Comparison

ToonSquid vs PicoChat for iMessage

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

ToonSquid

This powerful 2D art and animation studio for iPad combines traditional frame-by-frame animation with keyframe animation for layer properties. It offers a robust layer system, customizable brushes, vector shapes, animatable effects, and symbols to bring your creative visions to life.

Highlights
  • Frame-by-frame traditional animation
  • Keyframe animation for layer properties
  • Flexible layer system with blend modes
  • Customizable brushes with Apple Pencil support
  • Vector shapes and path tools
  • Animatable effects and inverse kinematics
  • Symbol workflow for reusable clips
Features
Read full description

ToonSquid is the powerful 2D art and animation studio for your iPad. Its flexible layer system allows you to combine the charm of hand-drawn traditional animation with keyframes that automatically animate layer properties over time. With a library full of beautiful, blazing-fast and fully customizable pixel and vector brushes, animatable effects, a smudge tool, animated text and vector shapes, bones with inverse kinematics, video and audio layers, camera movements, symbols and many more features, ToonSquid makes it easy to bring your vision to life. Traditional Animation - Create hand-drawn frame-by-frame animations - Control how long you want to show each drawing in the timeline - Draw in resolutions of up to 4k Keyframe Animation - Add keyframes to automatically animate layer and effects properties over time - Choose from an extensive list of customizable easing curve presets to create organic motion between keyframes - Easily loop your keyframe animation Powerful Layer System - Define the order and length of each element in your animation using layers and drawings and a flexible timeline - Organize your layers into groups for a clean workflow or to animate multiple layers at once - Use the camera layer to quickly define the visible portion of your animation in the export - Mask layers to other layers, even when their contents are animated - Choose from 27 industry-standard layer blend modes for beautiful compositing effects Fully-customizable Brushes - Draw gorgeous brush strokes with ToonSquid's state-of-the-art digital brush engine - Take full advantage of Apple Pencil's pressure and tilt sensitivity and the iPad Pro's 120Hz display for lag-free drawing - Use vector brushes to create brush strokes that are sharp at every zoom level - Edit the 60+ brush settings and import custom textures to create a brush library that is perfectly tailored to your art style - Blend your strokes together using the smudge tool - Draw in a variety of styles such as sketching, inking, wet mixing, pixel art, and more - Export and share your custom brushes with others - Import your existing library of Adobe® Photoshop® brushes Vector Shapes - Create custom shapes using the path tool by placing and editing each curve control point - Quickly add common vector shapes from the shape library - Import SVG files - Fill and stroke your shapes with beautiful gradients and edit them directly on the canvas - Animate the visible length of a path using its trim properties Animatable Effects - Create character rigs using bones and add inverse kinematics constraints - Create custom meshes to deform pixel layers when they are part of a bone rig - Animate perspective and warp effects - Apply adjustments, blur, pixelation, drop shadow, chroma key, halftone, parallax and more effects Efficient symbol workflow - Split your animation into separate clips that you can then reuse multiple times using symbols - Make edits to an animation clip and immediately see the changes in all of its symbol instances - Use frame markers to speed up your lip-syncing workflow Text - Add text layers and animate their appearance - Import your favorite fonts Color - Use ToonSquid's powerful color picker with plenty of different interfaces to choose the exact colors you need - Create custom color palettes and share them outside the application - Pick colors straight from the canvas using the pipette tool - Fill connected regions quickly with the fill tool Audio and Video - Add audio clips to your timeline and perform lip-syncing animations - Import videos, GIFs and images into your project and work with them through symbols Transform - Animate a layer's position, rotation and scale properties using keyframes - Build transform hierarchies to achieve more advanced movements - Edit your layer's motion path directly on the canvas Numerous Export Formats - Export your work in one of many common file formats such as MP4, MOV, GIF, PNG, JPEG, PSD, and more.

About

PicoChat for iMessage

Relive the nostalgia of early 2000s handheld messaging with this retro drawing app for iMessage. Create tiny pixel art, use unique emoji, and share your creations with friends, even if they don't have the app installed. Features include undo, saving favorites, and customization options.

Highlights
  • Create tiny drawings in iMessage
  • Dozens of pixel emoji
  • Undo mistakes
  • Save favorite drawings
  • Customize name and color
Read full description

Remember sitting on the bus and messaging your friends via your favorite two-screened handheld? Relive those memories with PicoChat, a tiny retro drawing app for iMessage! Featuring all the nostalgic features you remember and a few extras including the ability to undo, save favorites, and more! This open-source iMessage app is perfect for sending drawings to your friends who can see you art even if they don't have the app installed. With PicoChat, you can: • Create tiny drawings right in iMessage • Use dozens of pixel emoji • Undo mistakes with the click of a button • Save favorites to come back to later • Customize your name and color scheme And much more, download PicoChat today and try it out for yourself! Note: The terms Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS, and PictoChat are registered trademarks of Nintendo Co., Ltd. This app is in no way affiliated with Nintendo.

Screenshots

PicoChat for iMessage3 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: PicoChat for iMessage at Free against ToonSquid's $9.99. PicoChat for iMessage also leads on update cadence (daily vs every 2 weeks). ToonSquid's advantage is ratings volume (1.3K vs 98) and review sentiment (89% vs 79%). On rating, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

PicoChat for iMessage is free to download; ToonSquid costs $9.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.6 for ToonSquid against 4.5 for PicoChat for iMessage. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: ToonSquid has 1.3K ratings behind it against 98, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 89% of ToonSquid's written reviews are positive against 79% of PicoChat for iMessage's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

ToonSquid ships an update every 2 weeks, PicoChat for iMessage daily. The most recent releases landed on November 8, 2026 and October 30, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard5 real differences · 5 level
ToonSquid versus PicoChat for iMessage: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterToonSquidPicoChat for iMessage
Price$9.99Free — better
Rating4.6 (1.3K ratings) — better4.5 (98 ratings)
Positive reviews88.7% of reviews — better79.2% of reviews
Number of ratings1.3K — better98
Update frequencyEvery 2 weeksDaily — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaidFree — better
DevicesiPadiPhone, iPad — better
Requires iOS15.0 — better16.6
Further details — not scored
Size48 MB3 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperKeiwan DonyagardIdrees Hassan

Customer experience

ToonSquid

All ratings1,336 ratings
Positive91.8%
Neutral3.2%
Negative4.9%
Written reviews1,163 reviews
Positive88.7%
Neutral4.6%
Negative6.7%

PicoChat for iMessage

All ratings89 ratings
Positive91.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative9.0%
Written reviews53 reviews
Positive79.2%
Neutral0.0%
Negative20.8%

User reviews

ToonSquid

From 1.3K App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 AMAZING APP!!!
  • 🚀 This is an absolute LIFESAVER
  • 👍 Super solid animation App!
  • 👍 Great app just one suggestion
  • 👍 Absolutely Amazing App

Room to improve

  • 🐛 AMAZING APP!!! One recommendation tho.
  • 🐛 Snapping
  • 🐛 Crashes
  • 🐛 Keyframing doesn't work
  • 🐛 Randomly ill get a warning that i have low memory

PicoChat for iMessage

From 98 App Store ratings

What we love

  • 🚀 Perfection
  • 👍 Super Cute!!
  • 👍 Oh my lord
  • 👍 YES!
  • 👍 So much fun!

Room to improve

  • 🐛 Needs multiple size formats
  • 🐛 No icon app cannot be found
  • 🐛 A few bugs!
  • 🐛 almost perfect
  • 🐛 Why is there no icon for it on the homescreen or any way to delete? 🧐

Bugs and requests

ToonSquid

Reported bugs

7 issues
  • Keyframing doesn't work
  • Randomly ill get a warning that i have low memory
  • The lasso tool thing isnt working for me
  • Bug
  • Whenever I use the fill bucket tool my app will randomly crash sometimes
Show 2 more
  • When I upload my animatic as a video file and play it, it works for a couple of seconds, but then the screen goes white
  • The app keeps crashing on me in certain projects

Requested features

31 requests
  • Custom graphs
  • Bevel Shading
  • Drawing to drawing transform
  • Record Audio
  • Extract audio from video
Show 26 more
  • Symmetry tool
  • Skew / Shear feature for keyframes & symbols
  • Blending modes and filters
  • Ability to select & edit/copy multiple frames at once
  • Ability to rotate selected lines with the selection tool
  • Ability to draw rasterised brushes outside of the box perimeters
  • Audio feature where you can turn videos into audios
  • Pen tip icon like Procreate and FlipaClip
  • Ability to adjust an entire layer's opacity
  • When playing an animation from a specific point on the timeline, returning to that point on the timeline when you pause
  • Easier time selecting and moving and then unselecting specific areas
  • Being able to copy and paste selected areas
  • Ability to turn on brush outline
  • Ability to adjust the size of the workspace
  • Liquify brush
  • Rigging/bone system
  • Ability to reuse assets in other projects
  • Rigged deformations
  • Ability to flip the entire canvas for drawing
  • Folders for projects or "stacks" like Procreate for sorting projects
  • Ability to import .svg files
  • Ability to merge all the animation layers into one
  • Ability to customize the shape of deformation tool
  • Ability to make vector/flash animations
  • Ability to merge layers
  • Ability to change opacity for frame-layers

PicoChat for iMessage

Reported bugs

4 issues
  • Settings don't save
  • Cursor turns into scribbles when writing too fast
  • Rainbow pen lags the app and force closes messages
  • Doesn't accommodate all screen sizes

Requested features

4 requests
  • Bigger keyboard size
  • Dark Mode support
  • Scaling fix for iPad
  • Ability to transform photos into drawings

In-app purchases

None

ToonSquid

No in-app purchases

None

PicoChat for iMessage

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is ToonSquid free?
ToonSquid costs $9.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is PicoChat for iMessage free?
PicoChat for iMessage is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, ToonSquid or PicoChat for iMessage?
ToonSquid is rated higher. ToonSquid averages 4.6 out of 5 from 1.3K ratings, while PicoChat for iMessage averages 4.5 from 98 ratings.
Do ToonSquid or PicoChat for iMessage have ads?
Neither ToonSquid nor PicoChat for iMessage shows ads.
Which is updated more often, ToonSquid or PicoChat for iMessage?
ToonSquid ships an update every 2 weeks, and PicoChat for iMessage daily. Most recently, ToonSquid was updated on November 8, 2026 and PicoChat for iMessage on October 30, 2026.

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