Inspire review
A brush-rich iPhone painter with playback, pressure controls, and one-time pricing.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
Inspire is an iPhone painting, drawing, and sketching app from snowCanoe, designed for solo creators who prioritize brush-based work and replayable process videos. Its toolset centers on 150 brushes across 15 sets, with wet-brush, dry-brush blending, and eraser modes. Artists can create custom-size canvases, bring in images from Photos or iCloud Drive, and organize saved paintings in a gallery with thumbnails and playback.
The app uses one paid Inspire plan with a one-time purchase and no subscription fees or in-app purchases. Brush controls cover pressure, blending mode, scatter, and taper, while HSB and RGB sliders plus saved palettes support repeatable color choices. Canvas Playback records strokes and exports video up to 1080p, giving illustrators a way to show process alongside finished images. Up to 1,000 undo and redo levels, plus canvas move, rotate, and zoom, support iterative painting on an iPhone.
Inspire stays focused on iOS and mobile creation rather than a cross-platform production pipeline. Import works through Photos or iCloud Drive, but the documented export path centers on 1080p Canvas Playback video. The app’s brush depth and pressure controls suit painters and sketchers; however, the lack of layers makes complex compositing or multi-element revisions less practical, and the narrow export focus may not fit workflows that require broad image-file interchange. Choose Inspire for direct, brush-led painting, custom canvases, and shareable playback. Choose another drawing app if layered editing, extensive file-format support, or broader platform coverage is central.
Inspire pros and cons
- Where it wins
- 150 brushes with wet, dry, blending, and eraser modes
- Canvas Playback records strokes and exports video up to 1080p
- Pressure, blending, scatter, taper, palettes, and up to 1,000 undos
- Where it doesn't
- No layer workflow for complex compositing
- Export focus is limited to Canvas Playback video
- Available only on iPhone and other iOS devices
Inspire fact sheet, pricing and score →
Advertiser disclosure: iTechGuides is reader-supported. Vendors can pay for top positions in our rankings and for a place on other products' pages, and we may earn a commission when you click some links. How we rank.
Last updated · How we research and update