Omadesign on Omarchy

Omadesign on Omarchy: one native creative suite

Omadesign is a free, native Linux creative suite (vector design, layout, pixel painting, RAW photo development and motion in one app) written in Rust and built to follow your Omarchy theme and font out of the box. Michael Hurley wrote it, it is MIT-licensed, and it calls itself alpha.

TL;DR install

curl -fsSL https://omadesign.app/install | sh

Update: Omadesign landed in the official Omarchy package repo as omadesign-bin. omarchy pkg add omadesign-bin now works and is the better route, since it updates with everything else. See the package page. The notes below about the missing package are kept for people on older installs.

That is the only supported install route as of October 2026. The script picks your architecture, downloads the 0.6.3 release tarball from GitHub, verifies its SHA-256 and unpacks into ~/.local. Nothing touches /usr and no sudo is needed. Omadesign is free with no paid tier. Cloud features (shared projects, team review) need an account, but every editing feature works offline without one.

The honest caveat up front: omarchy pkg add omadesign-bin only works on the edge channel for now. The omadesign-bin package was merged into the official Omarchy repo on October 11, 2026, but new packages land on the edge ring first and only reach stable (what a normal Omarchy install uses) when the next Omarchy release train promotes them. Until then, the curl one-liner above is the route for everyone on stable, with everything that implies. Read the script first if you want; it is 62 lines, and the SHA-256 check happens before anything is extracted. Second caveat: the project moves fast (0.6.0 to 0.6.3 in one month) and this guide is written against 0.6.3.

Getting started in 5 minutes

1. Install

Run the command above in a terminal. You need curl, tar and sha256sum, all of which Omarchy ships. It downloads about 39 MB on x86_64 (36 MB on ARM64, which covers Apple Silicon under Asahi). The last line should read "omadesign 0.6.3 is installed". If omadesign --version says command not found, open a new terminal; Omarchy puts ~/.local/bin on your PATH but existing shells will not see it. To pin a version, set OMADESIGN_TAG=v0.6.2 before the command. To install somewhere else, set OMADESIGN_INSTALL_PREFIX.

2. First launch

Hit Super + Space and type "oma", or run omadesign. You land on a welcome screen that scans your home directory for existing .oma projects (it skips hidden folders, Trash and symlinks) and offers +Vector and +Layout buttons that open the template picker. The window is already in your Omarchy palette and font. There is no light/dark toggle because it mirrors whatever theme is active.

3. The 3 things you need to know

• Modes, not separate apps. The centered buttons across the top switch between Vector, Raster, Layout, Photo, Motion and Agent, all on one document and one layer stack. Press R for rectangle, P for pen, T for type, B for brush, C for crop. F1 opens the full shortcut list and Ctrl + / toggles a shortcut overlay for the current tool.
• It opens and exports the files you already have. Import covers PSD/PSB, GIMP XCF, PDF, Illustrator (PDF-compatible), OpenRaster, SVG and camera RAW (DNG, CR2/CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF). Export covers layered PSD, PDF, OpenRaster, 16-bit PNG/TIFF, JPEG, SVG, animated SVG, Lottie and responsive HTML. The limits are real and documented: PSD text and smart objects come in as flattened pixels, there is no writer for AI or XCF, and PDF export turns text into outlines. The format guide lists every one.
• Updates happen inside the app. Omadesign > About > Update checks the release channel, downloads the new build with the same installer, snapshots your open documents and restarts with them open. There is no pacman -Syu path, so this menu is how you stay current.

4. Config location

• Preferences: ~/.config/omadesign/
• Crash recovery swap files: ~/.local/share/omadesign/<id>.oma.swp, written after about a second idle and deleted on save
• Binary and desktop entry: ~/.local/bin/omadesign and ~/.local/share/applications/
• Theme: read on launch from ~/.local/state/omarchy/current/theme/colors.toml, falling back to ~/.config/omarchy/themes/<current>/colors.toml, then a built-in Catppuccin
• Font: whatever omarchy font current returns, then fontconfig sans-serif. Override with OMADESIGN_FONT=/path/to/font.ttf
• Projects are plain folders. A folder counts as a project when it holds .omacolors, .omatype or an .omabrand/ directory. Photo edits sit next to the original as photo.jpg.omaphoto.

5. CLI pro tip

omadesign --inspect artwork.psd prints a file's structure without opening the UI, and omadesign --convert artwork.afdesign --output artwork.oma converts between any supported pair. omadesign --agent-skill prints a ready-made skill file describing the CLI and document format; drop it in .claude/skills/ and Claude Code can batch-convert and inspect your files without you opening the app.

Common issues & fixes

omarchy pkg add omadesign-bin says "target not found", and the app has no page on this site

Fix: You are on the stable channel and the package has not been promoted yet. The developer's omadesign-bin package sat unreviewed in the Omarchy repo for five weeks at an old alpha, then was rebased to 0.6.3 and merged on October 11, 2026. It published to the edge ring that evening. Stable gets it with the next Omarchy release train, and this site (which lists stable) picks it up on the next rebuild after that. Until then: the curl one-liner, or download the tarball and checksum from the GitHub releases page, verify with sha256sum -c, extract, and run the install.sh inside. There is still no AUR package; the maintainer closed that request as not planned. (omarchy-pkgs PR #343, merged, omadesign issue #73)

You switch Omarchy themes and Omadesign keeps the old colors

Fix: Builds before 0.6.0 read the palette once at startup and cached it, so the window stayed stale until a restart. The maintainer shipped a file watcher in the 0.6.0 replacement bundles. Check Omadesign > About; if you are on 0.5.x, run the install one-liner again or use About > Update. On a current build, a theme switch repaints live. (omadesign issue #133)

Ctrl + C / Ctrl + V do nothing, and fcitx5 cannot type CJK into a text box, on Hyprland

Fix: Before 0.6.2 the app never activated the Wayland text-input protocol, so the input method never received keystrokes and the clipboard sat on the wrong path. Fixed in 0.6.2 (verified by the maintainer under Sway with fcitx5 and Rime, reported originally on Hyprland 0.56). Update via About > Update. Omarchy ships fcitx5 by default, so this one bit Omarchy users specifically. (omadesign issue #83)

Typing and brush strokes lag badly, or motion playback stutters on a bigger comp

Fix: Two separate things. Motion playback on complex compositions was fixed upstream at the end of September 2026, so update first. The lag is hardware. The maintainer's own benchmark ran the same build on three machines: a 4-core AMD thin client with under 6 GB RAM saw 90 ms median keystroke latency with half-second stalls, while an 8 GB Intel laptop sat at 35 ms and an M1 Pro at 21 ms. The provisional guidance is 8 GB RAM minimum, 16 GB recommended, and four cores is not enough. A dedicated GPU is not needed; AI features (background removal, upscaling) run on the CPU. (issue #177, issue #158 benchmark)

Affinity files will not open

Fix: Affinity import goes through an optional GPL-licensed bridge that is not bundled. Run ./scripts/setup-affinity-import.sh from a source checkout once; it needs Inkscape's Python modules plus the Python zstandard, Pillow and numpy packages. Even then, adjustments, live effects and edit history do not survive, and multi-spread documents can fail. (Omadesign format guide)

Pairs well with / If you hate this, try

Pairs well with

• Inkscape (omarchy pkg add inkscape) if you need a mature SVG editor for the pieces Omadesign still approximates, like mesh gradients and complex text on import.
• GIMP (omarchy pkg add gimp) for the XCF round trip. Omadesign reads XCF but cannot write it, so export OpenRaster and open that in GIMP.
• Darktable (omarchy pkg add darktable) if you do serious RAW work. Omadesign's Photo mode covers develop, crop and presets; Darktable covers everything else.

If you hate this, try

• Inkscape plus GIMP plus Darktable, the three separate tools Omadesign is trying to replace. All are one omarchy pkg add away from the Arch repos, all are mature, none follow your theme.

Comparison: Omadesign vs Inkscape + GIMP vs Krita

One-line verdict: Use Omadesign if you want one themed app and can live with alpha software; use Inkscape and GIMP if a format detail matters for client work; use Krita if you mostly paint.