Draw Things
Ranked 2 of 4 image generation interfaces by recommenders
Recommended as an easy way to run AI image models locally on Mac and iPhone, with recommended settings that need no fiddling. Caveat: one critic found it confusing for beginners.
Recommended as an easy way to run AI image models locally on Mac and iPhone, with recommended settings that need no fiddling. Caveat: one critic found it confusing for beginners.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 9
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 9 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Easy setup with recommended settings
“Tap "Try recommended settings", have the guarantee that for whatever model it supports, it is the fastest in Mac ecosystem, no need to fiddle.”
Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “Run Qwen3.8 27B locally: real numbers from my Mac Studio” “Apps like LMStudio, Ollama, Draw Things, etc do a great job of simplifying it”
Comment from 10 Jul 2026 in “Apple Silicon Exec Explains Mac Mini AI Demand and On-Device Future” “Draw Things is supposed to be pretty "batteries included" simple”
Comment from 20 May 2026 in “Remove AI Watermarks” - Comment from 13 Jun 2026 in “How to Setup a Local Coding Agent on macOS”
Fast generation on Apple hardware
“Tap "Try recommended settings", have the guarantee that for whatever model it supports, it is the fastest in Mac ecosystem, no need to fiddle.”
Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “Run Qwen3.8 27B locally: real numbers from my Mac Studio” “Draw Things runs on iPhone just fine and generally faster than their implementation on the same model”
Comment from 31 May 2026 in “1-Bit Bonsai Image 4B Image Generation for Local Devices” “Draw Things does the job, usually in 120 seconds or less.”
Comment from 26 Jun 2026 in “Apple to Skip High-End M6 Mac Chips in Favor of AI-Focused M7 Line” - Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “Ask HN: Anyone Using a Mac Studio for Local AI/LLM?”
Runs newer image models locally
“You can run newer models like Z Image Turbo or FLUX.2 [dev] using Draw Things with no effort too.”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades” “Try running liuliu's 'Draw Things' app, or any other tool that generates AI images locally.”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “Apple introduces the new iPad Air, powered by M4” “You can easily run models like Mistral and Stable Diffusion in Ollama and Draw Things”
Comment from 23 Dec 2025 in “Local AI is driving the biggest change in laptops in decades”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Hard for beginners
“I did not find it beginner friendly. I remember feeling a lot of doubt, confusion, and frustration.”
Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “Run Qwen3.8 27B locally: real numbers from my Mac Studio” Too many supported models
“I think one of the issue Draw Things inherited is the baggage of supporting too much models.”
Comment from 28 Aug 2026 in “Run Qwen3.8 27B locally: real numbers from my Mac Studio”
Other image generation interfaces people recommend
The three most recommended other image generation interfaces, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ComfyUI | 70 | 19 | 79% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Draw ThingsThis page | 9 | 0 | 100% | 7 | — | — |
| InvokeAI | 6 | 1 | 86% | 7 | — | — |
| Automatic1111 Stable Diffusion WebUI | 5 | 3 | 63% | 5 | — | — |
What people said
All 14 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I think one of the issue Draw Things inherited is the baggage of supporting too much models.”
“I did not find it beginner friendly. I remember feeling a lot of doubt, confusion, and frustration.”
“Tap "Try recommended settings", have the guarantee that for whatever model it supports, it is the fastest in Mac ecosystem, no need to fiddle.”
“I am the author of Draw Things”
“Apps like LMStudio, Ollama, Draw Things, etc do a great job of simplifying it”
“Draw Things does the job, usually in 120 seconds or less.”
“easy to use apps that handle much of the cruft for you”
“Draw Things runs on iPhone just fine and generally faster than their implementation on the same model”
“Draw Things is supposed to be pretty "batteries included" simple”
“Try running liuliu's 'Draw Things' app, or any other tool that generates AI images locally.”
“it runs rather quickly via the Draw Things app”
“I have a local image generator app called Draw Things that has many times more options than this.”
“You can run newer models like Z Image Turbo or FLUX.2 [dev] using Draw Things with no effort too.”
“You can easily run models like Mistral and Stable Diffusion in Ollama and Draw Things”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.