chaiNNer

What chaiNNer is

chaiNNer is a free desktop node editor for building image processing pipelines on Linux, macOS, and Windows. It supports AI upscaling up to 8x, along with resizing, background removal, color work, blending, format conversion, batch processing, and video frames. Models can run through PyTorch, NCNN, ONNX, or TensorRT, with CPU fallback. Its maintained Spandrel package supports ESRGAN, SPAN, OmniSR, and other architectures, while OpenModelDB is suggested for community-trained models. Chains can branch conditionally, loop through folders or video, perform math, and build text or filenames from values. Saved chains can run from the command line as part of a larger pipeline. On first launch, chaiNNer downloads an isolated Python build and manages dependencies through its built-in Dependency Manager, though users can choose system Python instead. The maker describes it as a GPLv3 hobby project with nothing gated behind payment. The download page warns that macOS installation may show a warning because code signing was disabled for Alpha v0.25.1 to address build issues; ONNX DirectML support is noted as broken in v0.25.0.