Liftr
100% On-Device · Nothing Uploaded · Free for Personal Use
Lift the subject.
Drop the background.
Drag in a photo — or a whole batch — and Liftr uses Apple's on-device Vision model to remove the background in about 0.2 seconds. Drop in transparency, a color, a blur, a gradient, or your own image. Nothing is ever uploaded, no account, no per-image fee. Now available in 13 languages.
v1.4.0 · macOS 14+ · Apple Silicon & Intel · Signed & notarized by Apple · No account
Real result
A real photo, background gone.
One drag across the seam tells the story: the full scene on the left, the subject lifted clean onto transparency on the right — done on-device in about a second.
Why Liftr is different
Your photos never leave your Mac.
Every other background remover — remove.bg, Photoroom, Canva — uploads your photos to the cloud and charges a subscription or a per-image fee to do it. Liftr runs Apple's own Vision model, built right into macOS, entirely on your machine. Same one-tap result, none of the trade-offs.
Cloud tools
Upload every photo to a server · account required · monthly subscription or per-image cost · resolution and batch limits · needs a connection.
Liftr
Nothing ever uploaded · no account · one-time or free · unlimited batch at full resolution · editing needs no connection · originals never modified.
See it in action
Lift the subject. Drop the background.
A real recording — drop in a photo and Liftr cuts out the background in about a second, entirely on your Mac.
How it works
Three steps, then you're done.
Drag in your photos
Drop one image onto the window — or a whole folder. Apple's Vision model lifts the subject in about a fifth of a second per photo, no upload, no waiting on a server.
Drop in a new background
Transparent, a solid color, a blurred version of the original, a gradient, or your own image. Refine the edge, add a soft shadow, and trim to the subject — with a live before/after slider.
Export, copy or share
Write PNG, JPG, HEIC or TIFF at full resolution, copy the cut-out straight to the clipboard, or Share it. Every export writes a new file, and Liftr will not write over a photo you added to the list — not the one it is reading, and not any of the others.
Features
Everything a background remover should be.
One focused, native window with every tool you reach for — without ever sending a photo to the cloud.
On-device removal
Apple's Vision model finds the subject and cuts it out in about 0.2 seconds — at full resolution, right on your Mac. No upload, no server round-trip, no waiting.
Apple Vision
Drop in any background
Keep it transparent, or drop in a solid color, a blurred version of the original photo, a gradient, or your own image. Switch modes instantly — the matte is cached, so it never re-runs.
Pan & zoom your background
When your background is your own photo, Zoom/X/Y sliders under Background → Fit let you reframe it without leaving Liftr — works with both Cover and Contain.
New in 1.3
Eyedropper & color picker
Sample a color straight from your photo with the eyedropper, then dial it in exactly with a full color picker — a saturation/brightness square, a hue slider, and a hex box. Works for any solid-color or gradient background.
New in 1.2
Fade the background back
Don't want a hard cut-out? A Keep original slider brings the original background back — from fully removed at 0% to untouched at 100%. Stop anywhere in between for a soft, ghosted backdrop.
New in 1.1
Edge refinement
Tighten, feather, and clean up the cut-out edge so hair and fine detail look natural — not a paper-cut halo. Dial it in and watch it update live.
Touch-up brush
Cut too much, or left a stray speck? Paint it fixed. The brush flips between Erase and Restore (press R) — zoom right in and clean up the edge by hand. Hold Shift to constrain a stroke to a straight line — click one point, then Shift-click another, to connect them cleanly. Your fixes carry through to every background, and into Copy and Export.
New in 1.2
Save the mask
Take the selection with you. Save the alpha mask as a PNG — white is the subject, black is the background, grey is the soft edge — and use the same cut-out in Photoshop, After Effects or Figma. Whatever you erased or brushed back is already baked in. One button does the whole batch, reporting as each one lands, and that button becomes Stop while it runs — it finishes the mask it is on, keeps every mask already saved, and says how many it reached.
New in 1.4.0
16-bit output
Write PNG and TIFF at 16 bits per channel, so gradients and soft shadows stay smooth through grading and printing instead of banding. The option appears only for the two formats that can carry it.
New in 1.4.0
Soft drop shadow
Add a natural shadow beneath the subject — pick a Soft, Natural or Long preset, or dial blur, opacity and offset yourself — so a cut-out sits believably on its new background.
Trim, aspect & size
Trim-to-subject auto-crops to what's left, then set an aspect ratio, output size, or a round crop — with one-tap size presets for marketplace, profile and social. Perfect for product shots, avatars, and social posts.
Reposition the subject
A Subject panel adds Scale/X/Y sliders so you can nudge or resize the cut-out within the canvas — handy for recentering after a crop or leaving room for text.
New in 1.3
Batch with presets
Drop in dozens at once and apply a preset — Transparent PNG, Product White, Studio Gray, Soft Shadow, Portrait Blur, Social Gradient — to all of them in one click. Or hit Save current to save your own background-and-export setup as a named preset, right beside the six built-ins. Unlimited, at full resolution.
New in 1.2
Every image has its own button
Hover a card, select it, or tab to it, and one button does whatever that image needs right now: export just this one, stop just this one while it runs, try it again if finding the subject failed, or open the result when it lands. A retry keeps that image's entire edit history and every eraser stroke on it, so having another go no longer means starting over.
New in 1.4.0
Clear all, with an Undo
Emptying the list used to mean removing images one at a time — forty images, forty confirmations. Clear all asks once, and the message it leaves behind puts everything back if you change your mind.
New in 1.4.0
A default for new images
A batch shot on the same background wants the same background, format and trim every time. Set one image up the way you want it and make it the starting point for everything you add from then on. Images already loaded are left alone, and it asks before it changes anything.
New in 1.4.0
Before/after compare
Drag the compare slider to see exactly what changed — the original on one side, the clean cut-out on a checkerboard on the other — then export it as a shareable before/after reveal GIF in one click.
PNG, JPG, HEIC & TIFF
Export a transparent PNG, HEIC or TIFF for cut-outs, or a flattened JPG — at full resolution, with the size and aspect you set.
Copy & Share
Copy the cut-out straight to the clipboard to paste into any app, or send it through the macOS Share sheet — no export step required.
Right-click in Finder
Install the Remove Background with Liftr Quick Action and cut out a photo straight from Finder's right-click menu — no need to open the app first. There's a headless command-line tool too, for scripts and batch jobs.
Quick Action
100% on your Mac
Nothing is uploaded — ever. No account, no cloud, no telemetry. Editing needs no connection at all; the only two Liftr makes are its update check and, if you buy one, a business-license check. Every export is a new file, and no photo in your list is ever written over — masks included. Replace existing files replaces what is already at the name Liftr wants in the destination folder, which it can never take from a photo you added.
Privacy
Signed & notarized
Opens with a normal double-click — no "unidentified developer" warning, no Open Anyway, no Terminal. Notarized by Apple.
No warnings
13 languages
Liftr speaks 13 languages out of the box — German, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Turkish and Simplified Chinese — with an in-app flag picker. It auto-detects your Mac's language, you can override it anytime, and the whole window follows, sheets and sliders included.
Built for everyone
Keyboard-navigable with VoiceOver labels throughout, in both dark and light — Liftr follows your Mac's appearance or pins to either — and the UI meets WCAG 2.1 AA contrast in both. Every control on an image card can be reached with Tab, a card that fails says so out loud, and Reduce Motion is honored.
WCAG 2.1 AA
Reads & writes
PNG
Transparent PNG
JPG
HEIC
TIFF
+ common image formats in
Pricing
Free for you. Fair for work.
Personal use is free forever — full resolution, unlimited batch, every background mode, no account, no watermarks. If Liftr earns its keep at your job, a one-time business license keeps it supported.
Personal
Free forever
For individuals and personal projects
- On-device removal at full resolution — no per-image cost
- Every background mode, preset, and batch — unlimited
- Non-destructive — originals never modified
- 100% on-device — nothing uploaded
- No account, no nag screens
- Free updates forever
Business
$5 / computer
One-time payment — no subscription
- Everything in Personal
- Use commercially at work
- One-time payment — no subscription
- Free updates forever
- Supports solo indie development
The personal tier is the full app — buy a business license only if you use Liftr commercially. One seat per computer, paid once, yours for life. Secure checkout via Stripe; your license key is emailed instantly.
Download & install
Get set up in seconds.
Download the app and drag it into Applications — that's it. No Terminal, no Homebrew, no sign-up.
Version 1.4.0 · Released August 18, 2026 · Free updates forever
macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Apple Silicon or Intel
Liftr uses the background-removal model built into macOS 14, so there's nothing else to install — no cloud service, no separate download.
Opens with a double-click
Liftr is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens cleanly the first time — no
Open Anyway trip through System Settings, no Terminal. Open the DMG, drag Liftr into Applications, and launch it.Check the file you downloaded
Liftr is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, and macOS checks that every time you open it — that is the check that catches a file altered on its way to you. To confirm it yourself, compare the SHA-256 of your copy with the one published for the
Liftr.dmg this page serves.SHA-256 checksum
Published checksum
Run this on your download and compare
shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/Liftr.dmg
Or have your Mac compare them for you: save Liftr.dmg.sha256 beside the download and run shasum -a 256 -c Liftr.dmg.sha256.
FAQ
Common questions.
Does Liftr upload my photos anywhere?
No. Every photo is processed entirely on your Mac using Apple's built-in Vision model and CoreImage — nothing you open or export is ever uploaded, there's no account, and there's no telemetry. The only time Liftr contacts our server is if you enter a business license key (to validate it) or it checks for a new version — automatically about once a week, or when you ask — which sends only the app version and can be switched off. Your photos are never involved.
How is Liftr free when remove.bg and Photoroom charge?
Cloud tools like remove.bg, Photoroom and Canva upload your photos to their servers and charge a subscription or per-image fee to cover that compute. Liftr runs Apple's on-device Vision model that ships free inside macOS, so there's no server to pay for — which means no per-image cost, no subscription, unlimited batch, and full resolution. Personal use is free forever; a one-time $5 business license per computer covers commercial use.
What macOS version do I need?
macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on Apple Silicon or Intel. Liftr relies on the foreground-instance masking in Apple's Vision framework, which was introduced in Sonoma.
Is Liftr really free?
Personal use is free forever — full resolution, unlimited batch, every background mode, no account, no trial timer, no watermarks. If you use Liftr at work, a one-time $5 business license per computer keeps it supported.
How does the business license work?
If you use Liftr commercially, buy a one-time $5 license per computer from the pricing section — secure checkout via Stripe, and your license key is emailed instantly. The personal tier is the full app with no nag screens, so you can evaluate it freely first.
Can Liftr generate a brand-new AI background?
No — that's a deliberate non-goal. Liftr replaces the background you have with transparency, a solid color, a blurred version of the original, a gradient, or your own image. It doesn't invent new scenery, and there's no generative model — everything runs on-device.
Will it change my original photos?
Never. Liftr is non-destructive by design: your originals are never modified, and every export writes a new file. Same-name files are never overwritten unless you say so.
What formats can it read and write?
Out: PNG, JPG, HEIC and TIFF — with transparent PNG, HEIC and TIFF for cut-outs, and a flattened JPG when you need one. In: common image formats including JPG, PNG, HEIC and TIFF.
Will macOS warn me about an unidentified developer?
No. Liftr is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens with a normal double-click the first time — no Open Anyway dance, no Terminal.
How do I update Liftr?
Liftr updates itself. It checks about once a week and, when a new version is out, shows you what changed and offers to install it in place — the download is signature-checked, and one that doesn't verify is refused. You can also check on demand, turn the automatic check off in the update panel, or download the DMG from this page and drag it into Applications yourself. Your preferences carry over.
Is there a Windows version?
Not yet — Liftr is Mac-only. It's built on Apple's on-device Vision model, which is part of macOS, so it's a native Mac app from the ground up.