How to contribute

March 9, 2026 · View on GitHub

It is essential to the development of PixiJS that the community is empowered to make changes and get them into the library. Here are some guidelines to make that process silky smooth for all involved.

Reporting issues

To report a bug, request a feature, or even ask a question, make use of the GitHub Issues section for PixiJS. When submitting an issue please take the following steps:

  1. Search for existing issues. Your question or bug may have already been answered or fixed, be sure to search the issues first before putting in a duplicate issue.

  2. Create an isolated and reproducible test case. If you are reporting a bug, make sure you also have a minimal, runnable, code example that reproduces the problem you have.

  3. Include a live example. After narrowing your code down to only the problem areas, make use of jsFiddle, jsBin, or a link to your live site so that we can view a live example of the problem.

  4. Share as much information as possible. Include browser version affected, your OS, version of the library, steps to reproduce, etc. "X isn't working!!!1!" will probably just be closed.

NOTE: if you are looking for support, please visit the FAQ, forums, wiki or go through the tutorials.

Contributing Changes

Setting Up

To setup for making changes you will need to take a few steps, we've outlined them below:

  1. Ensure you have node.js installed. You can download node.js from nodejs.org. Because pixi uses modern JS features, you will need a modern version of node. v24+ is recommended.

  2. Fork the pixi.js repository, if you are unsure how to do this GitHub has a guides for the command line and for the GitHub Client.

  3. Next, run npm install from within your clone of your fork. That will install dependencies necessary to build PixiJS.

Making a Change

Once you have node.js, the repository, and have installed dependencies are you almost ready to make your change. The only other thing before you start is to checkout the correct branch. Which branch you should make your change to (and send a PR to) depends on the type of change you are making.

Here is our branch breakdown:

  • main - Make your change to the main branch if it is an urgent hotfix.
  • dev - Make your change to dev if it is a non-urgent bugfix or a backwards-compatible feature.
  • v4.x, v5.3.x, v5.2.x, etc - Make your change to legacy branches to patch old releases if your fix only applies to older versions.

Your change should be made directly to the branch in your fork, or to a branch in your fork made off of one of the above branches.

Testing Your Change

You can test your change by using the automated tests packaged with PixiJS. You can run these tests by running npm test from the command line. If you fix a bug please add a test that will catch that bug if it ever happens again. This prevents regressions from sneaking in.

Tips for a faster workflow:

  • Run npm start in one terminal. This watches the source tree and compiles it incrementally.
  • Run npm run test unit to run unit tests, or npm run test visual to run visual regression tests.
  • Run npm run test unit debug to use headful DevTools to debug or develop tests.

You can also run individual check categories:

  • npm run test lint — ESLint only
  • npm run test types — Type checking only
  • npm run test unit — Unit tests only
  • npm run test visual — Visual regression tests only

For more details on the build and test pipeline, see scripts/README.md.

Visual Regression Testing

PixiJS uses a custom visual tester that allows you to create pixi scenes and compare them to a reference image. These tests can be found in the visual scenes directory. To run these tests, run npm run test visual from the command line, or run npm run test visual debug to use headful DevTools to debug or develop tests.

All visual tests must end with .scene.ts and follows this format:

import { Graphics } from '~/scene';

import type { Container } from '~/scene';
import type { Renderer } from '~/rendering';
import type { TestScene } from '../../types';

export const scene: TestScene = {
    it: 'should render a red rectangle',
    pixelMatch: 40,                          // optional: pixel tolerance for comparison
    options: { backgroundColor: 'white' },    // optional: renderer options passed to PixiJS
    renderers: ['webgl2', 'webgpu'],          // optional: only run on specific renderers
    excludeRenderers: ['canvas'],             // optional: exclude specific renderers
    only: false,                              // optional: isolate this test
    skip: false,                              // optional: skip this test
    create: async (scene: Container, renderer: Renderer) =>
    {
        const rect = new Graphics().rect(0, 0, 100, 100).fill('red');

        scene.addChild(rect);
    },
};

Submitting Your Change

After you have made and tested your change, commit and push it to your fork. Then, open a Pull Request from your fork to the main pixi.js repository on the branch you used in the Making a Change section of this document.

Quickie Code Style Guide

  • Use 4 spaces for tabs, never tab characters.
  • No trailing whitespace, blank lines should have no whitespace.
  • Always favor strict equals === unless you need to use type coercion.
  • Follow conventions already in the code, and listen to eslint.
  • Ensure changes are eslint validated. After making a change be sure to run npm test to ensure that you didn't break anything. This will run eslint, type checking, and the test suite.

Contributor Code of Conduct

Code of Conduct is adapted from Contributor Covenant, version 1.4