Pikimov 5.1.0 is now available as an offline app, bringing all the browser-powered video editing and motion graphics powers of this tool to a standalone tool — no internet connection required. The browser version is free forever; for offline capabilities, you need to pay $6 a month (no commitment).
Pikimov is not free as in open source, but it is a really beautiful labor of love, and a case study in what can now be accomplished with browser technologies. It may well be a drop-in replacement for users of tools like CapCut, or for people whose needs for these tools is relatively lightweight, or as an addition to other tools, or in environments where an app install isn’t possible. (A lot of education environments have just Chromebooks or locked-down desktops or both — been there.) I wouldn’t view it as a full replacement for other tools at this stage for most folks outside those case studies, but as you can try it for free, you can see if it fits certain tasks.
The main advantage of Pikimov is running in a browser and being free. But if you fit any of the use cases above, or just like how lightweight this tool is, the standalone version is both a nice convenience and a way to support the developer.
I’ve just given this a try on the Mac, and it runs seamlessly. You don’t feel like you’re in a browser. It is missing some things you might expect from a fully native app — pinch and scroll gestures on my trackpad don’t function, and there’s no way to output the preview to my second monitor. But these should both be possible, technically — this is a great start from a one-person dev shop.
And there’s something great about not having the overhead or distractions of the browser, even if this is powered by browser technologies under the hood. The only time it’ll need an active internet connection is for background removal (for now, at least — and that only reads the online model, so no data is uploaded). There’s already a chorus of people asking for a Linux version and it sounds like that’s in the cards soon — even more critical, as there’s less competition in this category on Linux.
On macOS, you will need to manually remove Pikimov from quarantine, at least for the 5.1.0 build I downloaded and macOS Tahoe 26.3. It’s not just enough to right-click and choose open, then dig into preferences; you’ll also need to run this command from Terminal:
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine pikimov.app
Once you do that, though, it runs without a hitch and comes with the same sample content to get you started. (The app is also currently missing notarization, which will prompt a “damaged” error — will try to help with that! You can ignore it for the moment, though.)
I wrote about Pikimov v5 earlier this year:
Here’s a nice tutorial to try out. I’m not replacing other apps with Pikimov just yet, but it’s really a no-brainer to add it to the arsenal. It’s justa pleasure to use.
What’s coming next: a particle generator. So if you all go out and pay for this thing, we may well put Pikimov’s dev over the top. I guess I’ll find out what the CDM bump is looking like today.
More on the official site:
Here’s another take on it: