Frequently Asked Questions

No pressure sensitivity

First, check the preferences dialog. Try checking or unchecking the "Use Windows Ink" option. When Windows Ink support is not available, you must have Wintab drivers installed. Note that you must restart Drawpile for the setting change to take effect.

Note that you should not enable the "relative pen mode hack" unless you're using your tablet in mouse mode.

Check if pressure is being detected by using the tablet tester found in the Help menu. If pressure events register there, but not when you're drawing, the problem most likely is that you have something other than "Stylus" selected in your input settings dock (View menu / docks.)

Tablet stylus drags canvas

After the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update, Windows also generates a touch event for a tablet stylus motion event.

There are two solutions. The best is to use Windows Ink mode (with "bug workarounds" option unchecked.) If Ink is not available, you will have to uncheck the "scroll with finger" option.

The window is too big and the chat bar goes below the screen

This happens when there are too many docks open and it forces the minimum window height to be larger than the screen height. You can close some docks, tab them together or move them to the other side of the window to release some space.

"Connection timed out" when connecting

A "connection timed out" error (when you know the server should be up) is typically caused by firewalls.

First, check that the hosting user is not behind a NAT. Drawpile can use UPnP, which is supported by most home routers, to automatically set up port forwarding. If the port forwarding works, the private IP address displayed in the status bar (typically starts with 10. or 192.) gets replaced by the public address a few seconds after the session is started.

If the address does not change, you must set up port forwarding manually. See the hosting page for more info.

Note. If the public address starts with "100.64.", it means your ISP doesn't have enough addresses to go around and you're behind carrier-grade NAT. In this case, you must use a remote server to host. (Or use an IPv6 address, if available.)

If you're sure NAT is not the problem, check if the operating system's firewall is not blocking Drawpile's port (27750 by default.) This includes the standard firewall as well as any 3rd party firewalls.

Can I use Drawpile on my Android tablet?

Yes, since version 2.2, there is Android support.

Can I use Drawpile on my iPad?

Apple doesn't allow Drawpile on the App Store. This is not a technical problem, it's a legal one: Drawpile is under a license that keeps it free and open forever, not even we ourselves can change that, but it's incompatible with the closed nature of the App Store.

There may be hope in the future if Apple allows (or rather, is forced to allow) applications from outside of the App Store to be installed, but at the time of writing, there is no avenue available.

Is there a browser version?

Not yet, but preliminary plans exist.