Welcome, and thank you for trying MangaLoft. You're one of the first artists to draw with it, and your reaction is exactly what we need. This page gets you from install to your first page in a few minutes — then tell us what you think in Feedback & Tasks.
What it is
MangaLoft is a focused manga drawing app for Mac and iPad — panels, screentones, inking, layers, and print-ready export. During the beta everything is free and unlocked — no purchases or subscriptions.
Install
- Install TestFlight from the App Store (Apple's beta app).
- Open your invite on your device: your TestFlight invite.
- Install MangaLoft and open it.
Requires macOS 26 or later, or iPadOS 26 or later.
⚠️ Read this first — how drawing input works
On iPad: the Apple Pencil draws; your finger pans and zooms (a finger does not draw, so you can rest your hand).
On Mac: the Pen and Eraser need a stylus — a pen tablet (e.g. Wacom) or an iPad connected via Sidecar with the Apple Pencil. A brush line's thickness comes from how hard you press, and a mouse has no pressure to give, so if the mouse won't paint, that's expected rather than a bug. Everything else works with a mouse: paths and bezier curves, text, balloons, screentones, selection, transform, frames and layers.
No tablet on your Mac? You can still lay out panels, ink with the path tool, letter, and screentone a whole page — it's the brush work that wants a pen. For brush drawing, the iPad with an Apple Pencil is the best place to start.
Make your first page
- New document → pick a paper size, binding, and trim → the editor opens.
- Draw a few strokes with your pencil/stylus. Undo/redo with ⌘Z / ⌘⇧Z on Mac, or the Undo/Redo buttons in the toolbar on iPad.
- That's it — you're drawing. Explore, or follow the guided tasks in Feedback & Tasks.
Your work autosaves. On Mac you can also Save As; on iPad documents live in Files and can be duplicated with a long-press.
What you can make
- Panels — slash across the page and it splits into panels; draw clipped inside each.
- Screentones — real manga tones you drop in, move, and keep crisp (and re-editable).
- Natural inking — a pressure-sensitive, pen-first canvas with brush presets.
- Text & lettering — built for manga: vertical text, ruby, automatic 縦中横.
- Print-ready export — bleed and registration marks, "For Print" or "For Display."
…plus layers, multi-page documents, a private Scrapbook, and cross-document copy/paste. See the full feature list →
Working on one frame — here or on your other device
Select a frame and choose Open in Workbench to pull it out and work on it alone; the rest of the page stays exactly as it was. Apply when you're happy, or discard.
Continue Elsewhere sends that frame to your other device — draw it there, send it back, and it merges into the page on its own.
Two things to know before you try it. MangaLoft has to be open on the receiving device, and that device needs to be awake and online — it picks the frame up while the app is running, not in the background. Given that, it usually arrives within seconds; a frame that seems stuck is almost always a sleeping iPad rather than a slow sync. While a frame is out, it's locked on the page so the two copies can't drift apart.
If you have a drawing partner
Collaboration — assign a page to another artist who reworks it and sends it back for you to review. It needs two iCloud accounts, so you can't try it alone. Nothing alerts you automatically, so open Collaborate and tap Refresh rather than waiting. If you have a partner, this is the feature we'd most like put through its paces.
It's a beta — what to expect
- Rough edges and the occasional bug are normal; that's why you're here.
- Your work autosaves, but save/close cleanly when you can.
- Found something, or have a reaction? Head to Feedback & Tasks and post in Discord.
Thank you — seriously. Now go make something you'd want to read.