Microsoft Paint
Ranked 8 of 11 image editors by recommenders
Fast and simple for quick diagrams, screenshot edits and drawing; critics object to the new version's hidden identifier watermark and AI feature.
Fast and simple for quick diagrams, screenshot edits and drawing; critics object to the new version's hidden identifier watermark and AI feature.
33 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 10
- criticize it
- 23
- approval share
- 30%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 10 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 0.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 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
Faster than alternatives
“Still feels faster than watching my screen fade in and out for the snipping tool.”
Comment from 15 Nov 2025 in “Windhawk Windows classic theme mod for Windows 11” “it's so much better and faster than the stock image viewer”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 in “Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown” Simple, uncluttered, does its job
“does everything I'd expect from a paint program, and gets out of the way when I don't need it anymore”
Comment from 25 Sep 2026 in “What About Rails?” “Paint, Notepad, Calculator are all fantastic.”
Comment from 18 Jan 2026 in “If you put Apple icons in reverse it looks like someone getting good at design”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Hidden tracking identifier in output
“Inserting a tracker that can personally identify me without my explicit opt-in consent is a GDPR breach.”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID” “I don't think adding an identifier which can most likely be mapped back to user is "standard mark".”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID” “the invisible watermark is embedded in both the image pixels and the image metadata”
Comment from 24 Aug 2026 in “MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID” - Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID”
- Comment from 24 Aug 2026 in “MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID”
- Comment from 24 Aug 2026 in “MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID”
- Comment from 24 Aug 2026 in “MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID”
Telemetry and spyware phoning home
“crippling it with additional spyware that phones home to tell Microsoft what you're doing”
Comment from 25 Aug 2026 in “MS Paint and Photos inivisibly watermark even locally generated output with GUID” “If you break telemetry globally, notepad will crash, along with calc and paint.”
Comment from 27 Jan 2026 in “Windows 11 January Update Breaks Notepad” Bugs in saving, fill and stability
“cropping a screenshot in paint and leaving it in the background has partially stopped my PC from rebooting”
Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux” “sometimes I save images using Paint and then the default canvas size will be something else!”
Comment from 10 Aug 2026 in “Assembly Hall of Shame” “because the fill tool didn't recognise the background properly”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown” Ribbon redesign disrupts habits
“The new mspaint fucked, then unfucked, then refucked my decades-old muscle memory”
Comment from 7 Aug 2026 in “Assembly Hall of Shame” “I never liked the new ribbon-based design from later version of Windows.”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “Windows 11 Notepad to support Markdown”
Other image editors people recommend
The four most recommended other image editors, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GIMP | 179 | 216 | 45% | 13 | 20 yrs17 owners | — |
| Adobe Photoshop | 152 | 187 | 45% | 12 | 25 yrs22 owners | — |
| Moss pixel canvas | 46 | 6 | 88% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Paint.NET | 30 | 8 | 79% | 7 | — | Approved |
| Microsoft PaintThis page | 10 | 23 | 30% | 8 | — | — |
What people said
33 of the 34 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it can't open .PNG and .JPEG files”
“does everything I'd expect from a paint program, and gets out of the way when I don't need it anymore”
“most people would have no idea that Microsoft tags and tracks the images here”
“Inserting a tracker that can personally identify me without my explicit opt-in consent is a GDPR breach.”
“I don't think adding an identifier which can most likely be mapped back to user is "standard mark".”
“crippling it with additional spyware that phones home to tell Microsoft what you're doing”
“it would be a colossal GDPR breech against every EU user”
“users aren't really told about this, as far as I can tell”
“this is entirely to identify users for any purposes they deem necessary”
“the invisible watermark is embedded in both the image pixels and the image metadata”
“sometimes I save images using Paint and then the default canvas size will be something else!”
“The new mspaint fucked, then unfucked, then refucked my decades-old muscle memory”
“shitty ms paint recommendation”
“I'd rather see a shitty Microsoft Paint drawing as opposed to some AI image.”
“Even MS isn't so stupid as to ship two separate accessories both called "Paint" in the same OS by default!”
“I now have to find the old paint manually.”
“mspaint now tries to push for a login… yep that's right, mspaint…”
“or just use paint / aesprite...”
“it's so much better and faster than the stock image viewer”
“the 'AI' feature is another by-the-numbers crappy stable diffusion model that's strictly worse than anything you could get with your first Google search”
“the enshittified even calc.exe and mspaint”
“Same thing happened with paint.”
“I never liked the new ribbon-based design from later version of Windows.”
“because the fill tool didn't recognise the background properly”
“Paint is becoming Photoshop-lite, and now has conflicting functionality with the Photos app.”
“I physically, no matter how hard I try, draw a circuit diagram in Microsoft Paint as fast as you can draw one with your hand.”
“if you need to do anything with that layer, you're basically SOL”
“people would already be ecstatic if they just cloned how 30-year-old version of Microsoft Paint did it”
“cropping a screenshot in paint and leaving it in the background has partially stopped my PC from rebooting”
“If you break telemetry globally, notepad will crash, along with calc and paint.”
“Paint, Notepad, Calculator are all fantastic.”
“I do get saturated colors”
“Still feels faster than watching my screen fade in and out for the snipping tool.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.