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#dev-log

#dev-log

Jens
Thu, 9th April 2026 at 8:11am
Website update
We're getting close to releasing the updated website. This is what I've been working on for the last couple of months. To me, this is a very exciting update because it fixes the fundamental issue of the website being something very different from Colors Live on consoles.

The new website is running the same C++ code as on the Nintendo Switch. This is possible thanks to browsers becoming more capable, with support for WebGPU and WebAssembly. The best part is that improvements made to the website will also improve the experience on the device, and vice versa.

I’ve also taken the opportunity to do a major upgrade to the colorslive.com infrastructure. Future versions of Colors Live will be better, snappier, and more feature-rich because of it.

But perhaps the most important upgrade is proper phone support. It’s slightly embarrassing that a website in 2026 didn’t properly handle phone resolutions, but will now be fixed. It might also be a stepping stone to get Colors Live out on some new devices...

Jens
Wed, 19th November 2025 at 3:48pm
As you might have seen, Colors Live v1.15 is out this week. It’s mostly a bugfix update, but the big goal was getting everything running smoothly on Nintendo Switch 2.

We’ve been trying to get our hands on Switch 2 devkits for a while now, but Nintendo is still keeping those pretty close. We’re eager to dig into all the fun new stuff on the hardware - higher resolution, HDR, and 120 Hz (and we even want to try the mouse support).

Even so, we managed to fix the SonarPen connection issue on Switch 2, so Colors Live now works great on it. It looks great on the bigger screen and just feels snappier and better. Try it out!

Jens
Sat, 2nd December 2023 at 3:52pm
We've updated the repainter on colorslive.com so it's much much faster than it used to be. We also took the opportunity to implement the 3D tilt feature that came into a recent Colors Live version. Press play, and then click and drag to see the individual layers!

Jens
Sun, 7th May 2023 at 8:11pm
v1.13 is now submitted. If it breezes through Nintendo's certification, it could be done within a week. If they encounter some problems it could be much longer.

Jens
Mon, 27th March 2023 at 6:46am
We're finally wrapping up v1.13. The big feature-additions are Layer Mods, that gives Transparency Lock, and #remix, which allows you to download a painting, remix it, and then post it to colorslive.com. I can't wait to get this one released! If you are a Patron, feel free to try the PC version out and let me know if you find any issues so we can get all bugs squashed before we submit it to Nintendo!

jaames
Sun, 4th December 2022 at 1:08pm
The issue with stuck painting comment / like / mention notifications should also be fixed now — that’s the one where the notifications couldn’t be dismissed by tapping them if the painting had been deleted

jaames
Sun, 20th November 2022 at 11:04pm
Hello! I think I've fixed the issue where notifications for comment mentions and new followers sometimes weren't sent out, but it's a very unpredictable (timing-dependent) bug, so we need some help to confirm that!

If you notice that you haven't received a notification for a comment mention, from a comment posted after you've read this, please let us know in #tech-support on colorslive.com/discord. Please try to include a screenshot of the exact comment you weren't notified about too. Thanks!

Jens
Sun, 13th November 2022 at 5:18pm
This feed has been quite neglected lately, but here's a sneak peek of a thing that's in the pipeline.

Jens
Mon, 23rd May 2022 at 5:03pm
I've been working on v1.12 for a while now. Lots of effort has gone into rewriting some parts of Colors Live to make room for new features. This isn't very exciting for end-users, but it's necessary to get in things like Special Layers, which is a very powerful feature that we'll use for a lot of things. We've also reworked the general look of our brush icons. This is the first time since the original Colors! prototype back in 2007 that we've updated the brush icons, which is pretty crazy. The big underlying changes will require additional time for testing, but I'll post some updates here and there in the coming weeks before v1.12 goes into submission.

jaames
Tue, 10th May 2022 at 1:15pm
Hello! Since April is over now, this is just a quick heads-up that the Spring Quest will be disappearing in a couple of days. Please make sure to copy any paintings that you'd like to keep into your local gallery as soon as possible!

In the future, we hope to add a way to retrieve your paintings from seasonal Quests once they're closed (and add more seasonal Quests in general!), but in the meantime you won't have access to your paintings until this happens.

Twarda
Tue, 22nd March 2022 at 5:09pm
Hey everyone!
We put a small surprise in the upcoming Colors Live update for you. And that surprise is... Spring Quest! Yup, during April you will be able to try out 10 new challenges!

Curious enough? Designing a brand new world for you to explore is a challenge itself 😉 So let me show you some sneak peeks from behind the scenes too! Like with everything creative, the beginnings can be humble. Ideas, flow, possible colour schemes and visual language get more and more finalized within each step.
The final effect? Well, you will have to see it yourself! And we hope you will enjoy it!

Jens
Mon, 7th March 2022 at 8:30am
v1.10 is in submission with Nintendo, and should hopefully be approved and released this week. The two big additions is a new brush list screen (which will be further updated future versions) along with a new flood fill tool!

jaames
Tue, 22nd February 2022 at 1:52pm
A few of you might have come across a bit of a nasty bug where viewing certain paintings (or sometimes entire artist profiles) causes the Colors Live app to crash. This can happen either on a local painting or on the gallery when an at symbol or hashtag are used in a painting/profile description without anything after them - the app tries to turn these into an artist mention or a tag link, but it's not able to.

We wanted to reassure everyone that this will be fixed in the next Colors Live update (version 1.10), and any affected paintings will be accessible again after updating. In the meantime, please try to avoid leaving unfinished mentions/tags in descriptions.

As a partial temporary fix for the online gallery, we've started automatically removing these broken mentions/tags from descriptions and comments. Proper mentions and tags shouldn't be affected, but you may notice that things like emoticons containing these symbols are formatted strangely. This measure will be removed after the next update rolls out. Thanks for your patience!

jaames
Wed, 16th February 2022 at 5:29pm
We've made it easier to block people in Colors Live on your Nintendo Switch! The new "manage blocklist" button in your account settings will let you view a list of artists that you have blocked, and you can add someone to this list by searching for their name.

Blocking someone will stop them from being able to comment on the paintings you've posted to the colorslive.com gallery. We're going to work on extending this so that you never see an artist you've blocked as you browse around the gallery, but that's a much bigger task, so it's not ready yet.

Also, for additional safety and spam prevention, we've blocked new accounts from being able to leave comments from the colorslive.com website. This limit will be removed as soon as you sign into that account from any version of the Colors app/game :)

Jens
Mon, 14th February 2022 at 1:54pm
We're currently working on improving brush selection which will allow us to have a bunch of more brushes without things getting too messy. The help with that, I've experimented with adding a second "row" of favorite brushes that you'll quickly be able to access either from the palette, but also directly while painting. It feels promising.

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