BioCartoon app

BioCartoon app

BioCartoon is a free and open-source tool for creating biology figures with illustrations. We compile existing open biology-focused illustration resources and introduce our own illustrations in a single database with a graphical interface for search and figure generation.

This repository holds the source code for the desktop app, web app, and website. The icon database and the biocartoon command-line interface are in biocartoon.

Usage

Web application: app.biocartoon.com

Install Desktop application: app.biocartoon.com/download

Resources

15,393 icons and 6 templates across 8 resources.

source	icons	license	examples
BioCartoon	10	CC0
Bioicons	2,793	CC BY / CC0 / CC BY-SA / MIT / BSD
Health Icons	798	CC0
NIAID NIH BioArt Source	936	Public Domain
OpenMoji	4,495	CC BY-SA 4.0
Reactome icon library	2,569	CC BY 4.0
SciDraw	772	CC BY 4.0 / CC0
Servier Medical Art	3,020	CC BY 4.0

Building from source

The editor is built with a crate from the biocartoon repository (app/Cargo.toml: path = "../../biocartoon/catalog"), so clone both repositories into the same parent directory:

git clone https://github.com/josephrich98/biocartoon.git
git clone https://github.com/josephrich98/biocartoon-app.git
cd biocartoon-app/app

You need a stable Rust toolchain. Then:

Linux needs libxkbcommon-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libwayland-dev libx11-dev for the desktop build.

Windows needs the Visual Studio Build Tools with the C++ workload, which provide the linker (without them the build fails with "linker link.exe not found"):

winget install Microsoft.VisualStudio.2022.BuildTools --override "--passive --wait --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools --includeRecommended"

Then build from PowerShell or cmd, not Git Bash: Git Bash's own link command shadows the MSVC linker and the build fails with link: extra operand.

The web build needs rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown and trunk (cargo install trunk --locked). It compiles SQLite from C to wasm32, which needs a clang that can target wasm32. app/.cargo/config.toml points at Homebrew's LLVM (brew install llvm) on macOS. On other systems, override it with your own clang:

export CC_wasm32_unknown_unknown=clang
export AR_wasm32_unknown_unknown=llvm-ar

cargo packager comes from cargo install cargo-packager --locked. Releases are built by .github/workflows/release.yml for every v* tag.

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Joseph Rich. This repository is open source under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later. Third-party illustrations and icons keep their own licenses; see NOTICE.md.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome; see CONTRIBUTING.md. Pull requests need a signed Contributor License Agreement. Contributors keep the copyright in their work, and artists are credited under the name they choose.

FAQs

Q: Is it really free?

A: Yes, it is! No accounts, subscriptions, publication licenses, microtransactions, watermarks — 100% free.

Q: Can I use figures in my papers/presentations?

A: Yes. The figures you make are yours. The illustrations in them keep their own licenses, so credit the creator wherever a license asks for it (CC BY and CC BY-SA). The editor shows the license and credit line for every illustration.

Q: Do I need an account?

A: No. Open the web app and start creating. An account is an option if you want your data to be saved long-term.

Q: Do my projects save after I exit the app?

A: Yes. The desktop app always saves your projects on your computer. In the web app, signing in keeps an online copy of your projects and Your library in your account. Without signing in, the web app saves projects in your browser's storage, which the browser may clear (Safari does after 7 days without a visit; other browsers may when the device runs low on space or when you clear site data). Either way, you can save any project as a .biocartoon file, or download every project at once as a backup .zip, and open them again later. Changes are saved automatically within a couple of seconds, and the web app warns you if you close the tab before the last change is saved.

Q: What user information do you store?

A: By default, we don't store any user data. You can use the web app or desktop app without an account, and your figures and Your library (uploaded icons, saved templates, and favorites, plus any words you add to the spelling dictionary) stay on your own device (starring an icon only adds to its public count under a random ID, not anything tied to you). If you would like long-term storage in the web app, you can sign in with Google or GitHub, and then only your name, email, and an online copy of your figures and Your library are stored in a secure database. No passwords are ever stored. Deleting a figure, removing something from Your library, or deleting your account removes it from the online database as well. The only other things we keep are what you choose to send us: contributions, suggestions, and removal requests, with the name and optional contact email you give (the email is seen only by our reviewers). See the privacy policy for details.

Q: How do I contribute an illustration or template?

A: In the app, upload an icon or save a slide as a template and tick "Submit to the shared library". Submissions are reviewed before they appear for everyone. You keep the copyright and choose CC0 or CC BY 4.0.

Q: Why is there both a desktop app and web app?

A: The web app allows one to create figures immediately without any software downloads. The desktop app enables database indexing for quick searches, as well as downloads for offline use.

Q: Can I bulk download the database?

A: Yes. Open the app, click on the top-left menu, and click "Download".

Other Links

Website: www.biocartoon.com

Database and CLI source code: github.com/josephrich98/biocartoon

Application and website source code: github.com/josephrich98/biocartoon-app

Icon SQLite database: assets.biocartoon.com/catalog/assets.sqlite.gz

Template SQLite database: assets.biocartoon.com/catalog/templates.sqlite.gz

Support

If biocartoon is useful to you, you can buy me a coffee ☕