DrawAnywhere vs Sketching (PFA)
Side-by-side comparison of two open source alternatives
DrawAnywhere
DrawAnywhere lets you sketch, annotate, and highlight directly on top of any screen — great for video courses, tutorials, and presentations. Drawing tools Freehand pen, rectangle, ellipse, and laser pointer Pixel eraser; stroke eraser via stylus button 50-step undo/redo HSV color wheel, 18 presets, recent colors, hex input Stroke width and opacity sliders Canvas and gestures Infinite canvas — pan and pinch-to-zoom freely Three-level lock (none, zoom only, all) with HUD indicator Two-finger pinch: zoom | double-tap: reset zoom | triple-tap: reset position Three-finger double-tap: toggle passthrough | triple-tap: hide canvas Toolbar Horizontal and vertical layout, draggable anywhere via long‑press Auto-dims after 3 seconds of inactivity Hide canvas or pass touch events through to the app below Finger-drawing toggle for stylus-only mode Convenience Quick Settings tile to toggle the service Drag the toolbar to the bottom of the screen to close the app Second-launch closes the service Brush hover preview while drawing Tips Turn on Clear canvas on hide to auto-clear when hiding the canvas (passthrough is also disabled). Turn off Open canvas on start to hide the canvas on startup. Source: https://github.com/DrawAnywhere/DrawAnywhere
Sketching (PFA)
Privacy Friendly Sketching lets you create and save simple sketches in a quick manner without having to endure ads or requiring additional permissions! Select a background color or a background image and start drawing! This app allows you to draw simple sketches in a matter of seconds to share with your friends. A key feature of Privacy Friendly Sketching is ensuring the users privacy at all costs. This means that every sketch is saved encrypted and that there are no permissions being required in order to use this app. In addition, we will never display any annoying ads to increase the fun factor while using the app and eliminate any data usage that might occur! The only permission that this app requires (that is completely optional) is to access the import/export functionality of this app, in which you can import an image from the device storage or export a sketch into the device storage. Functionalities: Edit a sketch with various different colors, thickness and transparency Undo/redo the last action Zoom and Scrolling Select a background image or a background color for your sketch Export sketches as a PNG into the device storage Share sketchs with your friends Gallery overview that shows all encrypted sketches Privacy Friendly App on GitHub: https://github.com/SecUSo/privacy-friendly-sketching You can reach us via BlueSky - https://bsky.app/profile/secusoresearch.bsky.social Mastodon - @SECUSO_Research@bawü.social https://xn--baw-joa.social/@SECUSO_Research/ Job opening - https://secuso.aifb.kit.edu/english/Job_Offers.php
| Feature | DrawAnywhere | Sketching (PFA) |
|---|---|---|
| License | AGPL-3.0-or-later | GPL-3.0-or-later |
| Install sources | F-DroidGitHubIzzyOnDroid | F-DroidGitHub |
| Categories | ProductivityPhoto EditingGallery | Photo EditingGallery |
| Features | Ad-FreeOpen SourceNo Tracking | Ad-FreeOpen SourceNo Tracking |
| Platforms | Android | Android |
| Website | ||
| Source code |