Built for Speed. Engineered for Geeks.
Direct2D Native • Modern C++23 • Dynamic Scheduling Architecture • Portable
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QuickView is currently one of the fastest image viewers available on the Windows platform. We focus purely on delivering the ultimate viewing experience—leave the heavy editing to professional tools like Photoshop.
Rewritten from scratch using Direct2D and C++23, QuickView abandons legacy GDI rendering for a game-grade visual architecture. With a startup speed and rendering performance that rivals or exceeds closed-source commercial software, it is designed to handle everything from tiny icons to massive 8K RAW photos with zero latency.
🌐 Multi-Language Support: English, 简体中文, 繁體中文, 日本語, Deutsch, Español, Русский
QuickView supports almost all modern and professional image formats:
- Classic:
JPG,JPEG,PNG,BMP,GIF,TIF,TIFF,ICO - Web/Modern:
WEBP,AVIF,HEIC,HEIF,SVG,SVGZ,JXL - Pro/HDR:
EXR,HDR,PIC,PSD,TGA,PCX,QOI,WBMP,PAM,PBM,PGM,PPM,WDP,HDP - RAW (LibRaw):
ARW,CR2,CR3,DNG,NEF,ORF,RAF,RW2,SRW,X3F,MRW,MOS,KDC,DCR,SR2,PEF,ERF,3FR,MEF,NRW,RAW
Release Date: 2026-06-01
💡 Tip: Press F1 at any time to open the interactive Shortcut & Help overlay to review all commands and operations.
- Background Watcher: Real-time folder monitoring utilizing Windows native
FindFirstChangeNotificationWto detect file system creations, deletions, and renames. - 300ms Event Debouncer: Intelligently groups rapid-fire OS change notifications to maintain UI fluidness and zero-stutter navigation.
- Main-Thread Reconciliation: Multi-threaded notifications reconcile safely on the main thread via system event messages for 100% thread-safe dynamic list reloading.
- Clang-cl + Ninja Matrix: Switched fully to the CMake-driven Clang-cl toolchain with the Ninja compilation backend, deprecating legacy Visual Studio
.slnand.vcxprojfiles. - Link-Time Optimization (LTO): Built with Full LTO (
-flto=full), aggressive inlining (-inline-threshold=250), and zero-exception policies (/EHs-c-), shrinking the standalone executable footprint to the extreme. - x64-windows-static-clang: Implemented custom triplet to compile an entirely static binary with zero external runtime DLL dependencies.
- Zero-Unpack Engine: Direct, instantaneous browsing of
.zip,.rar,.cbz, and.cbrarchives directly in memory using a zero-overhead Data-Oriented Design (DOD) VFS. No disk space is consumed. - Comic Dual Page Mode: Automatically stitches adjacent pages side-by-side with smart dynamic scaling, providing an immersive double-page comic book experience. Fully localized toolbar tooltips included.
- Single-Threaded Unrar Acceleration: Features custom, high-speed
unrar-minimemory-mapped decoding.
- HLG OETF & OOTF Corrections: Fixed HLG inverse OETF math and applied CPU-side OOTF system gamma 1.2; accelerated HLG conversions directly in shaders with branchless vectorization.
- Advanced scRGB Exposure Routing: Fully aligned dynamic exposure calculations with Microsoft Advanced Color rules (absolute HDR at gain 1.0, relative SDR/linear scaled by
SdrWhite/80). - Smart Spline Tone-Map Passthrough: Dynamically skips spline-curve evaluation in favor of a clean colorimetric clip when image highlights completely fit within the display's peak brightness.
- 64bpp FP16 linear space: Complete migration of the composition pipeline to 64bpp half-floats and GPU matrix transforms, preventing color clipping.
- libplacebo PQ Splines: Ported professional-grade scientific Spline tone-mapping mapped in PQ space.
- Highlight Desaturation & BT.2408: BT.2408-inspired exposure gain routing and highlight gamut compression to reduce washed-out colors while preserving HDR headroom.
- Advanced JXL & AVIF HDR: JXL half-float output and AVIF EOTF handling improve HDR color and luminance consistency.
- Customizable Reinhard Extended: Upgraded HDR perceptual mapping with customizable parameters editable via standard sliders in the Settings panel.
- 65x65x65 3D LUT: Highly precise, GPU-accelerated gamut warning overlay mapping color space transformations.
- Soft-Proof Compare Integration: Entering Compare Mode (C) while soft-proofing is active automatically compares the image before (original) and after (with soft-proofing ICC applied) side-by-side.
- 1s Debouncer: Debounced rendering calculations to keep image switching absolutely fluid.
- Draggable EXIF Overlay (#179): The EXIF Info Panel is now fully draggable and restorable, remembering its exact placement across program restarts.
- Overlay (Tracing) Mode: Renders the main window in semi-transparent mode via DirectComposition.
- Mouse Click-Through: Pass mouse events (
WM_EX_TRANSPARENT) straight to background apps. Perfect for digital artists to reference and trace templates. - Shortcuts:
Ctrl + Shift + Oto toggle Tracing Mode,Alt + Up/Down Arrowto adjust opacity,Shift + Escto exit mouse passthrough.
- Mouse Click-Through: Pass mouse events (
Release Date: 2026-04-05
- Universal Acceleration: Migrated all core SIMD operators to Google Highway, enabling high-performance execution on everything from older SSE4 CPUs to modern AVX-512.
- Native ARM64 Port: Full, native support for Windows on ARM architectures (NEON SIMD) with zero performance compromise.
- scRGB Linear Pipeline: A complete architectural shift to a 32-bit floating-point linear rendering pipeline, preserving extreme color precision and dynamic range.
- Ultra HDR GPU Composition: Native hardware-accelerated support for Gain Maps (Google/Samsung/Apple), delivering true-to-life brightness on HDR displays.
- Tone Mapping v2: Advanced HDR-to-SDR roll-off mapping for consistent results on legacy monitors.
- Hardware CMS: Deep integration of ICC profile management directly into the GPU pipeline.
- Soft Proofing: Professional simulation of output profiles (CMYK, Printer, Grayscale) with real-time HUD toggles.
- V4 Profile Support: Robust handling of ICC v4 and Compact ICC profiles.
Release Date: 2026-04-15
- Universal Playback: High-performance support for
.gif,.webp,.apng, and.avifsanimations. - Frame Inspector: Pause animations and traverse frame-by-frame using
Alt + Left/Rightto analyze motion or extract specific keyframes.
- Visual Refresh Debugging: Introduced the Dirty Rect tool for professional designers and developers. It visualizes the exact region currently being decoded and refreshed by the GPU.
- Toggleable UI: Enable the "Show Dirty Rect button" in
Settings > Visuals > Professional Tools.
- Dark/Light Mode: Full support for system-synchronized or manual Dark/Light UI modes.
- Accent Color Control: Customize the UI highlight color to match your Windows accent or personal preference.
- Ambient Dimmer: Added a configurable immersion overlay that dims the background when menus or galleries are active, enhancing visual focus.
- 16-bit scRGB Pipeline: Fully resolved "washed out" colors on HDR displays by migrating to a native scRGB float pipeline.
- Automatic CMS: Smart ICC profile detection and GPU-accelerated color space conversion.
- Right-Click Drag Zoom: Professional-grade zooming by holding the right mouse button and dragging vertically.
- Smart Initial Scale (#127): Resolved blurring on 1080p displays by ensuring pixel-perfect initial alignment.
- Google Highway SIMD: Dynamic dispatching for SSE4, AVX2, AVX-512, and ARM64 NEON.
- Titan Tiling System: Handle gigapixel images with smooth 60fps panning by only decoding what's visible.
- Zero-Latency JXL (#137): Native JPEG XL support with optimized thread pooling and memory management.
"Speed is a feature."
QuickView leverages Multi-Threaded Decoding for modern formats like JXL and AVIF, delivering up to 6x faster load times on 8-core CPUs compared to standard viewers.
- Zero-Latency Preview: Smart extraction for massive RAW (ARW, CR2) and PSD files.
- Debug HUD: Press
F12to see real-time performance metrics (Decode time, Render time, Memory usage). (First time use: Please enable Debug Mode in Settings > Advanced)
No more manual .ini editing.
A fully hardware-accelerated Settings Dashboard.
- Granular Control: Tweak mouse behaviors (Pan vs. Drag), zoom sensitivity, and loop rules.
- Visual Personalization: Adjust UI transparency and background grid in real-time.
- Portable Mode: One-click toggle to switch config storage between AppData (System) and Program Folder (USB Stick).
Stay fresh, stay fast.
QuickView automatically checks for updates in the background. When a new version is available, a non-intrusive toast notification will appear. You can install the update with a single click—no browser needed.
Don't just view the image; understand the data.
- Real-time RGB Histogram: Translucent waveform overlay.
- Refactored Metadata Architecture: Faster and more accurate EXIF/Metadata parsing.
- HUD Photo Wall: Press
Tto summon a high-performance gallery overlay capable of virtualizing 10,000+ images. - Smart Extension Fix: Automatically detect and repair incorrect file headers (e.g., PNG saved as JPG).
- Instant RAW Dev: One-click toggle between "Fast Preview" and "Full Quality" decoding for RAW files.
- Deep Color Analysis: Real-time display of Color Space (sRGB/P3/Rec.2020), Color Mode (YCC/RGB), and Quality Factor.
"Compare with absolute precision."
QuickView features a powerful Dual-View Compare Mode built for deep visual analysis.
- Side-by-Side Sync: Synchronized zoom, pan, and rotation between two images, allowing for millimetric inspection.
- Precision HUD: Real-time RGB Envelope Histograms and quality metrics (Entropy/Sharpness) to identify the superior shot.
- Interactive Divider: A smart, translucent divider that identifies the 'winner' of each comparison metric automatically.
"View light as it was meant to be seen."
QuickView 5.0 introduces a world-class color management suite.
- True HDR Panel: SIMD-accelerated peak luminance estimation and "HDR Pro" structural metadata (MaxCLL/FALL).
- Global Soft Proofing: Instantly preview how your photos will look when printed or converted to specialized color spaces.
- Linear workflow: 32-bit internal pipeline ensures zero banding and absolute precision.
We don't use generic codecs. We use the State-of-the-Art libraries for each format.
| Format | Backend Engine | Why it rocks (Architecture) |
|---|---|---|
| JPEG | libjpeg-turbo v3 | AVX2 SIMD. The absolute king of decompression speed. |
| PNG / QOI | Google Wuffs | Memory-safe. Outperforms libpng, handles massive dimensions. |
| JXL | libjxl + threads | Parallelized. Instant decoding for high-res JPEG XL. |
| AVIF | dav1d + threads | Assembly-optimized AV1 decoding. |
| SVG | Direct2D Native | Hardware Accelerated. Infinite lossless scaling. |
| RAW | LibRaw | Optimized for "Instant Preview" extraction. |
| EXR | TinyEXR | Lightweight, industrial-grade OpenEXR support. |
| HEIC / TIFF | Windows WIC | Hardware accelerated (Requires system extensions). |
Press
F1at any time to view the interactive Shortcut Guide.
🗺️ Roadmap We are constantly evolving. Here is what's currently in development:
- Tracing Mode: Semi-transparent overlay mode, designed for designers to reference and trace over other windows.
- Video Wall Port: Direct output to multi-monitor visual arrays.
- Plugin System: Open architecture for community-developed codecs and filters.
| Component | Minimum Requirement | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| OS | Windows 10 (1511+) | DirectComposition Visual3 required |
| CPU | SSE4-Capable CPU | Broadened Support (Intel 2008+ / AMD 2011+) |
| Arch | x64 or ARM64 | Native ARM64 support for NEON |
⚠️ Important: QuickView uses Google Highway for dynamic SIMD dispatching. While we've broadened support to SSE4, ARM64 users enjoy full NEON acceleration.
QuickView is primarily designed as a Green & Portable application.
- Download the
QuickView_*.zippackage from Releases. - Unzip anywhere and run
QuickView.exe. - Use in-app Settings > Portable Mode to manage configuration storage.
If you prefer a standard Windows installation (includes a deep uninstallation tool):
- Manual: Download the
QuickView_Installer_*.exefrom Releases. - Command Line:
winget install QuickView
⚠️ Architecture Note: The project has fully migrated to aCMake + Ninja + vcpkgbuild system. It uses the Clang-cl compiler and Full LTO (Link-Time Optimization) to achieve extreme binary size compression. The legacy.slnand.vcxprojfiles have been deprecated and removed.
- Visual Studio 2022 (with the "Desktop development with C++" workload installed).
- LLVM / Clang Toolchain (Ensure
clang-cl.exeandlld-link.exeare added to your system'sPATH). - CMake and Ninja (Bundled with VS or installed separately).
- Git.
After cloning the repository, run the following two commands in the root directory:
# 1. Automatically fetch dependencies via vcpkg and configure the Release-LTO build matrix
cmake --preset Release-LTO
# 2. Launch the Ninja backend for multi-core compilation and LTO linking
cmake --build out/build/Release-LTOThe final executable will be located in the out/build/Release-LTO/ directory.
Note
Developer Note
I maintain QuickView in my spare time because I believe Windows deserves a faster, cleaner viewer. I don't have a marketing budget or a team. If QuickView helps you, the biggest contribution you can make is to Star us on GitHub or share it with a friend.
QuickView stands on the shoulders of giants. Licensed under GPL-3.0. Special thanks to David Kleiner (original JPEGView) and the maintainers of LibRaw, Google Wuffs, dav1d, and libjxl.