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Polyform is a desktop app for Windows, macOS and Linux. On a phone we can email you the link.

0.9.0-beta.1Beta

Released

The first beta of Polyform, for invited testers on Windows. It brings together everything built since 0.7.0 (5 August 2026). It isn't code-signed yet, so Windows asks before it installs it. From here on Polyform updates itself, and checks every update against a release list signed offline before downloading it.

Updating

  • Polyform updates itself. It checks 30 seconds after it starts and every 4 hours, downloads an update in the background and installs it when you quit. Restart to update installs it now: it saves your work first and waits while an edit or an agent's change is in progress. Later leaves it until the next launch.
  • Every update is checked before it is downloaded. Polyform compares it with a release list signed offline, and the downloaded installer with the list again. Anything that doesn't match is refused or deleted, and nothing on your PC changes.
  • The Updates panel opens from the badge in the title bar or Help → Check for Updates. It says what is happening, shows the release notes, and holds Update automatically and Get beta versions (on in a beta). After an update, a note says which version you now have.
  • A smaller download. The installer is 105 MB (from 139 MB) and the installed app 382 MB (from 588 MB).

Text

  • One text layer can mix styles. Select words while editing and give them their own font, weight, size, colour, underline or strikethrough. They keep their styles when the text rewraps, when you copy and paste them, and in SVG export.
  • What you edit is what you get. Text looks the same while you type as after.
  • Variable fonts and OpenType features. Any weight a variable font allows, a row for each of its axes, and its features, such as tabular figures, a slashed zero and stylistic sets, one toggle each.
  • Text that runs out of room can end with "…", with a maximum number of lines.

Drawing

  • The pencil (Shift+P) draws freehand. With a pen tablet, how hard you press sets the width along the stroke, and any open stroke can change width along its length.
  • The pen draws curves when you drag a point, Esc keeps an unclosed path, and vector edit has new tools and the modeller's keys (G, R and S).
  • Image trace (Object → Trace Image…) turns an image into vector shapes, in black and white or in up to 32 colours.
  • More paint and strokes: angular gradients, gradients on strokes, a different stroke weight on each side, and line ends (round, square, arrow, circle, diamond).
  • Materials and shaders, Liquid Glass among them.
  • Ctrl+V pastes an image from the clipboard where the mouse is.

Layout

  • Auto layout does more: wrap (columns too), Auto gap, fill width and height, minimum and maximum sizes, and children placed absolutely.
  • Grid layout, with fixed, hug and fill columns and rows, and children that span cells.
  • Drag a child to a new place in its stack or onto a grid cell.
  • Layout guides on frames: columns, rows and grids.

Components, styles and libraries

  • Variants and component properties: Combine as Variants, Boolean, Text and Instance swap properties, nested properties you choose to expose, and slots. Switching a variant keeps your overrides.
  • Styles link to strokes as well as fills, and a library shares every kind of style (colour, text, effect and material), with Update when the library changes.
  • Editing a linked colour by hand detaches it from its style, so a later style edit no longer overwrites it, and Link again links it back.
  • Assets, rebuilt: search, components in folders of thumbnails, drag to place, and a section for each kind of style.

Variables and modes

  • Variables for colours, numbers, text and true-or-false values, in collections with modes such as Light and Dark. Edit them in the Variables panel (Ctrl+Alt+J), bind a fill, stroke or number field from the Inspector, and write them out with File → Export Variables… as CSS and design tokens.

Prototyping

  • Wire screens together in the Inspector's Prototype tab: clicks, hovers, drags, keys and timers that go to a screen, open an overlay, go back or scroll.
  • Present (Ctrl+Enter) plays the prototype in the window, with Smart Animate between screens.
  • Export Prototype saves it as one HTML file that plays offline in any browser.

Dev Mode

  • Shift+D switches to a read-only view for developers: measure between layers, read sizes, colours and typography, copy code in CSS, Tailwind, SwiftUI and Jetpack Compose, and export assets.

The layers panel

  • Find layers (Ctrl+F), with type filters and Search all pages, and find and replace names.
  • Colour labels say where the work stands, and descriptions carry a note on any layer.
  • The tree works from the keyboard, and pages fold, reorder and take dividers.

Agents

  • Agents work where you can see them, and you can stop them. An agent's change waits for yours to finish, is one undo step marked as the agent's, and the layers it touched are marked for the session.
  • Agents can do more: work on pages you are not looking at, link layers to styles, read and write descriptions, labels and variables, and trace images. The Claude Code skill installs from the Agent panel.

Import and export

  • PDF export, with text kept as text, and JPG and WebP beside PNG and SVG, from the app and the command line.
  • .fig import keeps variants, component properties, overrides, mixed text styles and gradient directions. SVG import keeps paint, exact shapes and styled <tspan> text.

Files, history and speed

  • Undo works after you reopen a file, and saving writes only the pages that changed.
  • Plugins run in a sandbox (Plugins → Run Plugin Script…), with no access to the network or your files, and a run is one undo step.
  • Big documents stay fast: dragging, recolouring and editing in auto layout redraw only what changed.

Known issues

  • Windows only for now. macOS and Linux come later.
  • Not code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen asks before the installer runs: More info, then Run anyway.
  • A copy of 0.8 installed before this beta can't update itself. Install 0.9.0-beta.1 from the download page once; it updates itself from then on.