ExcalidrawZ wraps Excalidraw in a native SwiftUI app for Mac, iPad and iPhone

ExcalidrawZ, an open-source project from developer chocoford, reached the front page of Hacker News on November 12 with a straightforward pitch: take Excalidraw's canvas and put it inside a native SwiftUI app for macOS, iPadOS and iOS. According to the project's GitHub repository, the drawing canvas itself stays compatible with Excalidraw, while everything around it — file handling, sync, version history, export and AI features — is rebuilt as native Apple-platform functionality.

Documents, sync and history

Instead of leaving drawings scattered as downloads from a browser tab, ExcalidrawZ treats them as managed application documents. Users can organize drawings into groups, apply custom sorting, and work from an ExcalidrawZ library, local folders or temporary external files. The app opens .excalidraw files directly, along with the .excalidraw.png and .excalidraw.svg hybrid formats that embed editable Excalidraw data inside an image. App-managed drawings sync across Mac, iPad and iPhone through iCloud, and ExcalidrawZ records checkpoints for each file so earlier versions can be reviewed and restored.

Native controls around a familiar canvas

The README emphasizes that the surrounding app is built for Apple platforms rather than ported from the web. The toolbar's tool order is customizable, and number shortcuts follow whatever order the user configures. On iPad, Apple Pencil works with its undo and redo gestures; on iPad and iPhone, mouse and trackpad scrolling and zoom are supported. PDFs can be imported, Mermaid diagrams can be converted into editable Excalidraw content, and Excalidraw's collaboration feature is available for drawing with others.

An AI assistant with guardrails

ExcalidrawZ ships an AI assistant aimed at canvas work. According to the repository, it can read, create and revise drawings, and it can use attached images as visual context. Two design choices stand out: AI output arrives as a proposal preview that the user applies to the real canvas deliberately, and each file can be marked as visible or invisible to AI. The assistant surfaces in compact toolbars on iPhone, a floating panel on iPad and the inspector on macOS.

The app can also expose itself as an MCP server for compatible local AI clients, connecting through an HTTP endpoint it hosts. A basic mode reproduces the excalidraw-mcp drawing workflow, while an optimized mode adds deeper integration: editing the current file, navigating files, inspecting history and the canvas, exporting, library workflows and math tools.

Locked files and encryption

For sensitive drawings, the project adds protection on both storage and AI fronts. Files can be locked behind local authentication, and locked files plus their checkpoints are encrypted, with a recovery key as a fallback and encrypted backups as an additional recovery path. Locked content stays hidden from the AI assistant, which can still work through proposal canvases that never touch the real file.

Math tools, export and availability

For technical drawings and study notes, ExcalidrawZ can insert LaTeX-rendered formulas, render function graphs with configurable axes and styles, and draw on reusable math templates plus AI-assisted formula generation; inserted math images remain editable from the canvas afterwards. Export covers images, PDFs and editable Excalidraw files — including the .excalidraw.png and .excalidraw.svg forms that preserve editability — alongside sharing via the clipboard, the Files app and the system share sheet, and archiving for backups. A non-App Store build is distributed as a .dmg from GitHub Releases, and the full source is available for anyone willing to configure their own signing team, iCloud container and app group identifiers. Feedback goes through the developer's Discord server, and the Excalidraw core the app uses is open-source as well.

Why it matters

Excalidraw has become a go-to tool for quick sketches and diagrams, but its natural home is the browser, where document management and cross-device persistence are afterthoughts. A native client with iCloud sync and checkpoint history fixes exactly that gap for people working inside Apple's ecosystem. The AI features are equally notable for their restraint: proposal previews, per-file AI visibility and encrypted locked files that the assistant cannot read suggest the project treats model access as something to scope deliberately rather than enable wholesale. And by embedding an MCP server in both basic and deep-integration modes, ExcalidrawZ turns a desktop drawing tool into an endpoint that external AI agents can operate directly — an early example of a pattern that looks set to spread. As open-source software distributed outside the App Store, it can also be audited or self-built by anyone who wants to verify those claims.