VTFEdit for Mac

Open, preview, convert and create Valve Texture Format (.vtf) textures — natively on macOS.

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.vtf is the texture format used by Valve's Source engine — CS:GO / CS2 skins, TF2, Garry's Mod, L4D and friends. Every decent VTF tool is Windows-only, so Mac users get stuck booting a VM or fighting Wine just to look at a texture.

VTFEdit for Mac fixes that. Drag your textures in and see them instantly. Export to PNG, TGA, TIFF or JPEG — one file or a whole folder at a time — or go the other way and turn any image into a game-ready .vtf with DXT compression and mipmaps. No Wine, no VM, no command line required.

✨ Features

• 🖼️ Instant preview — open a .vtf and see the texture immediately, with a transparency checkerboard so alpha is obvious.
• 🔁 Both directions — decode .vtf → image, and encode any image → .vtf with DXT1/DXT5 compression, uncompressed output and automatic mipmaps.
• 🎞️ Frames & cubemaps — step through animated frames and cubemap faces, and export them all at once.
• 🧱 VMT materials — open a .vmt, read its fields, and preview the $basetexture it points to.
• 🔍 Zoom & pan — pinch on the trackpad or use the on-screen controls (− / + / Fit / 1:1) to inspect every pixel.
• 📦 Batch export — drop in a whole folder and convert everything in one click.
• 🎨 Multiple output formats — PNG, TGA, TIFF and JPEG.
• 🧩 Broad format coverage — DXT1/3/5 plus all the common uncompressed layouts, across VTF versions 7.1 → 7.6.
• 🪶 Zero dependencies — a pure-Swift VTF codec. No VTFLib, no DevIL, no native libraries to install.
• 🍎 Truly native — SwiftUI app, universal on Apple Silicon and Intel, tiny footprint.

📥 Install

One command — no Xcode required

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Scratchhhh/vtfedit-mac/main/install.sh | bash

Downloads the latest release, installs VTFEdit.app into your Applications folder, clears the Gatekeeper quarantine, and launches it. Requires macOS 13 Ventura or newer (Apple Silicon & Intel).

Manual download

Grab VTFEdit-macOS.zip from the latest release, unzip it, and drag VTFEdit.app to Applications. On first launch, right-click the app → Open (the build is ad-hoc signed, not notarized).

Build from source

Requires Xcode 15+ (or the Command Line Tools) on macOS 13+.

git clone https://github.com/Scratchhhh/vtfedit-mac.git
cd vtfedit-mac
./scripts/build_app.sh
open dist/VTFEdit.app

🕹️ Usage

Action	How
Open file(s)	Toolbar Open Files, ⌘O, or drag files onto the window
Open a folder	Toolbar Open Folder, ⇧⌘O (scans recursively)
Pick output format	Format menu in the toolbar — PNG / TGA / TIFF / JPEG
Export a texture	Select it → Export…, or right-click → Export
Export everything	Toolbar Export All → pick a destination folder
Convert image → VTF	Open a .png/.jpg/… → choose DXT5 / DXT1 / uncompressed + mipmaps → Export VTF…
Browse frames/faces	Use the Frame / Face controls over the preview; Export All writes every one
Zoom	Pinch on the trackpad, or the − / + / Fit / 1:1 controls

.vtf, .vmt and image files (.png .jpg .tiff .bmp .gif) are all accepted, and exports keep the original base name.

🧬 Supported formats

Read — .vtf (versions 7.1 – 7.6, including the 7.3+ resource directory) and .vmt materials:

Compressed	Uncompressed
DXT1	RGBA8888 · ABGR8888 · ARGB8888
DXT1 (1-bit alpha)	BGRA8888 · BGRX8888
DXT3	RGB888 · BGR888
DXT5	RGB565 · BGR565
	I8 · IA88 · A8 · P8
	UV88 · BGRA4444 · BGRA5551 · BGRX5551
	RGBA16161616 / RGBA16161616F (HDR)

Write to image — PNG · TGA · TIFF · JPEG. Write to VTF — DXT1 · DXT5 · BGRA8888 · RGBA8888, with a generated mipmap chain and low-res thumbnail.

🛠️ How it works

VTFEdit for Mac is split into two pieces:

• VTFKit — a dependency-free Swift codec. It parses the VTF header, walks the mipmap/frame/face layout and decodes the pixel data (hand-rolled BC1/BC2/BC3 block decompression) into RGBA8; encodes RGBA8 back into VTF (BC1/BC3 compression, mipmaps, thumbnail); writes PNG/TGA/TIFF/JPEG; and parses .vmt materials.
• VTFEditMac — the SwiftUI front-end: file management, preview, zoom, frame/face navigation and export.

Because VTFKit has no platform UI dependencies, it's also reusable on its own.

import VTFKit

// Decode a texture to an image
let vtf = try VTFFile(data: Data(contentsOf: url))
let image = try vtf.decode()
try image.write(to: pngURL, as: .png)

// Encode an image back into a VTF
let data = try VTFEncoder.encode(image, options: .init(format: .dxt5, generateMipmaps: true))
try data.write(to: vtfURL)

🧑‍💻 Development

swift build      # build the library + app
swift run        # run the app from the terminal
swift test       # run the VTFKit decoder tests

The test suite validates the parser and each decoder against synthetic fixtures; drop a real .vtf into Samples/ and the integration test will exercise the full pipeline on it.

🤝 Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. If you hit a .vtf that fails to open, attach the file (or its header) to an issue — odd formats are exactly what makes a decoder better.

📄 License

Released under the MIT License.

Valve Texture Format and the Source engine are trademarks of Valve Corporation. This project is an independent, unaffiliated tool for working with the format.