Changelog
Every shipped improvement, newest first.
Seedance now tells you before submitting when a prompt is too long
When you write long prompts for Seedance, you're now told the moment you submit if you've gone over the limit.
What's different
- You're told at submit time. If the prompt is over Seedance's limit, hitting Generate shows a message right away — nothing is charged, and you don't wait in the queue for a failed generation.
- Roughly how long is the limit. About 20,000 Chinese characters (about 60,000 English characters) per request. Reference images, audio and video take up a small part of that, so the more media you attach, the slightly less room there is for text.
- When submitting from the CLI, MCP or the agent, the error tells you roughly how many characters to remove.
This applies to all Seedance models.
Privacy lock: set your own shortcut for “Lock Now”
Set your own shortcut for “Lock Now”
Go to Settings → Privacy lock, click the key shown on the Shortcut row, then press the combination you want (Esc to cancel):
- Mac: hold ⌘ (or ⌃) plus ⇧ or ⌥, then press a letter or number;
- Windows: hold Ctrl plus Shift or Alt, then press a letter or number;
- If a combination is already used by the system or XinYu, you'll be asked to pick another. To go back to ⌘⇧L / Ctrl+Shift+L, click Reset.
The setting applies to this device only. Once the desktop app updates to 0.3.5, “Lock Now” in its menu uses your shortcut too (apps on 0.3.1 or later update automatically).
Desktop app privacy lock: lock when the app opens
Lock when the app opens
In the desktop app, go to Settings → Privacy lock. Under "Desktop app only" there's a new option, Lock when the app opens (off by default; set an unlock PIN first):
- Close the app and open it again, and you'll need to unlock before anything shows;
- On Windows, after you close the window to the tray or minimize it, restoring it from the tray or taskbar also asks you to unlock;
- Refreshing the page won't lock it.
Older desktop apps will ask you to update
If you're on an older version of the desktop app, you'll see a prompt in the bottom-right corner to download the new one. Install it once from the download page, and the app keeps itself up to date from then on.
Voice input: tap stop and it stops
Stopping voice input is now much more decisive.
What's different
- Tap Stop and it always stops within 1.5 seconds. When you finish speaking and tap the red Stop button, voice input first tries to write your last sentence into the box. Even on a weak connection, it stops and releases the microphone within 1.5 seconds at most.
- In a hurry? Tap again. Tapping Stop once more during that short wait ends it immediately.
- Works the same everywhere there's a microphone: the agent chat box, the prompt boxes on canvas nodes, and every other input with a voice button.
Saving big canvases is more reliable on a shaky connection
Saving is now more reliable on canvases with lots of nodes, even when your connection isn't great.
What's different
- When your save collides with a change made elsewhere, only your edits are sent. If the same canvas was edited in another tab, or a generation result was just written back to it, your save can bump into that change. Now it goes through by uploading only the nodes you changed — no need to download the whole canvas first. The bigger the canvas and the slower the connection, the bigger the difference.
- New things added elsewhere show up for you. When that happens, nodes and connections added on the other side are brought into the canvas you have open. Things you deleted yourself are not brought back.
- The last save before you leave is smaller. Before you head to top-up or close the tab, the final save only sends what changed, so it is far more likely to arrive before the page goes away.
Tip
The save status is shown under the canvas name — "Saved to cloud" means everything is stored.
This applies to personal canvases; team canvases already sync in real time.
The XinYu agent now lets you keep talking while it works — and rewind when you change your mind
Keep talking while it works
- While the agent is working, keep typing: your message waits under "Queued" above the input box and goes out automatically when the agent is done.
- To change course right away, tap Steer next to that message: the agent finishes the step it's on, then follows your new instruction.
- If a task stops before it's done, waiting messages stay put and are marked "Tap Send to send".
Rewind when you change your mind
Hover over one of your messages and tap Rewind to here:
- The agent's canvas changes after that point are undone — nodes, links and groups it created, and names and settings it changed, go back to how they were;
- Images and videos that are already generated or still generating are kept, and anything you edited yourself afterwards is left alone;
- The conversation after that point is removed, and your original message goes back into the input box so you can edit and resend it.
Steadier
- Long replies are no longer cut off midway just because the agent is writing for a while.
- Before deleting anything, one tap on "Confirm" is all it takes.
- Something you stopped stays stopped — the agent won't pick it back up when you send your next message.
Easier start on a new canvas: example nodes in one click
- Starter buttons: a new, empty canvas now shows a "Double-click the canvas to add a node" hint and a row of starter buttons. Click Text to video or Generate an image to drop in a node with an example prompt already filled in. Your sign-up Xin Points cover one run.
- First node at the right size: on desktop, the first node you add to a new canvas appears at a comfortable size, with the generation panel and button fully on screen, so you can generate as soon as your prompt is ready.
- You can also click Upload to add your own media, or More nodes to pick any other node.
Xin TV Publishing Agreement: your work stays yours, and 18+ works are never promoted
- Your work stays yours: we only display and promote your work on a non-exclusive basis — on Xin TV, the XinYu AI homepage and our official social accounts, credited to your nickname. We never sell your work or license it to any third party for commercial use.
- 18+ works are never promoted: works marked 18+ never appear in any promotion.
- Clear cloning rules: once you turn on "Share Canvas", others can clone your prompts, workflow and reference materials (plus finished images and videos if you turn on "Allow cloning of finished assets") to make their own new works, which they may use commercially. They may not resell or repost your original work as-is, or pass it off as their own.
- Tick to agree every time you publish or edit: the publish dialog now has a confirmation box at the bottom — tick it to publish. Editing a published work works the same way. For works marked 18+, you also confirm that everyone depicted is an adult.
- Unlist any time: once you unlist a work in "My Shares", it is no longer shown to anyone or used in any promotion.
- Read the full Xin TV Publishing Agreement.
The XinYu AI desktop app is here for Mac and Windows
- Download: go to xinyuai.app/download, or click "Desktop" in the site's top menu. The Mac app runs on both Apple silicon and Intel (macOS 13 or later). The Windows app supports Windows 10 or later (64-bit), and you can choose which drive to install it on.
- Local files panel: click "Local Files" in the canvas sidebar to keep a project folder from your computer next to the canvas. Browse it as a list, thumbnails or masonry and drag files straight onto the canvas. File names and paths stay on your computer; only the file you drag in is uploaded.
- Save downloads where you choose: downloading opens a save window that starts in the folder you last used for this project. You get a notification when it's saved, and one click shows the file.
- Notified when it's done: working in another app? You'll get a system notification when an image or video finishes or fails.
- A better privacy lock: lock right from the menu bar, lock automatically when your computer sleeps or locks, and on a Mac unlock with Touch ID and turn on screenshot blocking (XinYu shows as black in screenshots and screen sharing).
- Automatic updates: new versions download in the background and install the next time you quit. No need to come back to the website.
- On the web, clicking "Local Files" on the canvas also takes you to the desktop app download.
- For the full tour and a one-shot film, see The XinYu AI desktop app: your folders, right next to the canvas.
New privacy lock: cover your screen in one click, unlock with a 4-digit PIN
- Where to set it up: Settings → Privacy → Privacy lock. Set a 4-digit PIN and you're ready.
- Lock in one click: choose "Lock now" in the avatar menu or the canvas menu (top left), or press ⌘⇧L (Windows: Ctrl+Shift+L). The whole page is covered right away, and the browser tab title changes to "Locked".
- Unlock: tap the on-screen digits or type your PIN on the keyboard. After 5 wrong tries in a row, wait 30 seconds.
- Refreshing won't unlock it: every XinYu tab open in the same browser locks and unlocks together.
- Auto-lock when idle: optionally lock after 1, 5 or 15 minutes without activity.
- Locking only covers the screen. Generations already running keep going.
- Your PIN stays in this browser on this device and is never uploaded. You'll need to set it again after signing out.
XinYu AI is now available in Traditional Chinese and Japanese
- The site and the canvas are now available in Traditional Chinese and Japanese — switch from the language menu in the top-right corner.
- Browsers set to Traditional Chinese (Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau) or Japanese open in that language automatically on the first visit.
- Playlist controls on the canvas (split / export / zoom), the “Save to Material Library” dialog and the @ reference menu now follow your interface language.
Canvas motion refresh: generating, failure notices and adding nodes
- While generating: a new sparkle-and-sweep animation with elapsed time in the corner. When you regenerate, a blurred outline of the previous result stays visible, and the overlay fades out softly once the new one lands.
- Failure notices: the full reason is shown — longer explanations scroll inside the box. Messages have been rewritten to say what happened and what to do next.
- Adding nodes: when you add a node yourself (add menu, paste, dropping files and more), the dot grid lights up around it and ripples outward. It stays off when the canvas is zoomed far out or your system has Reduce Motion turned on.
- Zoomed far out: generating nodes get a green outline and failed ones a red outline, so they are easy to spot.
- Menus and dialogs: open and close with one consistent, lighter animation.
- ▶ Watch the 32-second demo (Chinese captions)
Agent updates for longer tasks and retries
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New Agent tasks start with a spending budget of 500 Xin Points and 120 minutes of active execution time. You will be asked before extending either limit, and progress is preserved when continuing.
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Retries retain the images, audio and quoted text attached to your request, including when you switch models.
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Failed Agent tasks receive a full refund of their Agent charge. Separately confirmed media generation remains billed per generation task.
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Fixed cases where clicking Send stayed on Processing without submitting a task, and improved status updates after continuing a task.
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More accurate completion status for storyboard batches. Continue creating in the same conversation by replying “continue” or requesting changes.
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Seedance 2.5 Draft mode: pick the shot at 480P, then render it in 1080P
How to use it
- Pick Seedance 2.5 (Draft) in the model menu. The resolution locks to "Draft 480P".
- Write your prompt and attach references as usual, then generate — you get a 480P draft.
- Not quite right? Keep editing on the same node (the switch under it stays on "Edit draft"); every try costs the 480P price.
- Happy with it? Hit Render final under the node and confirm 1080P. The final appears as a new node next to it, marked "Final" and linked back to its draft by a line. The draft stays as it is.
What the final looks like
The final reuses everything from the draft — prompt, duration, aspect ratio, sound and references — so the framing, motion and timing match the draft, now at 1080P. Fine details such as faces and eyes are re-rendered at 1080P and can differ slightly from the draft; in our tests, with a character reference image attached, the face matched the draft.
Pricing
A draft costs the same as a regular 480P render; a final costs the same as rendering that clip in 1080P directly. What you save is the cost of iterating: the trial and error happens at 480P, and you only pay for 1080P on the one you keep.
For a 5-second text-to-video clip with sound: a draft is 65 Xins, the final 356 Xins. Three drafts plus one final come to 551 Xins; trying three versions directly in 1080P costs 1068 Xins.
Good to know
- Every Seedance 2.5 mode supports drafts: text-to-video, first frame, first & last frame, all-in-one reference, video editing and video extension.
- A draft can be finalized for 7 days. After that, "Render final" is greyed out — use "Edit draft" to make a fresh one.
- You can render the same draft's final again, but it will look almost the same and is charged again; for a different shot, go back and edit the draft.
- The 1080P final is 10-bit HEVC: better image quality, but some players can't open it (VLC and QuickTime can).
- The Canvas Agent can make drafts for you too; rendering the final is always your own click.
CLI and MCP
- CLI:
xinyu gen video --model seedance-2-5 --draft ...for the draft, thenxinyu gen final <draft jobId> --project <canvas id>for the final. - MCP: call
xinyu_generate_videowithdraft: true, thenxinyu_generate_video_finalfor the final.
Generations with reference media now ride out network blips
When you generate with reference images, videos or audio, we first fetch those files from storage, then hand them to the model.
What's new
If that fetch runs into a brief network hiccup — a timeout, a dropped connection, storage being momentarily busy — it now retries automatically, up to 3 times. It all happens in the background; you don't need to press generate again.
This applies whether the generation comes from the canvas, the Agent, the CLI or MCP, and to all three kinds of reference media.
If it still can't get the file
After three failed attempts the job fails and your Xins are refunded in full.
Only network problems are retried. If the file itself is the problem — say it has been deleted, or it's too large — we won't keep retrying; you'll get told right away.
SeeDream 5.0 Pro: limited-time 20% off
SeeDream 5.0 Pro is 20% off for a limited time — a 2K image drops from 14 to 11 Xin Points, and 1K from 10 to 8. The reference-image surcharge (+1 per image from the 6th) is discounted too. Nothing else about the model changed: same resolutions, same reference limits.
The panel shows the original price struck through next to the discounted one; if you already had a canvas open, refresh to see the new price.
GPT-6 Sol / Luna, Claude Fable 5.1 and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash are now in XinYu chat
Four new brains
Open the model picker in XinYu chat and you'll find four new options:
- GPT-6 Luna — the lowest-priced GPT. Plenty for everyday questions and prompt tweaks.
- GPT-6 Sol — GPT-6's balanced tier, at about a fifth of GPT-6 Astra's price. It keeps reasoning while it uses canvas tools, which makes it a good default for most creative work.
- Claude Fable 5.1 — the newer Claude Fable, with flagship-level reasoning and tool use. On hard problems it decides for itself when to think deeper.
- DeepSeek V4.1 Flash — DeepSeek's newer lite brain; it thinks before it acts, and lets you watch it think.
Which one to pick
- Cheapest: GPT-6 Luna
- Want to see how it reasons: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash
- Most work: GPT-6 Sol
- Hard problems worth paying a little more for: Claude Fable 5.1 or GPT-6 Astra
Every model's price is shown in the picker — glance at it before you switch. You can switch back any time.
Video editing timecodes now cover a span, not a moment
In Seedance 2.5 video editing, "Insert timecode" now gives you a start and an end slider, and what lands in your prompt is a span like
00:05-00:08rather than a single moment.Why a span works better
Video editing is a full re-render: the model regenerates the clip, changing what you asked for and holding the rest. It needs to know where the boundaries are. Give it a moment and it has to guess; give it a start and an end and the change lands inside the window you drew.
The official prompting examples are all continuous spans too, so the panel now just gives you spans directly.
The panel tells you which stretches you left out
Say you wrote
00:05-00:08to swap a character, but the clip runs 18 seconds — the other 13 seconds are unspecified. The panel lists them:00:00-00:05, 00:08-00:18 not described — the model will improvise
Next to it there's Fill gaps: one click turns them into "keep the original footage unchanged".
You don't have to click it. Letting the model improvise in the blank stretches is a perfectly normal way to work, so we don't decide that for you. It stays a line of text and a button, and nothing is added to your prompt when you send.
Two small notes
- The sliders move in whole seconds. The platform wants whole seconds, and previously you could stop on a half second, so what you saw and what you sent could differ.
- The video editing dialog from the node toolbar still inserts single moments — that path is for stepping through frames and marking a spot, where "this frame" is exactly what you mean. Both kinds of chip can live in the same prompt.
XinTV now shows how many people watched your work
Every work on XinTV now has a view count that goes up with real views — visible on list cards, on the work page, and in your own "My shares".
How the number is counted
- Your own visits don't count. Opening your own work repeatedly won't move it.
- One person counts once per 24 hours. Refreshing, switching tabs, clicking in and out of the list — all count once.
- Only published public works are counted.
Why spell out the rules
Because the number is only worth anything if you can act on it. If your own visits counted, and every refresh counted, it would quickly become decoration nobody looks at. With the rules above, it reflects how many people actually opened your work — solid enough to decide what to make next.
Counting never gets in the way of the work
The view count is an observability number. It never affects whether anyone can watch your work, and never affects billing.
XinTV now has an 18+ switch — you decide what you see
There's a new 18+ switch at the end of the filter row in XinTV (All / Animation / Short film …).
- Off by default, so the list shows all-ages works only.
- To include 18+ works, tap 18+ and confirm you are 18 or older.
- That confirmation lasts for the current browsing session only — close the tab and you'll be asked again.
- Tap it again to hide them.
Nothing changes for creators
Whether a work is marked 18+ is still whatever you chose when you published it, and no work was unlisted. Works marked 18+ are still on XinTV; viewers just turn the switch on to see them. Your own works are always visible to you under My Shares, regardless of this switch.
The gate on the work itself is unchanged
Turning the switch on only affects what appears in the list. Opening a work still goes through the same age confirmation and unlock flow as before.
Switching teams takes you straight to the project list
Switching teams
Pick any team in the workspace sidebar, or leave a team canvas via Back to workspace — you now land straight in that team's project list.
The address bar stays scoped to that team, so refreshing the page or bookmarking the link brings you back to the same team.
Where team settings live
To rename a team, invite members, or change member permissions:
- Desktop: avatar menu (top right) → My Teams → pick the team
- Mobile: drawer menu → the team name with the gear icon
Videos added with “+” now really do edit and extend
Both ways work the same now
There are two ways to attach a reference video for Seedance 2.5: draw a connecting line, or use “+” to pick one from your canvas assets.
Until now only the first one actually ran as the task you picked. Videos added with “+” ran as general reference instead — the label was right, but what came back wasn't the kind of result you asked for. Both ways behave identically now.
The panel stops showing values that don't apply
On Video edit or Extend, the output aspect (and for edit, the length) follows the source video. So the panel now says exactly that, instead of showing a number you can change but that wouldn't take effect.
How to tell
Attach the video, pick Seedance 2.5, then choose Video edit or Extend in the prompt panel — the footer should read “follows the source”. When you see it, this run is using the task you picked.
Video editing, now right in the prompt panel
Edit right where you write
Connect a video into a generation node, pick Seedance 2.5, and a Video edit tab appears in the prompt panel's tab row.
Once you're on it:
- Just say what you want changed — no need to phrase it with words like "edit" or "replace", we handle that
- The price sits right next to it, visible before you hit generate
- Output length and aspect follow the source video, so those two pickers step aside (they wouldn't apply anyway)
Point at a moment with a timecode
Hit Insert timecode, drag the slider to the moment you mean (the range is this video's own length), and hit Insert — a timecode marker lands in your prompt. Write what should change right after it.
The full editor is still there
When you need to step through frames and circle a spot on the picture, the editor on the video node's toolbar works exactly as before. Two routes side by side: type a sentence in the panel, or open the editor when you want to draw.
Wan 3.0 Prime is live, and 21:9 is open
Wan 3.0 Prime — for when you're waiting on the result
Aliyun describes Prime as the high-speed edition: capabilities aligned with the standard edition, with end-to-end speed significantly improved. So Prime sells speed, not quality — parameters, ratios, durations, resolutions and reference-media limits are identical to the standard edition. The only difference is how fast the clip comes back.
Pick Prime when you're in a hurry, stay on the standard edition when cost matters more.
Tier Standard (50% off) Prime (40% off) 480P 3 Xins/s 4.9 Xins/s 720P 6 Xins/s 10.08 Xins/s 1080P 12 Xins/s 20.16 Xins/s A 30-second 720P clip: 180 Xins on the standard edition, 302 Xins on Prime.
Pick "Wan 3.0 Prime" straight from the model dropdown; the CLI and MCP server have it too (
--model wan-3.0-video-prime).21:9 widescreen is open — on both Wan 3.0 models
The upstream opened 21:9 up, so we did too. We measured the actual output dimensions at all three resolutions rather than just checking that the job succeeded:
Resolution Actual output 480P 980×420 720P 1470×630 1080P 2206×946 21:9 now appears in the ratio picker for both the standard edition and Prime.
Also
Wan 3.0 accepts any whole number of seconds from 2 to 30. When the Canvas Agent planned one of these for you, it used to budget as if the clip were 20 seconds; it now matches what you are actually charged.
GPT Image 2.5 limited-time price cut — up to 22% off
High-quality tiers are cheaper across the board
The discount our upstream gives us, passed straight through to you. Already live — nothing to set.
Size High Ultra Max 1K 7 → 6 12 → 10 27 → 22 2K 14 → 11 24 → 20 54 → 43 4K 23 → 18 40 → 32 89 → 72 4K Medium also drops from 6 to 5.
A 4K Max shot: 89 Xins → 72
Cuts run 14–22%; weighted by real usage that works out to roughly 20% off.
Low tiers, and Medium at 1K and 2K, are unchanged — those already cost just 1–4 Xins.
The panel shows the exact cost for the shot before you run it.
Why "limited-time"
This cut tracks the discount our upstream gives us. If that discount ends, our prices follow — and we will say so here first, not quietly.
You can take a generation back now
Those seconds are yours
After you hit generate on the canvas, the node shows a countdown with two buttons: Cancel and Submit now.
- Clicked the wrong thing → hit Cancel. The request never left your browser, so nothing is charged.
- Just a typo in the prompt → don't cancel, fix it right there in those seconds. What runs is your corrected version.
- Don't want to wait → hit Submit now, or click generate again to start immediately.
You decide how long
Open Canvas settings → Submit delay and set anything from 0 to 10 seconds. The default is 3 seconds — long enough to catch a misclick, short enough to stay out of your way.
Set it to 0 to turn it off entirely and go straight to generating, exactly like before.
Where it applies
Every generation on the canvas that spends credits: image, video, audio, text, inpaint, outpaint, background removal, subtitle removal, relight, trim, export and storyboard parsing.
Images on your phone: pinch to zoom, swipe to browse
Photo-album gestures for images on your phone
Open an image in Assets:
- Pinch to zoom in and out, then drag with one finger to look around
- Double-tap for 2.5x — it zooms into the spot you tapped; double-tap again to go back
- Swipe left or right to move to the next or previous image
- Swipe up or down on the picture to scroll straight to the file details and prompt below
Portrait images and videos are no longer squeezed into a thin strip either — you get a proper view as soon as you open one.
For video: the fullscreen, play, mute and restart buttons are bigger on phones, so you don't have to aim. (Video and audio still use the player's own controls; the gestures above are for images.)
On a mouse, nothing about the desktop changes — scroll-wheel zoom, the zoom slider and the arrow keys are all exactly where they were.
One look for the mobile menu
Whichever page you're on, the menu now shares the same design: icon rows, section headings and the language switch at the bottom. Once you're signed in you get the account and settings entries as well, in the same style. On the English interface the section headings are in English too.
The prompt box now shows each model's character limit
Know the limit before you write
Models differ in how long a prompt they accept, and until now you only found out after sending. The prompt box now shows a live count of characters written / that model's limit — amber as you approach it, red when it is full.
Pasting a long prompt no longer goes nowhere
Paste a long prompt and, if it exceeds the limit, we keep what fits and tell you exactly how many characters did not make it. No counting by hand, and no "I pasted and nothing happened".
The limits
Model Limit Seedance (all) No limit Wan 3.0 20,000 MiniMax H3 7,000 Wan 2.7 5,000 Kling 3.0 2,500 HappyHorse 1.1 2,500 Kling O3 No limit These follow each model's own upstream specification. The same rules apply when you submit via the CLI or MCP.
Free local subtitle cleanup: select, preview and export
- Select a generated video on the canvas and open Local subtitle cleanup · Free. Mark the subtitle area and time range, preview the result, then export.
- Supports videos up to 30 seconds and 1080p at 24/30 fps. Available for verifiable XinYu-generated assets; uploaded videos are not supported.
- Designed for white subtitles in a fixed position. Add or erase strokes to refine the repair area, and check the preview on complex backgrounds.
- Export a new video for 0 Xin, preserving the original and its audio track. The question-mark button opens an illustrated guide; Esc closes the guide first, then the editor.
GPT Image 2.5 can output transparent backgrounds; reference images are now priced per image
Transparent backgrounds
GPT Image 2.5 (Flare and Sunburst) now has a Background control in the parameter panel, with three options:
Auto · Opaque · Transparent
Pick Transparent and you get a PNG with a real alpha channel — everything outside the subject is genuinely transparent, not white. That saves a cutout step for product shots, stickers and asset pieces.
The control only appears on GPT Image 2.5, because transparent output is specific to it.
Aspect ratios now follow the size tier
1K / 2K / 4K offer almost the same set of ratios: 1:1, 4:3, 3:4, 3:2, 2:3, 16:9, 9:16 and 21:9 are available at every tier, and 2K additionally offers 9:21. The ratio you choose is the ratio you get.
The panel now lists only the ratios a tier can actually produce. So 1:1 disappears when you switch to 4K — that isn't an omission, it's that the tier can't produce it.
Reference images are now priced per image
Starting today, attaching reference images to GPT Image 2 and GPT Image 2.5 counts toward the price:
Model Pricing GPT Image 2 First one free, +1 Xin for each after that GPT Image 2.5 Flare / Sunburst +1 Xin per reference image For example, a 1K low-refinement GPT Image 2.5 render is 1 Xin; attach one reference and it's 2. The price in the panel tracks the reference count live, so you see the final amount before you run it.
Why: the upstream for these two models bills for reference images per image, and larger references cost more — a 4K reference costs over three times a 1K one. That part wasn't reflected in the price before.
Not affected: reference images on every other image model remain free of extra charge; nothing about their usage or pricing changes.
GPT Image 2.5 is here: Flare and Sunburst, five refinement levels
Two new models are in the image list: GPT Image 2.5 Flare and GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst.
How they differ
- Flare — faster generation. The everyday pick.
- Sunburst — same image quality, about twice as slow, tuned for edit precision. Reach for it when you are retouching or chasing fine detail.
They cost exactly the same; price follows the refinement level and size you pick.
Five refinement levels instead of three
GPT Image 2 had Low / Medium / High. 2.5 adds two more on top:
Low → Medium → High → Ultra → Max
Higher levels spend more compute on the image and cost more. At 1K that ranges from 1 to 27 Xins, and the panel shows the exact price for the shot before you run it.
Note: "High" on 2.5 and "High" on GPT Image 2 are not the same thing — each generation splits its levels by its own compute. For the best 2.5 output, pick Max.
16 reference images at once
Double GPT Image 2's eight. More room for character consistency, multi-image blends, and style references.
Both models also edit with references — just connect images to the generation node on the canvas.
Sizes and aspect ratios
1K / 2K / 4K. Each tier supports a different set of ratios (2K is the widest — it adds 21:9 and 9:21), and the panel only lists the ratios that tier can actually produce, so you can't pick one that won't come out.
Prompts up to 32,000 characters
GPT Image 2.5 accepts prompts up to 32,000 characters. Go over and you'll be told, instead of getting an image made from half your prompt.
GPT-6 Astra is now available in XinYu chat
A new top tier
GPT-6 Astra — OpenAI's current flagship — is now in the model list in XinYu chat.
Where it shines is work that needs step-by-step reasoning: turning a dense brief into a shootable shot list, finding a workable option inside a pile of constraints, restructuring long-form content. It holds up noticeably better than the other tiers on that kind of task.
Its deep thinking stays on while it uses canvas tools — letting it read your canvas and reason at the same time is where it's at its best.
Two things to know first
It's slow. Measured at roughly 3x the time of GPT-5.6. For everyday questions or tweaking a prompt, a faster tier is a much better experience.
It's the priciest tier. The exact rate is shown in the model picker — glance at it before you switch.
In short: give it the hard problems that are worth waiting for, and use something else for the rest.
How to switch
Open XinYu chat, click the model picker, and choose GPT-6 Astra. You can switch back any time.
You can now speak your prompts
Tap, and just say it
Image, video, audio and text nodes, storyboard scripts, prompt nodes, and the XinYu chat on the right — all of them now have a microphone next to the send button.
Tap once to start, tap again to stop. What you say lands straight in the box, appended to whatever you had already written.
Nothing is sent automatically. Look it over, fix a word, add your @ references, and send when you're ready. For long prompts, say a chunk, pause, then keep going.
Chinese and English
To the left of the microphone there's a 中 / EN toggle. Pick one and it recognizes in that language; your choice is remembered for next time.
Speaking a Chinese prompt with English model names or craft terms mixed in? Stay on 中 and say it naturally — common creative terminology is boosted.
No credits
Recognition happens in your browser. Your audio never reaches our servers, and it costs no credits.
Chrome or Safari work best. The first time you tap the microphone your browser will ask for permission — allow it. Safari needs Dictation or Siri enabled in system settings. If your browser can't do it, the button simply won't appear, so you'll never tap something that does nothing.
One-tap Seedance 2.0 Mini, and your welcome bonus is now claimable
Your first Mini, covered by your welcome bonus
Your welcome bonus covers a free account's first 4-second Seedance 2.0 Mini. Whatever the panel shows is what you're actually charged.
Free accounts get one Mini clip, up to 4 seconds. Upgrading removes the limit entirely and raises the cap to 15 seconds.
Your welcome bonus: the email now arrives on its own
Signing up now sends you a verification email automatically. Click the link and your welcome bonus lands.
If you registered earlier and never verified, there's a notice at the top of your workspace with a one-tap resend. The bonus has been waiting for you.
One click to start
The Mini write-up and the Seedance page now each have a direct entry point. Click it and we open a canvas for you with a Mini node already set up — model, duration, resolution and a sample prompt all filled in. Change what you want and hit generate.
Faster cropping, and upscales now keep their full resolution
Cropping is faster
Cropping used to download the entire original image into your browser before it could do anything. The bigger your image, the longer the wait — 4K renders and upscaled images routinely run to tens or hundreds of megabytes, which is painful on a phone or a long-haul connection.
The cut now happens on our servers; your browser only sends the position of the crop box. The image already lives next to the server, so it reads once, cuts once, and writes once.
While it runs you get a "generating" node on the canvas that fills itself in when it's done — the same experience as generating an image, so you can carry on with something else while you wait.
Upscales keep their full resolution
Upscaling, background removal and annotation now all work from the original image.
Until now they read the compressed copy the canvas uses for fast previews. Upscaling was hit hardest: a 5504×3072 image doubled should give you 11008×6144, but came back at 3200×1786 — smaller than your own original. These now start from the original, so an upscale gives you the full resolution.
Grid split and combine
Images produced by grid split and combine are now registered in your asset library too, so you can reference and manage them like any other material.
Crop tool: 7 more ratios, full-resolution output, and it works on touch
19 ratios, up from 6
The crop ratio list used to carry only six presets, far fewer than what generation itself can produce. The two are now aligned:
21:9, 3:2, 2:3, 5:4, 4:5, 2:1 and 1:2 are new, plus 9:21 for tall ultra-wide crops. With Free and Original, that is 19 in total.
Original doubles as a real reset: after cycling through a few ratios, tapping it brings the box back to the whole image instead of shrinking a little more each time.
High-resolution images keep their resolution
Cropping now reads the original file. It used to read the compressed copy the canvas uses for fast previews, so 2K and 4K renders — and anything you had upscaled — came out around 1600 pixels wide, with nothing on screen to tell you.
Those images now keep their full resolution. In our testing, a 7078-pixel-wide image that previously came back at 1600 now comes back at 7078.
The size readout in the corner switched to original-image pixels too, so the number you see is the number you get.
It works on phones and tablets
The crop box used to respond to a mouse only. On touch you could open the tool, pick a ratio and hit confirm — but the box itself would not move. Finger and Apple Pencil dragging now work, and the grab areas around the corners and edges are larger, so you no longer have to hit the small white dot exactly.
Esc closes the crop tool.
Type an exact size
Above the ratio grid there is now a size field. Enter the size in original-image pixels; it applies on Enter or when you click away. The Lock ratio switch next to it pins the current aspect ratio — including an arbitrary one you dragged out yourself — so dragging scales without distorting.
Cropping also shows progress now, instead of leaving you guessing how long it will take.
Reference links on your canvas stay put — and the ones you lost are back
Reference links stay put
A reference lives on the link between two nodes: the link is what lets @Image 1 in your prompt resolve to the right asset. Previously, when the same canvas was being written from more than one place at once — two tabs open, or the agent placing something on the canvas while you worked — links could go missing. What you saw was a whole batch of reference tags greying out, without you having deleted anything.
Those cases are now reconciled item by item before saving: links created elsewhere are kept, and links you cut yourself are never reconnected behind your back.
The links you lost are back
We ran a recovery using the most conservative test we could: the link was genuinely created, you never deleted it, both nodes still exist, and your prompt still carries the reference tag pointing at it. Only links meeting every condition were restored. 111 links came back — just open the canvas, nothing for you to do.
Anything that failed those conditions was left alone, so nothing you meant to remove gets pushed back at you.
No more English error page after an update
When a new version went live while your page was still open, opening certain panels could turn the whole page into a single line of English error text. Now the page saves your unsaved work first, then refreshes itself onto the new version — at most you see a brief load.
Reference tags in your prompt no longer disappear on their own
Tags grey out; they are never deleted
Reference tags such as @Image 1 in your prompt used to be stripped out of your text whenever a reference could not be read for a moment. Once removed, a refresh would not bring them back, and you had not deleted anything.
Your text is now left alone. When a reference cannot be read the tag simply greys out and explains itself on hover. Whether to clear it is your decision, via the “Remove stale tags” button.
Swapped references say so
When you replace the reference in a slot, the tag used to turn into an unexplained grey question mark, even though generation was in fact using the new image.
That case is now labelled explicitly: hovering says the slot holds a different reference and that generation will use the current one. The tag stays usable; you just know it is not the original.
Tags follow the asset itself
Reference tags now bind to the asset's own identity rather than only to the image address it had at the time. Re-generating, changing the cover, or moving storage no longer breaks them, so you don't have to go back and re-@ everything.
The “+” picker now lists only what's actually on this canvas — with real names
“This canvas” means this canvas
When you open the “+” to pick a reference, the “This canvas” tab used to include things you couldn't actually see on the canvas: copies left behind when you picked from another canvas, outputs replaced by a re-generation, leftovers from nodes you had deleted.
It now lists only what is really on this canvas: if the node is there, so is the asset; delete the node and it disappears immediately. “Other canvases” follows the same rule.
“Generation history” is unchanged — that tab is the generation record for this canvas, including output from nodes you later deleted. That's where to look for older images.
Cards have names now
Asset cards used to be titled “Untitled” almost every time (generated images have no filename). They now show the name of the node they belong to — the title you gave that node, and renaming it updates the list. Especially handy when picking from another canvas: you can tell at a glance which node an image came from.
Rejected references explain themselves
When a reference can't be used, the message now says which kind of problem it is and what to change — for example that the model does not take reference audio, that start/end-frame mode doesn't use reference video or audio, or that a referenced asset no longer exists.
Image nodes start with a “+”, and Seed Audio picks reference voices without edges
Image nodes start with a “+”
The “+” used to appear only once the tray already had a reference — a brand-new image node with nothing attached had no “+”, so the first reference could only come from an edge. New nodes now show the “+” right away; pick from your library and it registers on that node.
Seed Audio: reference voices without edges
With Seed Audio 1.0 selected, the audio node's tray now has a “+” — pick an audio clip from your library (this canvas / generation history / other canvases) as the reference voice, no edge needed.
- Up to 3 clips, wired and picked ones counted together; the “+” hides itself when full
- ElevenLabs shows no “+” (it doesn't take reference audio)
Picking an uploaded audio with “+” now generates
Picking an uploaded audio file with “+” (on a video or audio node) used to fail at generation. It now generates normally — nothing to configure.