Fun
Online Kaleidoscope
Draw glowing mirror-symmetric patterns, or turn a photo or your camera into a live, spinning kaleidoscope — all in your browser.
Draw anywhere on the canvas — every line repeats 8 times around the center.
Each stroke cycles through the rainbow, starting from a new hue.
Symmetry, colors and glow apply to new strokes, so you can layer different settings. A stylus varies the line with pressure.
Everything runs in your browser — your drawings, photos and camera never leave this device.
Play and explore in your browser. No account needed.
Frequently asked questions
Are my photos or camera video uploaded anywhere?
No. The photo is decoded and drawn inside your browser, and the camera stream goes straight from your device into a canvas on this page. Nothing is sent to a server, recorded, or stored; switching back to drawing mode or closing the tab stops the camera and discards everything.
How does the photo kaleidoscope work?
A real kaleidoscope uses two mirrors set at an angle, so one wedge of the scene is reflected all the way around. This tool does the same maths per pixel: it works out each pixel’s angle from the center, folds it into a single wedge — mirrored across the wedge’s middle when mirroring is on — and samples your image at that folded position. Rotation turns the image underneath the fixed mirrors, and drift slowly slides the sampling point across the picture so the pattern keeps changing.
What does “Renderer: Canvas 2D fallback” mean?
The animated kaleidoscope normally runs as a WebGL shader on your graphics chip, which keeps it smooth even with live video. If WebGL is disabled or unavailable, the tool switches to a Canvas 2D version that clips and mirrors wedges of the image instead. It looks much the same, but can be slower on older devices and shows black beyond the edges of the photo when you zoom far out.
Why is the camera not starting?
The browser has to ask for permission first. If you blocked it, allow the camera for this site in your browser’s settings and press Use camera again. The camera can also fail if another app is already using it, and some browsers only allow camera access on secure (https) pages. A photo works as a fallback on any device.
Does drawing support a stylus and pen pressure?
Yes. The canvas uses pointer events, so mouse, touch and pen input all work. With a pressure-sensitive stylus, such as an Apple Pencil or a Wacom pen, pressing harder makes the line thicker; mouse and finger strokes keep the brush size you set.
What size are the downloaded images?
Drawings are re-rendered from your strokes at 2400 × 2400 pixels, so the PNG is sharper than the on-screen canvas. Save PNG in the photo and camera mode captures the animated view at the resolution it is being drawn on your screen — up to 2048 pixels square on high-density displays.
About this tool
This online kaleidoscope has two sides. The drawing mode is a symmetry sketchpad: whatever you draw in one place is repeated in 2 to 24 segments around the center, and with mirroring on, each copy is also reflected, the way two mirrors in a kaleidoscope tube double every shape. Rainbow mode cycles each stroke through the color wheel as you draw, Gradient blends from a center color to an edge color, and Glow adds a soft neon halo that looks best on the black or night background.
The second mode animates an image instead of your drawing. It starts with a random demo pattern, and you can swap in a photo from your device or your live camera. The pattern is computed per pixel by folding every point into one wedge and sampling the image there, which is how real mirror kaleidoscopes behave. Rotation turns the picture under the mirrors, zoom sets how much of it fills each wedge, and drift slides slowly across the image so the pattern never quite repeats.
Because strokes are stored as data rather than pixels, Undo and Redo step back and forward one stroke at a time, Clear can be taken back with Redo, and the PNG download redraws everything at 2400 pixels square. The animated view renders with a WebGL shader where available and falls back to Canvas 2D elsewhere. Touch, mouse and pressure-sensitive pens all draw naturally.
Everything runs locally in your browser. Photos are never uploaded, the camera feed never leaves your device, and nothing is saved once you close the page — download a PNG if you want to keep a pattern.