Procreate has no native star or heart button for brushes, so you add a brush to your favorites with one of three workarounds. The fastest is to use a brush, open the Recent section of the brush library, swipe on it, and tap Pin. For a permanent collection, create a "Favorites" brush set, duplicate your brushes, and drag the copies into it. A third option is to assign up to six brushes to your QuickMenu.

The Three Ways to Favorite a Brush in Procreate

Procreate organizes brushes into sets inside libraries, and none of the built-in tools works like a one-tap favorite. Artists have asked for a star or heart icon, and users coming from Infinite Painter or Photoshop's BrushBox panel notice the gap quickly. Until that changes, each workaround trades speed against permanence.

Procreate updates change menu details, so if a gesture below doesn't match your screen, check your app version. The Pin feature appears in the 5.2 and 5.3 builds that tutorials commonly demonstrate.

Method 1: Pin Brushes in the Recent Section

This is the closest thing to a real favorites feature, and it takes a few seconds.

1. Paint a stroke with the brush you want to save.
2. Open the brush library and select Recent at the top of the left column. It's marked with a star icon.
3. Find the brush in the list. The most recently used one sits at the top.
4. Swipe on the brush row (tutorials show both left and right swipes, depending on version) and tap Pin.

A star appears next to the brush, and it stays at the top of the Recent list while other brushes cycle in and out below it.

What to know about pinning

• Recent only holds a limited history. It shows your last eight brushes. Without pinning, a brush from a few days ago will have dropped off.
• There's no apparent cap on pins. One tester pinned more than 30 brushes.
• Pinned brushes can't be reordered. They're sorted by when you pinned them, newest first, so you can't build a deliberate order.
• Too many pins means more scrolling. The rolling list of recent brushes sits beneath your pins, so a long pinned list pushes it down.
• Removing is simple. Swipe the brush and tap Unpin, or tap Clear to remove it from Recent entirely.
• Find the origin. Swipe a Recent brush and tap Find to jump to the set it came from, which helps when you forget where an imported brush lives.

Pinning keeps brushes in their original sets, which matters if you want to preserve an imported artist pack intact. That is the main advantage over the duplicate-and-move approach below.

Method 2: Build a Favorites Brush Set

A custom set gives you the most control over order and contents. It takes more setup, but you only do it once.

Create the set

1. Open the brush library.
2. Drag down in the left column until the + appears, or tap the plus icon.
3. Choose Create new set.
4. Rename it "Favorites."

Duplicate and move brushes

1. Open the set that contains the brush you want.
2. Swipe the brush row and tap Duplicate. A copy appears, usually named with a "1" suffix.
3. Press and hold the copy until it lifts out of the list.
4. While holding it, use your other hand to navigate to your Favorites set and drop the brush inside the open set.

Drop the brush into the opened set rather than onto the set's name in the sidebar. Dropping onto the name is the easiest way to send a brush to the wrong place.

Move several brushes at once

Select one brush (it turns blue), then swipe other brushes to the right to add them to the selection. Press and hold one of the selected brushes, drag them out, and drop them into your Favorites set the same way. Duplicate them first if you want to keep the originals in their home sets.

The tradeoff

You're making copies, not shortcuts. If you tweak a brush in your Favorites set, the original in its source set stays unchanged, and the reverse is also true. That can be useful for custom variants, but it also means two versions can drift apart. Procreate remembers each brush's settings, so a tuned duplicate keeps its adjustments when you switch away and back.

Some artists keep project-specific sets, such as "Title Cards" or "Hand-Drawn Textures," instead of a single Favorites set. Rotating them is easier than rebuilding one set each time a project changes.

Method 3: Assign Brushes to the QuickMenu

The QuickMenu is a customizable menu. Assign your most-used brushes to its slots for instant access without opening the library.

The limit is six slots, which is why this works best as a layer on top of the other methods. Use QuickMenu for the handful of brushes you reach for every session, a pinned list for the current project, and a Favorites set as your long-term archive.

Keep Your Brush Library Organized

If you're building a serious kit, a few habits prevent the usual mess.

• Name duplicates clearly. A copy called "Dry Ink 1" becomes unreadable fast. Rename it to what it does.
• Group by purpose, not by pack. For animation prep, sets like "Line Work," "Grain," and "Fills" are easier to scan than a dozen vendor names.
• Use the Files app for housekeeping. Brush libraries live in the Files app under On My iPad → Procreate → Brushes, or iCloud Drive → Procreate Brushes. Folders inside are your libraries and sets, and the files inside those are individual brushes. You can copy, move, and duplicate there, and changes reflect in Procreate.
• Be careful when editing in Files. Deleting or moving things there changes your actual library, so back up first.
• Back up before big reorganizations. Copy your library folder out of Procreate's directory before restructuring.

Why This Matters for Motion and VFX Work

Many motion designers and animators use Procreate for the parts of a pipeline where a hand-made mark beats a procedural one: boiling line work, ink textures, paper grain, cel-style fills, rough animatics, and style frames. A tidy favorites setup keeps those marks consistent across a project. Consistent brush choice is what makes a texture pass or a series of hand-drawn frames read as one piece when it lands in After Effects, Nuke, or Premiere.

A practical workflow is to settle on one Favorites set per project, lock it before production starts, and avoid editing brush settings mid-sequence. If a look changes halfway through a shot list, you end up repainting frames.

Troubleshooting

I don't see Pin. Make sure you're in the Recent section, not a regular set. Pinning only applies to brushes listed there. Also check that your Procreate version supports it.

My pinned brush vanished. Tapping Clear removes a brush from Recent even if it was pinned. Unpin and Clear are separate actions, so check which one you tapped.

Dragging drops the brush in the wrong set. Open the target set first and drop the brush into the visible list instead of onto the sidebar name.

My duplicate behaves differently from the original. Each copy carries its own settings. If you edited one in Brush Studio, the other won't change.

I want my favorites on a new iPad. Copy your brush library folder from Files, or share individual sets, then import them on the new device through Create and import → Import from Files.

Which Method Should You Use?

• Mid-session switching: pin in Recent.
• A stable kit you rarely change: a Favorites set.
• Six brushes you use constantly: QuickMenu.
• Preserving an imported artist pack as-is: pin rather than moving brushes out of their sets.

Many artists combine all three. Pins handle the current project, a Favorites set holds the long-term kit, and QuickMenu covers the daily few. If Procreate adds a true star or heart button, you can fold those workarounds into it, but until then this layered approach is the fastest way to get your best brushes under your hand.

Procreate has no native star or heart button for brushes, so you add a brush to your favorites with one of three workarounds. The fastest is to use a brush, open the Recent section of the brush library, swipe on it, and tap Pin. For a permanent collection, create a "Favorites" brush set, duplicate your brushes, and drag the copies into it. A third option is to assign up to six brushes to your QuickMenu.

The Three Ways to Favorite a Brush in Procreate

Procreate organizes brushes into sets inside libraries, and none of the built-in tools works like a one-tap favorite. Artists have asked for a star or heart icon, and users coming from Infinite Painter or Photoshop's BrushBox panel notice the gap quickly. Until that changes, each workaround trades speed against permanence.

Procreate updates change menu details, so if a gesture below doesn't match your screen, check your app version. The Pin feature appears in the 5.2 and 5.3 builds that tutorials commonly demonstrate.

Method 1: Pin Brushes in the Recent Section

This is the closest thing to a real favorites feature, and it takes a few seconds.

1. Paint a stroke with the brush you want to save.
2. Open the brush library and select Recent at the top of the left column. It's marked with a star icon.
3. Find the brush in the list. The most recently used one sits at the top.
4. Swipe on the brush row (tutorials show both left and right swipes, depending on version) and tap Pin.

A star appears next to the brush, and it stays at the top of the Recent list while other brushes cycle in and out below it.

What to know about pinning

• Recent only holds a limited history. It shows your last eight brushes. Without pinning, a brush from a few days ago will have dropped off.
• There's no apparent cap on pins. One tester pinned more than 30 brushes.
• Pinned brushes can't be reordered. They're sorted by when you pinned them, newest first, so you can't build a deliberate order.
• Too many pins means more scrolling. The rolling list of recent brushes sits beneath your pins, so a long pinned list pushes it down.
• Removing is simple. Swipe the brush and tap Unpin, or tap Clear to remove it from Recent entirely.
• Find the origin. Swipe a Recent brush and tap Find to jump to the set it came from, which helps when you forget where an imported brush lives.

Pinning keeps brushes in their original sets, which matters if you want to preserve an imported artist pack intact. That is the main advantage over the duplicate-and-move approach below.

Method 2: Build a Favorites Brush Set

A custom set gives you the most control over order and contents. It takes more setup, but you only do it once.

Create the set

1. Open the brush library.
2. Drag down in the left column until the + appears, or tap the plus icon.
3. Choose Create new set.
4. Rename it "Favorites."

Duplicate and move brushes

1. Open the set that contains the brush you want.
2. Swipe the brush row and tap Duplicate. A copy appears, usually named with a "1" suffix.
3. Press and hold the copy until it lifts out of the list.
4. While holding it, use your other hand to navigate to your Favorites set and drop the brush inside the open set.

Drop the brush into the opened set rather than onto the set's name in the sidebar. Dropping onto the name is the easiest way to send a brush to the wrong place.

Move several brushes at once

Select one brush (it turns blue), then swipe other brushes to the right to add them to the selection. Press and hold one of the selected brushes, drag them out, and drop them into your Favorites set the same way. Duplicate them first if you want to keep the originals in their home sets.

The tradeoff

You're making copies, not shortcuts. If you tweak a brush in your Favorites set, the original in its source set stays unchanged, and the reverse is also true. That can be useful for custom variants, but it also means two versions can drift apart. Procreate remembers each brush's settings, so a tuned duplicate keeps its adjustments when you switch away and back.

Some artists keep project-specific sets, such as "Title Cards" or "Hand-Drawn Textures," instead of a single Favorites set. Rotating them is easier than rebuilding one set each time a project changes.

Method 3: Assign Brushes to the QuickMenu

The QuickMenu is a customizable menu. Assign your most-used brushes to its slots for instant access without opening the library.

The limit is six slots, which is why this works best as a layer on top of the other methods. Use QuickMenu for the handful of brushes you reach for every session, a pinned list for the current project, and a Favorites set as your long-term archive.

Keep Your Brush Library Organized

If you're building a serious kit, a few habits prevent the usual mess.

• Name duplicates clearly. A copy called "Dry Ink 1" becomes unreadable fast. Rename it to what it does.
• Group by purpose, not by pack. For animation prep, sets like "Line Work," "Grain," and "Fills" are easier to scan than a dozen vendor names.
• Use the Files app for housekeeping. Brush libraries live in the Files app under On My iPad → Procreate → Brushes, or iCloud Drive → Procreate Brushes. Folders inside are your libraries and sets, and the files inside those are individual brushes. You can copy, move, and duplicate there, and changes reflect in Procreate.
• Be careful when editing in Files. Deleting or moving things there changes your actual library, so back up first.
• Back up before big reorganizations. Copy your library folder out of Procreate's directory before restructuring.

Why This Matters for Motion and VFX Work

Many motion designers and animators use Procreate for the parts of a pipeline where a hand-made mark beats a procedural one: boiling line work, ink textures, paper grain, cel-style fills, rough animatics, and style frames. A tidy favorites setup keeps those marks consistent across a project. Consistent brush choice is what makes a texture pass or a series of hand-drawn frames read as one piece when it lands in After Effects, Nuke, or Premiere.

A practical workflow is to settle on one Favorites set per project, lock it before production starts, and avoid editing brush settings mid-sequence. If a look changes halfway through a shot list, you end up repainting frames.

Troubleshooting

I don't see Pin. Make sure you're in the Recent section, not a regular set. Pinning only applies to brushes listed there. Also check that your Procreate version supports it.

My pinned brush vanished. Tapping Clear removes a brush from Recent even if it was pinned. Unpin and Clear are separate actions, so check which one you tapped.

Dragging drops the brush in the wrong set. Open the target set first and drop the brush into the visible list instead of onto the sidebar name.

My duplicate behaves differently from the original. Each copy carries its own settings. If you edited one in Brush Studio, the other won't change.

I want my favorites on a new iPad. Copy your brush library folder from Files, or share individual sets, then import them on the new device through Create and import → Import from Files.

Which Method Should You Use?

• Mid-session switching: pin in Recent.
• A stable kit you rarely change: a Favorites set.
• Six brushes you use constantly: QuickMenu.
• Preserving an imported artist pack as-is: pin rather than moving brushes out of their sets.

Many artists combine all three. Pins handle the current project, a Favorites set holds the long-term kit, and QuickMenu covers the daily few. If Procreate adds a true star or heart button, you can fold those workarounds into it, but until then this layered approach is the fastest way to get your best brushes under your hand.