Paint.NET gets dark theme and improved high DPI support

A fresh update is rolling out to Paint.NET, and there are a couple of enticing new features tagging along. Perhaps the most eye-catching addition is dark theme support, but you'll also notice that the app now looks better on high DPI displays. There are, of course, a slew of bug fixes included here as well.

Here's a look at all fo what's new in Paint.NET version 4.0.20:

  • New: Dark Theme support
  • New: .NET Framework 4.7 is now required, and will be automatically installed if needed
  • New: Explorer thumbnails are now supported for TGA and DDS file types
  • Fixed and Improved: High-DPI support throughout the application
  • Fixed: Color Picker tool was not always honoring the "Switch to previous tool" setting
  • Fixed the arrow keys not working properly until the second shape (or line/curve) was drawn.
  • Fixed the zoom slider being "wiggly" while being dragged around
  • Fixed a glitch with the mouse cursor (resize handle) at the lower-left corner of the main window
  • Fixed a crash in the Shape tool renderer (BadNumberException via ID2D1Geometry::GetWidenedBounds)
  • Fixed a hang in the Frosted Glass effect
  • Fixed a hang in the Levels adjustment
  • Fixed a rendering issue in the Move Selected Pixels tool
  • Fixed: Canvas now processes WM_MOUSEHWHEEL, which was preventing some horizontal mouse wheels and trackpad swipe gestures from working properly
  • Fixed: Plugins will no longer completely crash the app on Windows 10 S (note, however, that plugins other than custom Shapes do not work on Windows 10 S)
  • Fixed: a data loss bug when saving very large images (greater than 4GB).

The addition of dark theme support means that Paint.NET is now tied to change its look based on your system theme. For example, if you set your Windows personalization setting to default to dark mode, Paint.NET will now automatically switch to its dark theme as well.

Having been initially introduced in 2004, Paint.NET has been in a constant state of evolution since, retaining a dedicated base of devoted users. Though it was a standard desktop app for most of its life, Paint.NET was released on the Windows Store as well in late 2017.

If you want to check out all of what's new, you can grab version 4.0.20 now either from the Windows Store or directly from the Paint.NET website.

See at Microsoft Store

Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl