Butterfly 2.5.3 released

Jun 8, 2026

Butterfly

🎨 Powerful, minimalistic, cross-platform, opensource note-taking app

CodeDoctor

I am excited to announce the release of Butterfly 2.5.3 focused on platform support, stylus improvements, selection reliability, and PDF import fixes.

This is a stable release, it includes all the changes from the 2.5.3 nightly releases.

Please visit the nightly version blog entries here to see all the changes in detail:

For reading the 2.5.2 release notes, please check the 2.5.2 release blog entry.

Windows on ARM Support

Butterfly now supports Windows on ARM, making the app available on more Windows devices, including ARM-based laptops and tablets.

This opens the door for a smoother Butterfly experience on newer Windows hardware and gives Windows users more flexibility when choosing their device.

The minimum iOS version has been raised to 14.0.

Better Stylus Support

Butterfly has been upgraded to Flutter 3.44, bringing stylus support improvements on Windows.

Pen input also received more polish in this release. Pressure is now used correctly for inverted stylus input, making stylus workflows more consistent.

Selection Improvements

#1118 #1112 #1109

Selection should feel more predictable in this release.

Selection transforms now use the nearest corner hit, making it easier to grab the right handle when editing. Raycasting on rotated elements has also been fixed, improving interaction with rotated content.

Very small selections are now easier to transform or open context menus for, and the lasso selection tool now handles non-convex polygons correctly.

PDF Import Fixes

#1123 #1124 #1106

PDF workflows received some important fixes.

Spread-to-pages imports no longer render as gray placeholders, and PDF import now correctly uses the selected pages instead of importing the first pages.

Moving PDFs with spacer tools no longer freezes the canvas, making PDF-based documents more reliable to edit.

Polygon Workflow Fixes

#1121

Polygon editing has been cleaned up further.

The polygon tool toolbar now correctly updates the element you are currently editing, and the polygon tool color picker now has the eyedropper button again.

Shapes with identical start and end points are no longer created accidentally.

Tool Reliability Fixes

#1092 #1093 #1107

Several tools should now behave more consistently while editing.

Temporary tools are no longer cleared after canvas gestures, the texture tool configuration no longer gets stuck while scrolling, and the stamp tool hover preview looks better on touch devices.

Image and Rendering Fixes

#1094 #1097

Visual rendering has been improved in a few places.

Jagged rendering after changing orientation has been fixed, and image operations no longer temporarily show gray boxes. Image export quality changes also no longer show stale previews.

Dialog and File Handling Fixes

#1101 #1105 #1114

Dialogs and file handling received several quality-of-life fixes.

The close dialog now clearly offers save, discard, and cancel actions. Title and description fields no longer clear themselves when losing focus, and the top corner menu now correctly shows navigator menu buttons in full screen.

Layer workflows also received a small improvement: duplicate layer is now available in the multi-select options of the layers navigator, and the duplicate layer button in the layers dialog works again.

Moved or renamed files no longer behave strangely in recent files, and embed message handling has been fixed.

Notes

Thanks to everyone who tested the 2.5.3 release candidates and reported issues! In the coming weeks, the 2.6 development cycle will begin, which will include some exciting new features and improvements. Stay tuned for more updates!

Please report any bugs you find on GitHub and share the app with others to help the project grow.

Full changelog

Changes since 2.5.3-rc.1:

Fix PDF spread-to-pages imports rendering as gray placeholders (#1123)
Fix PDF import using the first pages instead of the selected pages (#1124)
Fix polygon tool color picker has no eyedropper button (#1121)
Fix embed message handling

This is a stable release, it includes all the changes from the 2.5.3 nightly releases.