Pattern

A pattern repeats ("tiles") an image across the fill or the stroke of an object, the way a color or a gradient does. Choose Pattern in the Line Type or Fill Type pop-up on the Attributes Panel to switch a well from color or gradient to pattern.

Pattern replaces color or gradient wherever a Type menu offers it: the border or stroke of shapes, lines, paths, and text boxes, and the fill of shapes, paths, and text boxes. The characters themselves take a color, a gradient, or a pattern as well — the text fill type menu has a third Pattern entry, and it covers both straight text and curved text. The text outline takes a color only. Not every object accepts every source — for an object that cannot be patterned, the Pattern item stays grayed out while Color and Gradient remain available, so you can tell at a glance what the selection accepts.

Where you can apply a pattern

A pattern is always picked in a Type pop-up, one per channel. Whichever channel you set it on, the same panel, the same parameters and the same handle rules apply — only the entry point and what gets painted differ.

Fill

Choose Pattern in the Fill Type pop-up on the Attributes Panel to tile the inside of a shape, a path, or a text box (its background). The panel that opens is titled Fill Pattern, and its phase handle sits at the object's upper right.

Stroke

Choose Pattern in the Line Type pop-up to tile the border of a shape, a line, a path, or a text box. The panel is titled Border Pattern — or just Pattern where the stroke is the object's body instead of a border (pen, airbrush, and the line / curve / polyline tools). Its phase handle sits at the lower left.

The tile fills the stroke band, so how much of it you actually see depends on the line width: a thick border shows the tiling clearly, while a hairline leaves room for only a sliver of it. If a patterned border reads as a plain line, widen it.

Text characters

Choose Pattern in the Fill Type pop-up on the Text Attributes panel — a panel of its own, separate from the one shapes use — to tile the characters themselves. The text fill type menu has a third Pattern entry next to Color and Gradient, and it works on straight text and on curved text alike. The panel is titled Text Pattern, and its phase handle sits at the upper left.

On characters the tile is masked to the glyph shapes: it fills the strokes of the letters, the way a color or a gradient does, and leaves the background around them alone.

A text box can carry a pattern in up to three places at once — the characters, the background of the box, and the border of the box — each with its own well and its own settings. The text outline is a fourth, separate channel, and it takes a color only.

Where a pattern isn't offered

A pattern replaces a color or a gradient, so it appears wherever a Type menu does — and where it can't be used, the Pattern item stays grayed out while Color and Gradient remain available. Worth knowing:

A group carries no fill or stroke of its own, so it can't be patterned as a whole — select its members instead.
Objects the painting tools produce, rather than shapes you drew, don't offer Pattern.
Images you can tint with a color keep Color and Gradient but leave Pattern grayed out.
The text outline is its own channel and takes a color only.

To take a channel off a pattern again, choose Color or Gradient in the same Type menu. The tile you had is kept, so switching back to Pattern brings it back with its parameters.

The Pattern Panel

Choosing Pattern in the type menu opens the Pattern panel right away, in its own window, so it stays on screen while you work on the canvas. You can also click the pattern well at any time to bring it back.

Recent: The tiles you have used lately, most recent first. Both built-in and imported tiles land here once you click them. Paint S keeps the last 20; when a new one pushes the list past that, the oldest drops out of the list only — nothing is deleted from your Mac.
All: Everything the panel can offer — the built-in tiles, then your imported ones.
Built-in: Thirty-six tiles for a quick start — thirty-two seamless vector patterns (herringbone, floral, hexagons, triangles, circles, stars, plaid, jigsaw, leaves, scales, terrazzo, checkerboard and more) plus four natural-surface photo tiles (two grass variants, stone and wood). The photo tiles are processed so they repeat without a visible seam; the wood tile does so sideways, and copies stacked above one another follow the grain's own variation. Most built-in tiles are previewed as a small patch of the repeat — several copies side by side — so you can see how the tile joins before you apply it.
Imported: The images you have imported yourself, newest first. The library holds up to 100.
Import: Bring in your own images. In All and Imported, the first cell of the grid is a + tile — click it and the standard file picker opens. While Imported is still empty there are no tiles to show, so the panel puts an Import… button there instead.
Detach button: In the popover form, tear the panel off into its own window with this button in the top-left corner, so you can keep it open while you move around the canvas and pick colors or shapes. The panel's top row shows what it belongs to — Pattern, Border Pattern, Fill Pattern or Text Pattern — the same wording the well itself uses, in both forms; the detach button itself only appears in the popover. The detached window has no title text, just the window's own close button in the top-left corner.
Close the panel: In the popover form, the X in the top-right corner and Esc both dismiss it. Once detached, the window behaves like the system Colors and Fonts panels — a standing panel that Esc does not dismiss. Close it with either close button: the corner X and the window's own close button do exactly the same thing. Double-click the well instead to bring it back as a popover. Closing keeps the position, size and settings, and the panel stays closed until you open it again yourself — clicking the well, or choosing Pattern in the type menu. It will not reappear on its own when you come back to this document's window. The next time you do open it, it opens as a floating panel again; to have the well open the attached popover instead, double-click the well — it then stays a popover until you detach it again.

Click a tile to apply it to the object. Clicking the tile that is already selected leaves the pattern unchanged — a pattern well always holds a tile, so there is nothing to deselect.

Keyboard works too: the arrow keys move the focus across the grid, and Return or Space applies the focused tile exactly like a click would. In All and Imported the first cell is the + tile, so pressing Return on it opens the file picker.

The category you end up on is remembered — it is shared by the fill, border and text panels and by every document, so the panel opens on the same category next time.

The tile you last applied is remembered as well, along with its parameters, and it is kept separately for the fill, for the border, and for the text characters. Switching a well away from Pattern and back — or opening another document, or quitting and reopening the app — brings that tile back as you left it, instead of starting over from a built-in sample. A very large imported image can be too big to be kept this way; if so, that well starts over from the built-in sample after a restart, while the documents you already saved keep using the image they hold.

Importing your own patterns

Both entry points — the + tile at the head of the grid, and the Import… button shown while Imported is empty — open the standard file picker, and you can select several images at once. Each file is checked before it goes into the library:

The image must be no larger than 3000 px on a side and 100 MB on disk; anything bigger is skipped.
SVG and other formats that AppKit can read are converted to a bitmap when they are added, so they tile exactly like a PNG does.
Transparent areas in the image stay transparent, so a PNG with holes in it makes a cut-out pattern.
Importing an image you already have doesn't create a second copy. The existing tile just moves to the front of Imported and of Recent.
If the library is already full, nothing you have is dropped to make room: new images are accepted only up to the remaining space, and the rest are reported as skipped because the library is full. When there is no space left at all, the whole batch is refused and every image is reported in the summary as skipped because the library is full.
A batch is applied as far as it can go: the first image that imports is the one that goes on the object. When anything is skipped or refused, a single summary at the end tells you how many were added, how many you already had, how many were skipped, and how many were refused because the library is full; a single image that imports cleanly and is applied to the object right away needs no summary at all.

Removing a tile

Right-click a tile to get rid of it. The two entries mean different things:

Remove from Recent only drops the tile from the Recent list, with no warning. The tile is still in Built-in or Imported, and clicking it again puts it back at the top of Recent.
Remove Pattern deletes an imported image from the library, after asking you to confirm. Built-in tiles are never deleted, so this entry is grayed out for them.

Either way, objects that already use the tile keep their appearance: the pattern image is stored inside the document, so removing a tile from the panel can't change a saved file.

Pattern Parameters

The parameters sit in the same panel, below the grid of tiles and set off by a divider — one row per parameter. They travel with the panel, so detaching it to a floating window keeps the sliders right under the tiles they apply to. Each row is a slider with a numeric field and a stepper next to it, plus a fixed unit label (% or °) at the end, so you can drag for a rough value and type the exact one.

Opacity (0–100%): The opacity of the pattern itself. This affects the pattern only, not the object — an object at 100% opacity with its pattern at 40% shows a faded tile. The tile replaces the fill colour instead of lying on top of it, so what shows through is whatever is behind the object, not a solid version of the object.
Scale (5–300%): The size of the tile. The image is repeated, never stretched, so a large scale shows fewer, bigger copies.
Angle (−179° to 180°): The rotation of the tile grid.
Phase X / Phase Y (−50% to 50%): The offset of the tiling, measured as a fraction of one tile. Zero puts the first copy at the object's anchor; 50% shifts the whole grid by half a tile.
Reset: Return all parameters to their defaults.

Adjusting a slider updates the canvas as you drag. A run of small adjustments counts as a single undo step, so ⌘Z takes you back to where you started rather than rewinding every tick.

Moving the pattern with the canvas handle

Phase is a position, so you can set it by eye instead of by number. While the Pattern panel for that well is open in its own window and the selected object carries a pattern, a small round handle sits just off it — upper right for a patterned fill, lower left for a patterned stroke, and upper left for patterned characters — and the handle rides the object's own rotation. It also rides the pattern itself: the handle marks where the tiling starts, so whenever the phase changes it slides along with the tiles, and while you drag it stays under your pointer. Close the panel, and the handle goes with it: the panel is where these values are edited, so the handle shows only while it is on screen. Hover it and the app hints Drag to move the fill pattern, Drag to move the stroke pattern or Drag to move the text pattern, depending on which one it is; drag it and the tiles slide under your pointer, while the floating read-out (Phase X and Phase Y, each with its own percentage) and the Phase X / Phase Y fields track the drag live, so panel and canvas agree the moment you let go.

The three handles sit at three different points around the object, so a selection that is patterned in more than one way — a patterned fill and a patterned stroke, say — shows one handle for each and none of them covers another up.

The handle grabs an offset, not a spot: the pattern as you press down is the baseline, and the drag adds to it. However far you pull, the offset stays within half a tile in each direction (−50% to 50%) — past half a tile the tiling looks identical, so the value simply stops there.
The pattern follows your pointer whichever way the object is turned; a rotated object drags its tiles along the direction you move, not along its own axes.
One drag is one undo step: ⌘Z puts the pattern back where you grabbed the handle. Esc, or releasing without moving, abandons the drag and takes the panel back with it.
With several objects selected, only the one you are editing shows a handle, and the drag changes that one alone. A group has none, since a group carries no fill or stroke of its own — its members do.
No handle appears while you are still placing the object (a polyline or a vector path sends every click to the next anchor point), nor for a fill or stroke you have switched off, or turned back to a color or a gradient.
The text handle depends only on the characters being patterned, not on whether the text box has a background: a text box with its background fill switched off still shows its text handle.

How the Pattern Sits on the Object

The tiling is anchored to the object, not to the canvas. Moving an object moves its pattern with it; two objects of the same size and position show the pattern in the same place.
Rotating an object rotates its pattern. Scaling an object does not scale the tile — you get more or fewer copies instead of a stretched one. Use Scale to change tile size.
When an object has both a pattern and a shadow, the shadow follows the density of the pattern, so a cut-out tile casts a cut-out shadow.
On patterned characters, the tile is masked to the glyph shapes: it fills the strokes of the letters, the way a color or a gradient does, and the background around them is left alone. Where the tile itself is transparent, whatever sits behind the text shows through — the same as with a transparent color or gradient.
The text outline is a separate channel: patterning the characters does not pattern the outline, and the outline takes a color only.

Patterns and Export

Patterns are painted into every flattened output — PNG, JPEG, TIFF, BMP, WebP and GIF — exactly as they appear on the canvas.

In a PDF exported as Vector, a pattern stays a real tiled fill instead of becoming a picture, so it keeps its sharpness at any zoom or print size. Two combinations can't be carried as PDF drawing commands and are exported as pictures even in Vector mode: a dashed stroke whose stroke color is a pattern or a gradient, and text whose characters are filled with a pattern or a gradient. A PDF saved as Bitmap flattens everything, patterns included. See Export as PDF.

In an SVG export, an object filled or stroked with a pattern is written as an embedded image rendered at your document's own pixel resolution — or up to three times that on documents whose DPI is higher than 72 — because SVG has no equivalent of the canvas tiling. That multiplier is also capped by a total-pixel budget, so a very large object may be rendered below its nominal DPI rather than at the full 3×. The result looks identical at 100% zoom, but such an object is a picture rather than an editable path, and enlarging it past the resolution it was rendered at softens it. Objects without a pattern keep their vector form, and text without one keeps its live, editable characters — a text object that does carry a pattern, on the characters or on its box, becomes an image as a whole, so its text is no longer editable. Curved text is always written as an image, pattern or not.