser on iOS uses Safari's engine, so "try Chrome instead" changes nothing. The installed app gets its own storage, separate from Safari, so a session created in the browser does not exist inside the icon. And push notifications require iOS 16.4 or later and only work once the app is on the Home Screen.Read the answer →

Your PWA opens to a blank screenA PWA that opens to a blank screen is nearly always a service worker that answers the request but has nothing to answer with. The four causes, in the order we actually encounter them: the worker is registered but its cache is empty; the app shell is cached but the data it needs is not; the cache holds files from a previous deploy that no longer exist; or the manifest points somewhere that does not load. Open devtools → Application → Service Workers, tick Offline, and reload — the cause is visible in under a minute.Read the answer →

The install prompt never appearsChrome does not offer installation until every condition is satisfied at once: HTTPS, a linked manifest with name, a 192px and a 512px icon, a `start_url` inside `scope`, `display` set to standalone, fullscreen or minimal-ui, and a service worker with a fetch handler. Miss one and the prompt is silently withheld — no error, no warning. Devtools → Application → Manifest lists the failing condition explicitly under Installability — [the full checklist is here](/blog/why-is-my-pwa-not-installable).Read the answer →

Your update never reaches installed usersTwo separate things cause this. The everyday one: a service worker only takes control on the next navigation, so a user with the app open keeps the old version until they fully close and reopen it — and if you never call `skipWaiting`, the new worker waits indefinitely. The permanent one: changing `start_url` without a pinned `id` makes the browser treat your app as a different app, so everyone who already installed keeps the old one forever and silently stops receiving anything.Read the answer →

Are PWAs still relevant?Yes, but far less than the advocacy suggests. We opened 386 installable web apps in a real browser and cut the network: 151 kept working, 235 showed nothing. So the defining promise of the format — it works without a connection — holds for 39% of the apps that claim it. PWAs are relevant where someone did the work; the format is not the guarantee people assume it is.Read the answer →

How many PWAs are actually broken?Most of them, by at least one measure. Across 386 installable web apps opened in a real browser on 12 August 2026: 235 install and then show nothing offline. Of the 373 manifests we could read, 215 declare no maskable icon, 329 declare no `id`, and 331 declare no screenshots. 3 apps link to a manifest that no longer responds at all — those cannot be installed by anyone, and nothing in normal browsing reveals it.Read the answer →

Do PWAs actually work offline?Some do, most do not. Installability and offline capability are separate: a browser offers to install an app based on its manifest and the presence of a service worker, not on whether that worker caches anything useful. Of 386 installable web apps we opened with the network cut on 12 August 2026, 151 kept working and 235 showed nothing. So when an app says it is a PWA, that tells you it can be installed — it does not tell you it will run on a plane.Read the answer →

Why did PWAs fail?They did not fail — the promise that they would replace app stores did, and for two reasons that have nothing to do with the technology. Apple never shipped an install prompt, so on iPhone the user must know a hidden menu path. And nobody solved discovery: an app store is a place people already go, a web app has to be found. What the technology actually delivers, we measured: 151 of 386 installable apps keep working with the network off. The format works where someone did the work.Read the answer →

Excalidraw download: there is no installer — and you don't need oneThere is no official Excalidraw download. The Excalidraw team does not ship an installer for Windows, macOS, Linux or Android, and any .exe or .apk offered elsewhere is not from them. What you actually want exists though: install Excalidraw from your browser in one click and you get a real application window, a dock or taskbar icon, and full offline use — no download, no account.Read the answer →

Does Photopea work offline?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.Read the answer →

How to install a web app on any deviceAny Progressive Web App can be installed from the browser in a few seconds, with no app store involved. On Chrome and Edge, look for the install icon at the right of the address bar. On Safari, use File → Add to Dock on macOS, or Share → Add to Home Screen on iPhone and iPad. On Android, Chrome offers an install prompt or you use the ⋮ menu. You get a real icon, a window with no browser interface, and — for apps that support it — full offline use.Read the answer →

What is a PWA, really — and how to tell if a site is oneA Progressive Web App is a normal website with two additions: a manifest file that tells the browser how to install it, and a service worker that caches it so it keeps running with no connection. That is the whole definition. In practice it means a site you can add to your dock or home screen, that opens in its own window with no address bar, and that works on a train. No app store, no download, no review process — the browser does the installing.Read the answer →

Compress and convert images without uploading themYou can compress, resize and convert images entirely in a browser tab, with the file never leaving your device. Tools like Squoosh decode the image, re-encode it with modern codecs such as WebP and AVIF, and hand you the result — all using your own processor. There is no upload, so there is no wait and no copy of your photo on someone's server. For single images and small batches it is faster than any desktop tool, because there is nothing to install.Read the answer →

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