ZiroEDA
KiCad-compatible electronics design in a browser tab. Nothing to install.
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ZiroEDA is an open-source, browser-native port of KiCad 10: the schematic
editor, the PCB editor, and the tools around them, running in any modern
browser. It reads and writes KiCad's native files directly, so a .kicad_pro
made on the desktop opens here with no import step, and a project saved here
opens back in KiCad unchanged.
ZiroEDA extends the KiCad ecosystem; it does not replace KiCad. For very
large, heavy designs, desktop KiCad is the right tool. ZiroEDA is for
everything around it: small and medium projects, working from any machine,
reviewing a board without installing anything, and sharing a project by link.
Your projects live in the cloud end-to-end encrypted, so not even we can
read them, and they stay ordinary KiCad files you can take back to the desktop
at any time.
ZiroEDA is an independent project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed
by the KiCad project; "KiCad" is a trademark of its respective owners. See
PHILOSOPHY.md for how we relate to it.
Who it is for
- Students and labs. College lab PCs and Chromebooks where you cannot
install software. Open a tab and design.
- Teams and reviewers. Send a link instead of a zip; the other side opens
the real project, not a screenshot.
- KiCad users away from their desk. Open, check and edit the same
projects from any machine, then carry on in desktop KiCad.
- Anyone browsing open hardware. Open any public KiCad project on GitHub
straight from its address.
What works today
| |
|---|
| Schematic editor | KiCad's eeschema: symbols, wires, buses, labels, hierarchical sheets, annotation, ERC, symbol fields table, plot and print |
| PCB editor | KiCad's pcbnew: footprints, interactive router, zones with KiCad's own fill algorithm, DRC, board setup, 3D viewer, plotting and fabrication outputs |
| Library editors | Symbol editor, footprint editor, Assign Footprints (CvPcb) |
| Other KiCad tools | Gerber viewer, PCB calculator, image converter, drawing sheet editor |
| Libraries | KiCad's official symbol, footprint and 3D model libraries, served from the cloud |
| Cloud projects | End-to-end encrypted; open them from any device; share with collaborators by invite or link; export as ordinary KiCad files at any time |
| Open from GitHub | Any public repository's KiCad project opens read-only at designer.ziroeda.com/gh/<owner>/<repo>, with "Save a copy" to make it yours |
The port is ongoing and some dialogs and rarely used tools are not there yet.
If something you rely on is missing, open an issue.
Add an "Open in ZiroEDA" badge to your KiCad repository
Let visitors open your public KiCad project in their browser with one click.
Paste this into your README, with your own owner and repository name:
[](https://designer.ziroeda.com/gh/OWNER/REPO)
Screenshots
Your designs stay yours: end-to-end encryption
Cloud projects are encrypted in your browser, before upload, with a key the
server never sees. What we store is ciphertext; there is no master key on our
side that opens it.
- Every project has its own random key. Board files, schematics, file names and
the project's metadata are all encrypted with it (AES-256-GCM).
- The project key is wrapped under your account key. Your account key is
wrapped twice: once by a key derived from your password (Argon2id), once by a
recovery key shown to you once at sign-up. Your password itself never
reaches the server.
- Sharing a project seals only its key to the collaborator's public key
(ECDH P-256), so sharing never re-encrypts or exposes the boards.
- Live collaboration traffic (edits, cursors, selections) travels under the
same project key.
- All of it uses the browser's built-in Web Crypto, so the whole scheme is in
this repository for anyone to audit.
The trade-off is real: lose both your password and your recovery key and your
encrypted projects cannot be recovered by anyone, including us.
Plain-language details: docs/security.md. Design and
reasoning: docs/encryption-design.md.
How it is built
ZiroEDA is a TypeScript port of KiCad's C++ source, mirrored file for file
(eeschema/, pcbnew/, common/, libs/ …) against the KiCad 10.0.6 tag, so
behaviour can be checked against the original line by line. KiCad's own
kicad-cli is used as a test oracle: our file writers, zone fills and plots are
compared against what KiCad itself produces.
| Concern | Choice |
|---|
| Language | TypeScript |
| UI | React, with KiCad's wxWidgets dialogs rebuilt to the same layout |
| 2D rendering | WebGL, with KiCad's own stroke and outline fonts |
| 3D viewer | three.js |
| Auth, cloud, realtime | Supabase |
| Crash reporting | Sentry (opt-out, scrubbed) |
| Build / monorepo | Vite + pnpm workspaces |
| Tests | Vitest (1,500+ test files), mutation-tested |
ziro-designer/
designer/ # the app: launcher, editor frames, cloud sync, encryption
eeschema/ # schematic engine (port of KiCad's eeschema/)
pcbnew/ # board engine (port of KiCad's pcbnew/)
common/ # shared KiCad classes: shapes, text, units, plotters, widgets
libs/ # kimath, core, sexpr (lossless S-expression parser)
gerbview/ cvpcb/ pcb_calculator/ pagelayout_editor/ bitmap2component/
qa/ # unit tests (qa/unittests/<module>) + fixtures
See STRUCTURE.md for the full map and conventions.
Run it locally
pnpm install
pnpm -C designer dev # http://localhost:5173
pnpm -C designer build # typecheck + production build
pnpm -r test # all unit tests
pnpm -r typecheck
For development, a clone starts with no configuration. Accounts, cloud
projects and sharing need a Supabase project; every integration is env-gated
and simply switches off when its variables are absent.
| Variable | Effect when unset |
|---|
VITE_SUPABASE_URL, VITE_SUPABASE_ANON_KEY | Accounts, cloud sync and sharing disabled |
VITE_SUPABASE_STORAGE_BUCKET | Cloud file storage disabled |
VITE_SENTRY_DSN | Crash reporting disabled |
VITE_RELEASE | Falls back to the build's git SHA |
SENTRY_ORG, SENTRY_PROJECT | Source maps not uploaded (set in vercel.json) |
SENTRY_AUTH_TOKEN | Source maps not uploaded (secret, dashboard only) |
SENTRY_URL | Defaults to https://de.sentry.io/ |
To self-host the cloud side, apply the migrations in supabase/migrations/ to
your own Supabase project.
Cloud sync design
- Content-addressed, encrypted blobs. Each file is stored under the hash of
its plaintext as
iv‖ciphertext, so an upload only ever adds, a download is
verified after decryption, and earlier versions stay restorable.
- Commit last. Every blob is stored and confirmed present before the
project row that references it is written, so a failed push changes nothing.
- Compare-and-swap on the version. Two devices cannot silently overwrite
each other's work.
- One transport interface (
designer/src/cloud/backend.ts); only
supabaseBackend.ts touches Supabase, so the sync logic is fully testable.
Crash reporting
Opt-out (Preferences → Common → Privacy). Reports are scrubbed in
designer/src/telemetry/scrub.ts: file names and URL query strings are
removed, and no account or IP address is attached. Tracing, session replay and
profiling are off: this collects stack traces to fix bugs, not usage
analytics. Source maps are uploaded to Sentry and never deployed.
License
GPL-3.0-or-later, the same as KiCad. See LICENSE.
Much of the engine is a TypeScript port of KiCad's C++, the icons are KiCad's,
and the symbol, footprint and 3D model libraries are KiCad's official
libraries. Code and icons are GPL; the libraries are CC-BY-SA 4.0 with the
KiCad library exception. Full attribution: NOTICE.md.
Contact
Questions, bugs or collaboration: open an issue,
chat with us on Discord, or write to [email protected].
