A native macOS app for removing image backgrounds on your Mac. Drag in an image, get a transparent PNG out. Processing runs on-device with CoreML — no accounts, no servers.

• macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later
• Apple Silicon or Intel Mac

Download the latest Peel-<version>.dmg from GitHub Releases, open it, and drag Peel into Applications. Release builds are Developer ID signed and notarized.

brew tap tijs/tap
brew install --cask peel

Or directly:

brew install --cask tijs/tap/peel

Peel runs the RMBG-2.0 segmentation model through CoreML, using the Apple Neural Engine where available. The app links the RMBG2Swift package, which downloads the selected model from Hugging Face and caches it under ~/Library/Caches/models. The standard model is about 233 MB; the high-quality model is about 461 MB. After that first download, removal works offline.

• Drag an image onto the window, or press ⌘O to open one
• Paste an image from the clipboard with ⌘V
• When the result appears, ⌘S saves a transparent PNG, ⌘C copies it, or drag the cut-out straight into another app
• Drop or open another image to start over

Supported input: PNG, JPEG, HEIC, WebP, TIFF, BMP, GIF.

Peel processes images locally on your Mac. Images are not uploaded to a server. The app uses the network only to download CoreML model files from Hugging Face when a model is not already installed. Peel stores lightweight preferences, such as the selected model option, in UserDefaults.

xcodebuild build -project Peel.xcodeproj -scheme Peel -destination 'platform=macOS'
xcodebuild test  -project Peel.xcodeproj -scheme Peel -destination 'platform=macOS' -only-testing:PeelTests

Xcode resolves the RMBG2Swift Swift Package automatically on first build.

Release builds are packaged as signed and notarized disk images:

VERSION=1.0 scripts/release/release.sh

See docs/RELEASING.md for local and GitHub Actions release setup.

The model is fetched at runtime from Hugging Face. A local copy lives under ModelBackup/ (git-ignored, ~244 MB) as a fallback should the upstream download ever become unavailable.

• App code: MIT (see LICENSE)
• RMBG-2.0 model: CC BY-NC 4.0 — non-commercial use only. The model is not bundled in this repository; it is downloaded from briaai/RMBG-2.0 at runtime under its own terms.