A new era for software: production-ready design

Let's face it: The tools we use to design software haven't caught up with software itself.

Today's digital interfaces — whether in apps, car dashboards, games, or TVs — are dynamic, interactive, and responsive. They adapt instantly to user inputs, environmental conditions, and data changes. But most design tools? They're stuck in the print era, churning out static files like PNGs, SVGs, or PDFs. Even video formats are just a sequence of frames initially designed to be printed on film. They might look nice, but they weren't built for software that reacts, moves, and adapts.

This mismatch creates a clunky, time-sucking production workflow. Designers pour their hearts into mockups and prototypes using conventional design tools. Want to add custom interactions or advanced motion graphics? Better be ready to write a ton of extra documentation.

Ever written a 100-page design spec detailing every behavior, animation sequence, and transition? Fun times.

Then comes the dreaded handoff. Developers rebuild those prototypes into hard-coded graphics, trying their best to preserve the designer's vision. Depending on the language or tools used, what the designer envisioned could be extremely complicated, or even impossible, for developers to execute. It's tedious, messy, and often a recipe for miscommunication.

Even with tools like Figma's Dev Mode or Zeplin automating some documentation, developers must re-code every update and interaction. This duplicative, manual process wastes time, increases costs, and stifles creative agility.

The fix we've all been waiting for

Rive flips the script by letting designers create production-ready graphics themselves. Designers no longer need to pass their work off to an engineer and hope for a hard-coded miracle. What you design in Rive is what your users get.

Rive also lets you create stateful graphics — visuals that react to user inputs, data, or context — straight out of the box. It's like designing and coding all in one, but with less of the coding part.

Here's how Rive works:

1. Stateful graphics format: Built for software, Rive's format allows graphics to change state dynamically without needing to re-code every update.

2. Design, build, and animate: Use the Rive Editor to create interactive, adaptive graphics

3. Load and control: Connect your designs to data or code using open-source runtimes.

With Rive, designers stay in control of the final product. And developers get to focus on solving real engineering challenges instead of recreating hover animations for the 47th time.

Empowering teams with cutting-edge tools

Rive Editor

Create interactive, stateful graphics without coding. The Editor's State Machine lets designers control complex behaviors, from hover effects to dynamic animation blending, directly in the Animate tab.

In the example above, this file will load on software that doesn't need to know anything about the design, shapes, or the sequence the animations need to play in. It just needs to tell the Rive graphic when an area is hovered; the State Machine controls the rest.

Rive Runtimes

Rive Runtimes let you load and control our format. They’re open-source libraries for most major platforms, including web, iOS, macOS, Android, Windows, and more. We offer a simple high-level API or a more advanced low-level API, allowing you to choose how technical you want to get.

We also offer no-code integrations, like Framer, Webflow, and our Share Links. These use our runtimes under the hood. You interact with them through visual tools that don’t require any programming knowledge.

Rive Renderer

At the heart of Rive lies the Rive Renderer. This rendering technology outpaces traditional vector tools, enabling high-performance animations on even low-code devices.

Flash fans, this one's for you

If Rive sounds like Flash, that's no coincidence. Flash pioneered the concept of combining a design tool with a runtime, letting designers rapidly create interactive web content. It paved the way for experiences that responded dynamically to user inputs — an innovation that remains central to modern UI/UX design.

Flash is undeniably a part of Rive's DNA. But it had its shortcomings:

• Closed ecosystem: The Flash runtime and format were closed source, which limited transparency and flexibility, particularly during performance or security challenges.

• Plugin dependence: Viewing Flash content required a browser plugin, causing compatibility issues and exposing users to potential security vulnerabilities.

• Performance gaps: Flash struggled with performance on low-end devices or in environments with limited resources.

Rive builds on Flash with these benefits:

• Open standards: Rive's format, runtimes, and renderer are open-source, promoting transparency and collaboration.

• Native integration: Rive's lightweight runtimes are embedded directly into apps or websites.

• Superior performance: Powered by the custom-built Rive Renderer, Rive's graphics are highly performant and run smoothly even on low-powered devices.

• Scalability across platforms: Whether for standalone applications or components within larger systems, Rive scales to meet diverse needs.

The bottom line

Rive simplifies the production pipeline, giving designers creative control while eliminating redundant work for developers. It bridges the gap between vision and execution, ensuring that what you design is what users experience.

Whether you're building responsive UI for an app, animations for a game, or graphics for dashboards, Rive lets you create, iterate, and ship across platforms without compromise.

With Rive, designing for software finally feels as dynamic as software itself.

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Dive deeper into these concepts

• 📄 Learn how state machines make iteration a breeze.

• 🧑‍🎨 How we created a star rating component using Rive's State Machine.

• 📺 Animation mixing video. The State Machine can do more than just play one animation at a time – it can blend and mix multiple animations at the same time.

• 🎨 Learn more about designing state machines in the Rive Editor.

• 📖 Runtime documentation. You can control more than just state machine inputs with code. Read our documentation to see what's possible with our runtime API.