Boardsmith

Download the Boardsmith beta

Boardsmith is a card and board game design tool for macOS and Windows — you draw one layout, point it at a spreadsheet, and it renders the whole deck to print-ready files. What it does · documentation · pricing. It is written by Yurii Petrov, a solo developer in Ukraine; the installers below are signed under that name.

The beta is free and unfinished, and what it needs most is somebody using it on a real game rather than clicking around it.

macOS · Apple silicon

Any M-series Mac, macOS 11 or newer.

Download the .dmg

macOS · Intel

Intel Macs, macOS 11 or newer.

Download the .dmg

Windows

Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit.

Download the installer

Not sure which Mac you have? menu → About This Mac. A "Chip" line starting with Apple wants the first one; a "Processor" line saying Intel wants the second. Download the wrong one and macOS will simply refuse to open it — nothing breaks.

Two things to expect on first run

Windows will warn you

SmartScreen may say the publisher is unrecognised. The installer is signed — the certificate is simply new, and reputation with Microsoft accrues over weeks of downloads. Choose More info then Run anyway. Tell me if you see anything beyond that, especially from an antivirus.

Please turn telemetry on

It is off by default and stays off unless you switch it. In Settings (⌘,) there is one checkbox. It sends a random id, an event name and a few numbers — never your files, paths, or anything typed on a card. It is how I find out which exports fail, and during a beta that matters more than usual. Details on the privacy page.

What I'm asking for

Not a bug report template. Use it for something you actually want to make, and tell me where it got in the way. The most useful things you can send:

Send it however suits you: the Discord, or support@boardsmithapp.com. Short and rough beats considered and never sent.

The deal, stated plainly

The beta is free. Boardsmith becomes paid at 1.0 — the editor stays free forever, and a licence buys the print-shop half of the export; the pricing page has the whole line. Anyone who sends a meaningful piece of feedback during the closed beta gets a perpetual licence, free. That is not a discount code I will quietly forget: it is the reason you are here, and I would rather owe you a licence than owe you nothing.

Updates arrive by themselves — the app checks on startup, so you will not need this page again. New builds land roughly weekly.

Where to start

Getting started takes about ten minutes and ends with a printed page. If you would rather not start from scratch: send me your CSV and your artwork and I will build your deck in Boardsmith myself, then hand it back to you as a project you can carry on with. That offer is serious and it is open to everyone reading this.