Icelus

Icelus is a design tool for screens. Design on a real canvas; underneath, every screen is text.

Pick a part, tap the canvas, and it lands there as a real button, field, switch or table. One switch in Settings shows the same screen as box-drawing characters. Buttons, inputs, tables, date pickers, tab bars, charts, 38 parts in all. Draw arrows between them, add a big title, and move things around until the screen looks right. Or type the whole screen in a few lines and let Icelus draw it.

Then copy it. A Icelus screen is text underneath, so it pastes into a pull request, an issue, a README, a chat or a code comment, and it stays editable wherever it lands. No image to attach, no design file to open.

What you get:
- A real canvas: parts draw as real controls on artboards, with a Settings switch for the text look
- Brush, eraser, selections, gradients, 16 terminal colors, adjustment layers and masks
- 38 parts, each its own object you can move, resize, duplicate and reorder
- Several screens on one canvas, linked by arrows, copied as one document
- Screen templates: sign in, settings, list, detail, empty state
- Highlights, your own saved parts, and iOS, Material, terminal and email packs
- Copy HTML: the layout as real elements for a developer
- Paste any text wireframe and edit it
- Shortcuts: Draw a screen, Make plain ASCII
- 27 languages and full VoiceOver support
- Arrows that stay attached when parts move
- Type a screen in a few lines, and copy any sketch back as those lines
- Turn a photo into block art, or trace over one
- Text boxes, banners and five box styles
- Tables you edit as typed rows, with columns that grow
- Bar charts, sparklines and progress rows drawn from numbers
- Flowcharts from a line like a -> b -> c
- Sequence diagrams from lines like User -> App: Sign in
- Trees from an indented list
- Groups that move as one
- A layer list: hide, lock, reorder
- Symbols: edit one copy, every copy follows
- Pressed, disabled and error states
- Snap and alignment guides
- Copy as text, Markdown or plain ASCII, or share an image
- Autosave and 50 steps of undo
- Keyboard control on the Mac
- The same project file on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and the web

Everything stays on your device. An account is optional, and nothing you draw is uploaded. No tracking.

One price, no subscription. The web version at icelus.jaybulb.com is free.