Help Center

Start from a blank grid, browse ready-made example patterns, or convert a photo into a pattern. Pick whichever matches what you already have in mind.

Pick your stitch — peyote, brick, right-angle-weave, triangular, diamond, medallion, star, or earring — then set your rows/columns (or the shape's own size parameters, like a medallion's ring count or an earring's triangle width) and your bead size/brand. You can seed the new design with a saved palette here too, instead of starting from the default colors.

Tap a cell to place a bead in the currently selected color. The color strip above the toolbar holds your recent colors — tap one to switch, or tap + to open the full palette.

Tap the cloud sync icon in the top bar to sync/save your current designs to your Google Drive. See Sync & Backup for what this does and doesn't have access to.

Tap the sparkle icon to browse the built-in library of ready-made patterns across every supported stitch. Open one to add it to your own designs to customize.

Tap the import icon to load a .bwdesign file — Bead Works' own design file format — from your device, such as one someone shared with you or a backup you exported earlier.

Tap the gear icon to change the app's appearance, switch between English and Spanish, adjust measurement units, manage tool toasts, manage your Bead Inventory, provide feedback, and access general app resources.

Tap the + button at the bottom of the screen to start a new design — it opens the same three starting options covered in Getting Started: a blank grid, an example pattern, or Create from Photo.

Each saved design appears as a card with a thumbnail. Search or sort the list from the top, and switch between list and grid view. Tap a card to open it; use its three-dot menu (or press and hold) for Edit, Copy with Mirror, Share, or Delete — plus Copy to Earring for eligible combined patterns.

Tap or drag across cells to fill them with the currently selected color. The default tool for most of your design work.

Tap one bead to fill every connected bead of that same color in one go, instead of painting each one individually.

Draw a straight line of beads between two points — useful for clean edges and borders. Diagonal lines stay a consistent one bead wide rather than zig-zagging.

Drag a rectangle to select a region of beads. Once you have a selection, a toolbar appears letting you copy, move, mirror, rotate, or delete everything inside it at once.

Turn on live mirroring — horizontal, vertical, or 8-way — and whatever you paint on one side appears mirrored automatically on the other. Great for symmetric designs like medallions, where you only need to design one section. (This is different from the Mirror option inside an active Selection, which flips an already-placed selection once rather than mirroring live.)

Tap or drag to remove beads from cells, clearing them back to empty.

Move around a large design without editing it — useful for bigger grids that don't fit on screen at once. You can also pinch-zoom, or pan with arrow keys or a middle-mouse drag on desktop/web.

Found under the ⋮ More Tools menu. Tap any bead to see its color, palette letter, and bead code.

Use the undo and redo arrows at the top of the screen to step backward or forward through your recent changes — up to 200 steps back.

The row counter (top toolbar) tracks which row you're currently stitching, with buttons to step forward or back.

Toggle on/off the bead labels. Bead labels overlay each bead with its palette letter (A, B, C…) so a printed or on-screen pattern is easier to read at a glance.

Found under the ⋮ menu. Change a design's name, dimensions, or bead size after it's already created. Because resizing can shift existing beads, editing clears that design's undo history — finish any in-progress edits before making a structural change like this.

Found under the ⋮ menu. Export a clean, print-ready PDF of your design — easier to follow at the workbench than a phone screen mid-stitch.

Found under the ⋮ menu. Bead Works compares a pattern's color needs against your logged inventory and builds a shopping list for whatever you're short on.

Found under the ⋮ menu. Creates an independent copy of the current design, with a prompt offering to open the new copy right away. Handy for trying a variation without touching the original.

Found under the ⋮ menu. Turn on Beading Mode while you're actually stitching. It locks editing and lets you tap rows off as you complete them, so you always know where you left off. Use Reset Progress from the same menu to clear your row-completion marks and start tracking from the beginning again.

Found under the ⋮ menu. Set a photo as a reference overlay behind (or beside) your pattern, with adjustable opacity and position — handy for tracing a design by eye as you build it manually, separate from the automatic Create from Photo conversion. Once set, the same ⋮ menu lets you adjust its settings or remove it entirely.

Found under the ⋮ menu. Attach a text note to a design — useful for tracking things like which project it's for, sizing adjustments you made, or a reminder for next time you pick it up.

Found under the ⋮ menu. Paste whatever you copied to the app clipboard from a different design (see Copying between designs, in Design Tools). Only enabled once you've copied something first — after choosing it, tap where in the grid you want the pasted content to land.

Select an area and choose "Copy to app clipboard" to bring it into a different design. Open the other design and choose "Paste from Clipboard" from the ⋮ menu. If the two designs use different bead brands, colors are automatically remapped to the closest match.

Found under the ⋮ menu. Erases every bead in the current design after a confirmation prompt — use it to start the same design over from a blank grid. This can't be undone once confirmed, so make sure you're finished with the current version first.

Offset-row stitches, ideal for flat or tubular beadwork with fine detail and curved edges.

A straight grid stitch, well suited to bands, bracelets, and anything woven on a loom.

The RAW stitch consists of four beads arranged in small, circular units. The pattern is ideal for an open woven pattern.

The Shaped category of patterns consists of several geometric shapes: Up/Down Triangle Brick patterns, Diamonds, Hexagons, Medallions, and Stars.

Radial and wrapped stitches, built around a center point. Medallions pair especially well with the live Mirror tool — design one wedge and the rest fills in automatically.

A pointed radial layout for star-shaped pieces, from ornaments to pendants.

Smaller, shape-constrained canvases for earring drops — combine multiple stitches in one piece, like a brick-stitch triangle over a loomed center. Use "View as Pair" from the ⋮ menu to preview both earrings side by side.

The Combined pattern has a rectangular brick area positioned above a rectangular Square Brick area. This can be used for free-form earrings or other patterns that need these two stitches together.

Color palettes are mapped to actual bead brands — Miyuki Delica, Miyuki Rocaille, Toho Round, Fuse beads (Perler/Hama), and Artkal — so what you pick in the app matches what you can buy.

Tap a color swatch circle to select that color for painting. Long-press a swatch to open its options — change it, combine it with another color, or erase it. Tap + to add a new color, or tap the palette icon for palette-wide options.

Long-press any swatch in the color strip for three options: Change Color replaces every bead of that color with a different one you pick; Combine Colors merges it into another color already in your palette; Erase removes any beads using that color and takes it off the strip.

Tap the palette icon to open two sets of options. Save Current Palette stores your design's current colors under a name you choose, so you can reuse it later. Add Colors from Palette lets you pull colors in from another design, extract them from a photo, or load a palette you saved previously.

Tap the '+' icon in the color strip to add a color. The color picker is organized by bead brand — Delica, Rocaille, Toho, Fuse, and Artkal each get their own tab. When you're replacing an existing color, a Current vs. New comparison shows both side by side so you can judge the swap before committing. Use the search field to filter by bead name or code, or browse by color family.

The Related tab suggests colors close to whichever bead you're replacing, split into Closest and Same Family groups based on how visually similar they are — handy when you're out of a specific bead and need the nearest substitute from stock you actually have.

When adding a brand-new color (not replacing one), switch on multi-select in the color picker to check off several beads at a time, then confirm to add all of them to your palette in one step — faster than adding colors one at a time.

When you convert a photo, Bead Works maps the image's colors to the closest matches in your chosen bead brand's real palette.

Signing in lets you save designs to your own Google Drive and pick them up on another device — phone, tablet, or the web. It's entirely optional; the app works fully without an account.

Bead Works only ever creates and uses its own folder in your Drive. It cannot see or touch any of your other files.

Your designs are stored on your device, so you can keep working without an internet connection. You'll only need one to sign in or sync.