QuickView pre-release v6.24.0.0

QuickView pre-release v6.24.0.0

• Replaced WIC TIFF decoding with a custom mini-TIFF parser. In practical tests, the decoding time for a 12.8MP TIFF has improved significantly from 1.9s to 360ms. Note: To keep the application size small, no third-party TIFF decoding libraries were used. The custom decoder might not cover all edge cases, so if you encounter any display anomalies, please report a bug.

• Added drag-to-resize functionality for the filmstrip.

• Fixed an issue where the OSD (On-Screen Display) transparency was incorrect

Full Changelog: v6.22.3...v6.24.0.0

QuickView v6.22.3

QuickView v6.22.3 - RAW+JPEG Folding, Interactive Minimap, Loupe & Performance Boost

Release Date: 2026-07-17

Important

Introducing Pre-release Update Channel
Starting from this version, we have introduced a new Pre-release update channel. You can now toggle this option in the Settings menu. By switching to the Pre-release channel, you will receive our latest bleeding-edge updates first, allowing you to help us test new features and provide early feedback.
To ensure software stability, public Stable versions will be released shortly after a Pre-release version has undergone a testing period without any new bug reports.

Welcome to QuickView v6.22.3! This release introduces highly requested features designed to declutter your photo-culling workflow, check image sharpness with ease, and experience a massive speed boost when viewing large images.

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📸 Clean Up Your Gallery: RAW+JPEG Pairing & Folding (#201)

Contributed by Zhou Ying (@Zorange)
If you shoot in RAW+JPEG dual formats, your gallery can quickly get cluttered with duplicate images. This version introduces smart folding to keep your workspace clean.

• Unified Photo Grid: Automatically folds same-name RAW and JPEG (or other rendered) images into a single item in the gallery. No more duplicates!
• How to Enable: This feature is disabled by default. Go to Settings > Image and check the option to enable RAW+JPEG pairing.
• Instantly Swap Formats: Once enabled, you can quickly swap the visible layer of a photo to its RAW file by pressing the RAW toggle button on the toolbar or using your custom shortcut.
• Side-by-Side Comparison: Want to see how the camera's JPEG processing compares to the RAW sensor data? Press Shift + C to compare the two components of a paired image side-by-side.
• Flexible Deletion: When you delete a folded pair, QuickView will ask if you want to delete only the JPEG, only the RAW file, or both together.

🔍 Check Focus Instantly: Detail Loupe (#201, #216)

Contributed by Zhou Ying (@Zorange) & Core Team
A precision tool built specifically for photographers to cull photos and quickly check sharpness.

• Press-and-Hold Magnifier: When an image is zoomed out (smaller than its original size), simply press and hold the L key (customizable) to pop up a local magnifier showing the pixels under your cursor at 100% size. Release the key to hide it instantly.
• Live Resize: Need a larger inspection window? While holding down the L key, scroll your mouse wheel to dynamically resize the magnifier box.
• Synced Comparison: When comparing two images side-by-side, activating the Loupe will magnify the exact same area on both panes simultaneously.
• Visual Options: Customize your magnifier's shape (Circle or Square) and enjoy a high-contrast border that makes it easy to spot even on dark photos.

🗺️ Navigate Large Images: Interactive Minimap (#215, #216)

• Navigator Map: When you zoom deep into an image, a miniature overview map will appear in the top corner of the screen.
• Drag-to-Pan: Simply click and drag the highlighted viewport box inside the Minimap to quickly slide and pan across different sections of your image, eliminating the need for tedious manual scrolling.
• Improved UI: Added high-contrast borders and a soft shadow under the close button to ensure the Minimap remains legible on any image background.

🔄 Safer File Actions & Multi-Level Undo (#216)

• Mistake-Friendly Actions: You can now undo file renaming, image rotations, and mirror flips.
• Recycle Bin Confirmation: Added a setting to toggle the Recycle Bin delete confirmation prompt on or off.
• Gallery Deletion: Right-click any thumbnail directly in the filmstrip gallery to delete the file immediately.

🎨 Better Colors & Photoshop PSD/PSB Support (#214, #144)

• Flawless PSD/PSB View: Completely fixed transparency bugs when viewing Photoshop PSD/PSB files. Say goodbye to weird color noise or background grid leaks (#214).
• Accurate Colors: Upgraded color profile management to read modern multi-language color profiles (#144). QuickView now accurately displays the native bit-depth and color gamut of AVIF, JXL, and RAW files without losing fidelity.

⚡ Blazing Fast Speeds & Smoother Animations (#206, #212, #205, #144, #209, #202)

• Turbocharged RAW Loading: Rewrote the core image decoding loop to leverage modern processor instructions. Loading RAW files from high-end cameras is now up to several times faster.
• Low Memory Usage: Loading very large TIFF images now consumes significantly less memory (#206).
• Stutter-Free Gallery: Fixed an issue where the filmstrip gallery would stutter or freeze during slideshows (#201). Transitions and auto-scrolling are now butter-smooth.
• System Integration: Fixed taskbar title truncation bugs (#202) and resolved hotkey conflicts when typing with input methods (IME) (#209).
• Dynamic Localization: Resolves Japanese fallback glyph issues on non-English locales (#212).
• Russian Translation Update: Contributed by Dmitry Yerokhin (@Dimmitrius) (#205).

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❤️ Special Thanks

This release wouldn't be possible without our amazing contributors:

• Zhou Ying (@Zorange) for designing and implementing the RAW+JPEG folding system, the detail Loupe, and standardizing extension classifications.
• Dmitry Yerokhin (@Dimmitrius) for updating and correcting the Russian localizations.

Test: Pre-release v6.10.13.6

Test autoupdate for Pre-release channel

QuickView v6.8.1

QuickView v6.8.1 - Dynamic Island, Filmstrip Gallery, Custom Hotkeys & Size Optimization

Release Date: 2026-06-14

QuickView v6.8.0 introduces redesigned window controls, an interactive filmstrip gallery, dual-mode slideshows, fully customizable hotkeys, and substantial binary size optimizations.

🏝️ Floating 'Dynamic Island' Window Controls

The window controls have been redesigned for a cleaner interface.

• Floating Capsule Pill (#199): Replaces traditional window controls with a floating pill-shaped widget in the top-right corner. Includes hover glow transitions.
• Compact Size: Reduced the size of caption buttons to maximize screen space for images.

🎞️ Interactive Filmstrip Gallery

The filmstrip gallery has been redesigned with improved controls and animations.

• Top-Hover Trigger: Hover near the top edge to expand the filmstrip gallery. The trigger mode can be set to Hover, Pinned, or Disabled via the Settings menu.
• Auto-Centering Scroll: Selecting a thumbnail triggers a smooth scrolling animation that aligns the item to the center of the bar.
• Visual Refinements: Corrected visual gaps when pinned, fixed zoom anchor offsets, and restored smooth horizontal auto-scrolling.

📺 Dual-Mode Slideshow (#198)

• Spotlight Mode: Added a slideshow mode inspired by Picasa Spotlight, which dims the background and focuses on the active image.
• Normal Mode: Standard fullscreen slideshow functionality.

⌨️ Fully Customizable Hotkeys

• Custom Keyboard Mapping: Added support for completely customizing and rebinding all core keyboard shortcuts and navigation hotkeys directly within the Settings menu.

📐 UI/UX Adjustments & Window Snapping

• Magnetic Snapping (#90): Window borders now snap to screen edges (100% magnetic snap) when resized.
• Responsive Toolbar (#194): Toolbar buttons automatically hide based on the window width and active mode.
• Timeline Scrubbing: Implemented debounced asynchronous seeking for animated formats, providing smooth scrubbing without timeline lag. Fixed frame count and distortion issues on large GIF seeking (#197).
• Extended Mouse Mapping (#191): Added support for mapping multi-function mouse side buttons in settings.
• Archive Sorting (#193): Added an option to always sort archives by name ascending.

⚡ Footprint Compression & Size Optimizations

We reduced the binary size of the standalone executable by removing redundant templates and dependencies.

• C++ Stream Elimination: Removed <iostream> dependencies, saving approximately 18.5 KB.
• Localization Deduplication: Consolidated localization string tables, saving 10.5 KB by preventing template duplication.
• Vector Icon Compression: Compressed static vector icon coordinates to 16-bit integers, saving 54 KB.
• Code Devirtualization: Replaced std::function callbacks with C-style function pointers and devirtualized core controllers to reduce overhead.
• LTO Debug Fix: Removed obsolete compiler flags (/MERGE:.rdata=.text) from Link-Time Optimization (LTO) builds to fix minidump crash debugging.

🐛 Decoding & Memory Fixes

• Hybrid Allocation: Implemented a hybrid memory allocator to balance preloading and tile rendering.
• Access Violations: Fixed crashes when rapidly switching images.
• HDR in Archives: Resolved an issue where HDR images decoded from ZIP/RAR archives lost their peak luminance metadata or failed to render in float format.
• WebP, AVIF & JXL (#195): Fixed shadow transparency glitches in WebP/AVIF and image distortion in JPEG XL.

Full Changelog: v6.2.10...v6.8.1

v6.2.10

QuickView v6.2.10 - High-Performance HDR, Comic Evolution & Watcher System

Release Date: 2026-06-01

QuickView v6.2.10 is a major architectural milestone. This release features a complete overhaul of the rendering pipeline, deep virtualized comic archive support, an automated real-time directory watcher, ICC color-gamut warnings, digital drawing overlay support, and a high-performance Clang compilation matrix.

Note: Press F1 at any time to open the interactive Shortcut & Help overlay to review the latest operations and features.

🔍 Robust Directory Auto-Scanning (#192)

QuickView now automatically refreshes the image list when files are added, deleted, or renamed in the active directory.

• Background Directory Watcher: Implemented a dedicated background monitoring thread utilizing native FindFirstChangeNotificationW to listen to directory activities in real-time.
• 300ms Event Debouncer: Employs a robust debouncer that groups rapid file-system notifications to prevent UI stuttering and thread contention during event storms.
• Safe Index Reconciliation: Changes are dispatched safely back to the main thread via standard Windows messages, guaranteeing thread-safe, 0-lock list synchronization and immediate visual hot-reloads.

📚 Zero-Overhead Comic & Archive VFS (#186)

You can now scan and browse image archives with zero overhead.

• DOD Virtual File System: Features a high-performance Data-Oriented Design (DOD) VFS that extracts and reads .zip, .rar, .cbz, and .cbr archives directly in memory with 0-disk writing.
• Comic Dual Page Mode: Smart adjacent page stitching with dynamic scale adjustments for a seamless double-spread comic book viewing experience.
• High-Performance Unrar: Integrates a single-threaded custom unrar-mini engine for lightning-fast archive traversal.

🌈 Next-Gen HDR Pipeline (#131)

HDR handling has been reworked around standard luminance semantics for PQ/HLG, scRGB, scene-linear images, and gain-map content.

• HLG inverse OETF & CPU system gamma 1.2: Corrected HLG inverse OETF decoding math and added CPU-side OOTF system gamma scaling (1.2) for perfect accuracy with untagged and HLG-native sources.
• Branchless GPU HLG Math: Ported fully vectorized, branchless lerp-step shaders to accelerate HLG-to-linear conversion directly on the GPU.
• Microsoft Advanced Color scRGB Exposure Routing: Fully aligned tone-mapping parameters with Microsoft scRGB standard guidelines (absolute HDR at gain 1.0, SDR/relative elements scaled correctly by SdrWhite / 80.0).
• Smart Spline Tone-Map Passthrough: Added automated spline bypass detection. When an HDR image's peak fits completely within the screen's luminance boundaries, the spline shader is dynamically bypassed in favor of a zero-overhead colorimetric clip, saving precious GPU cycles.
• 64bpp FP16 and PQ Splines: Switched the entire composition pipeline to high-precision 64bpp FP16 linear color space. Integrates scientific-grade libplacebo-style Spline tone-mapping in PQ space.
• BT.2408 Exposure Gain & Highlight Desaturation: Reduces washed-out tones and color clipping with standard-aware exposure gain routing and high-dynamic color space desaturation.
• Reinhard Extended Perceptual Mapping: Includes customizable Reinhard perceptual scaling parameters with user-friendly sliders in the Settings panel.
• Highway SIMD Acceleration: SIMD-accelerated HDR peak luminance estimation for FP16 and U16 imagery.
• AVIF & JXL HDR Polish: JXL half-float output and AVIF EOTF handling improve HDR color and luminance consistency.

🎨 Gamut Warning & Soft-Proof Comparison

Color management is now fully professional.

• 65x65x65 3D LUT Gamut Warning: Real-time identification of out-of-gamut pixels in soft-proofing mode using high-precision LUT analysis.
• Soft-Proof Compare Integration: When soft-proofing is enabled and you enter Compare Mode (C Key), QuickView now automatically triggers a side-by-side comparison of the original image versus the soft-proofed image (with target ICC rendering profile applied).
• 1s Debounce Buffer: Optimized the gamut warnings with a debouncer to guarantee 0-latency scrolling.

📐 Draggable EXIF Info Panel & Tracing Overlay Mode

• Draggable EXIF Overlay (#179): EXIF Info Panel is now fully draggable across the screen, with automatic screen bounds confinement and layout memory persistence across sessions.
• Overlay (Tracing) Mode: Semi-transparent background mode powered by DirectComposition node transparency.
  • Mouse Click-Through: Toggleable mouse passthrough (WM_EX_TRANSPARENT) allows digital artists to overlay reference drawings directly over their favorite drawing canvases.
  • Shortcuts: Press Ctrl + Shift + O to toggle Tracing Mode, Alt + Up/Down Arrow to adjust opacity, and Shift + Esc to exit click-through.

🛠️ Clang-cl & CMake Build Overhaul (#177)

QuickView has completely abandoned legacy MSVC solutions for a modern, cross-platform build system.

• CMake & Ninja Matrix: Built using CMake and the ultra-fast Ninja compiler backend.
• Clang-cl and LTO: Optimized with clang-cl.exe utilizing Full Link-Time Optimization (LTO) and zero-exception (-fno-exceptions) flags, leading to massive standalone executable footprint compression and improved execution speeds.
• Static Single Binary: Packaged with a custom x64-windows-static-clang triplet to ensure zero runtime dependencies.

⚡ Underlying Performance & Instructions

• GeekGlass Context Menu Tuning: Skipped D2D effect initialization inside DWM acrylic-blurred context menus, avoiding massive runtime WARP JIT memory allocations and rendering spikes.
• stb_image.h to v2.30: Synchronized stb image libraries to the latest stable v2.30 and eliminated CodeQL integer overflow warnings in core image loading routines.
• Modern CPU Acceleration: Extended Highway SIMD implementations to take full advantage of modern AVX-512 (AVX3) and emerging AVX10.2 vector lanes.
• Memory Engine Arena: Specialized memory arenas and VFS block pools to eliminate heap fragmentation during prefetch and caching.
• Fluid UI Animations: Switched thumbnail animations to use a dedicated asynchronous PostMessage loop to maintain 60fps responsiveness.
• Fast-Lane Boot (#172): Streamlined window creation and thread startup for an instantaneous boot cycle.

🤝 Acknowledgments

A special thank you to all the community developers and contributors who reported issues, shared complex HDR samples, and assisted in testing archive parsing.

Full Changelog: v5.3.0...v6.2.10

QuickView v5.3.0

QuickView v5.3.0 - Vector UI & Interaction Update

Release Date: 2026-04-24

QuickView v5.3.0 focuses on improving UI consistency, refining user interaction, and ensuring a clean system footprint.

🎨 Vectorized UI Icons

We have migrated the remaining UI icons to the GeekIcon vector engine.

• Improved Consistency: Icons are now rendered using Direct2D paths, ensuring they look the same across different Windows versions and DPI settings.
• Font Dependency Removed: The application no longer relies on specific icon fonts for its core interface.

🛠 Windows Integration & Cleanup

• Deep Uninstallation: Added a new --uninstall flag for comprehensive registry (HKCU) and application data cleanup.
• Improved Installer: The Inno Setup installer now automatically purges legacy .old files and the AppData folder upon removal, ensuring a zero-footprint uninstallation.
• WinGet Automation: Optimized the submission pipeline to use standard installers, resolving previous validation issues and improving accessibility via winget install QuickView.
• Default Photo Viewer: Enhanced support for Windows 11 "Default Apps" settings via full Capability registration.

🎥 Interaction & Animation

• Frame Counter (#167): Added a basic frame index display to the animation progress bar for GIF and WebP files.
• Hand Cursor Panning (#160): Added a hand cursor when dragging images that are larger than the window.
• Thumb Wheel Support (#156): Added support for vertical/horizontal mouse thumb wheels.
• Zoom Cycle: Refined the zoom hotkey/double-click behavior to cycle through common scaling modes.

🌈 HDR & Color (Experimental)

• Luminance Handling (#131): We have adjusted how peak luminance is detected on HDR monitors by prioritizing system-level reports. Note: This is an initial attempt to address "washed out" colors, and we are still evaluating its effectiveness across different hardware.

🤝 Acknowledgments

A special thank you to the users who helped test this release:

• @bananakid, @PYCHBI, @lrbin50, @1kari-s, @Battler624, and @toxieainc for their bug reports, technical insights, and for sharing HDR testing resources.

We appreciate your continued support in helping us refine QuickView.

Full Changelog: v5.2.3...v5.3.0

QuickView v5.2.3

QuickView v5.2.3 - Emergency Stability Fix

Release Date: 2026-04-17

QuickView v5.2.3 is an emergency maintenance release focusing on performance reliability, security software compatibility, and Titan engine stability.

🛡️ Security & Compatibility (#149)

We have completely refactored our self-registration and update-checking mechanism to eliminate false positives in Microsoft Defender and other AV software.

• Idempotent Registration: QuickView now uses an O(1) INI-based check to verify registration status at startup, bypassing redundant registry operations.
• Idle Maintenance: Heavy registry updates are now deferred to a background task that only triggers when the system is truly idle.

⚡ Performance Optimization (#145)

• Animation Fast-Scan: Restored high-performance static viewing for PNG, GIF, and JXL by implementing a "magic-byte" pre-scanner that identifies static files before they enter the animation engine, avoiding unnecessary CPU overhead.
• Unified Decoding Pipeline: Consolidated various decoding paths into a robust LoadBufferUnified model, improving memory management for massive images.

🚀 Titan Engine Stability

• Context Menu Fix: Resolved a regression where the context menu could appear empty when prefetching massive images in Titan mode.
• MMF Animation Probe: Fixed an issue where large animated WebP files (MMF-based) would occasionally fail to play correctly.
• Idle-Based Prefetch Trigger: Replaced fixed startup timers with a robust 500ms continuous idle detection system, ensuring prefetch tasks don't compete with the initial image load.

🛠 Other Fixes

• Startup Resilience: Fixed a rare race condition and deadlock when opening massive files as the very first action after installation.
• HDR Accuracy: Improved peak luminance detection and tone mapping for monitors with incomplete WinRT Advanced Color reporting.

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v5.2.1

QuickView v5.2.1 - The Animation & Personalization Update

Release Date: 2026-04-15

QuickView v5.2.1 focus on modern motion formats and deep visual personalization, delivering our most refined "Geek Glass" experience yet.

🎬 Full Animation Support

QuickView now provides a high-performance viewing experience for modern and classic animation formats.

• Universal Formats: Full hardware-accelerated support for .gif, .webp, .apng, and .avifs.
• Frame Inspector: Pause animations and use Alt + Arrow Keys to step through frames with precision.

🎨 Deep Personalization

We've overhauled the theme engine to give you absolute control over your environment.

• Theme Modes: Choose between Dark, Light, or Automatic (system-synced) UI modes.
• Accent Customization: Pick custom accent colors and text colors to match your workflow.
• Ambient Dimmer: A configurable overlay that dims the background when interacting with menus or galleries to focus the eye.

🛡️ Professional Animation Debugger

Designed for artists and performance enthusiasts.

• Dirty Rect Indicator: Toggle a dedicated debug button in animation mode to visualize the exact pixel regions currently being updated on the GPU. Enable in Settings > Visuals > Professional Tools.

🛠 Reliability & UX Enhancements

• HDR Color Fix (#131): Optimized the linear rendering path to ensure HDR images no longer appear "washed out" on HDR-enabled displays.
• JXL Stability (#137): Resolved a regression in the JPEG XL decoder causing memory leakage during rapid page-turning.
• Sharp Initial Scaling (#127): Fixed a bug where 1080p images could appear slightly blurry on native 1080p monitors.
• Right-Click Drag Zoom (#132, #129): Introduced professional vertical drag zooming by holding the Right Mouse Button.
• Natural Metadata: Improved EXIF parsing performance and accuracy for modern camera brands.

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QuickView v5.0.0

QuickView v5.0.0 - The Advanced Color & Architecture Update

Release Date: 2026-04-05

Welcome to the most significant update in QuickView's history. Version 5.0.0 introduces a modernized core architecture and professional-grade color tools, moving Beyond SDR.

🚀 Google Highway & ARM64 Support

We've re-engineered our SIMD acceleration using Google Highway.

• Broader Hardware Support: Optimized performance for all CPUs (SSE4, AVX2, AVX-512, NEON).
• Native ARM64: QuickView now runs natively on Windows on ARM with full hardware acceleration.

🌈 Professional HDR Pipeline

QuickView now features a full 32-bit float scRGB linear rendering pipeline.

• Ultra HDR (Gain Map): Native GPU-accelerated composition for Google Ultra HDR and Samsung Gain Maps.
• Tone Mapping: Professional HDR-to-SDR roll-off mapping ensures stunning results even on standard displays.
• HDR Pro Panel: Real-time peak luminance estimation and detailed structural metadata for JXL, AVIF, EXR, and HEIC.

🎨 GPU-Driven CMS & Soft Proofing

Accurate color reproduction is now at the heart of QuickView.

• Modern CMS: Hardware-accelerated ICC profile extraction and application via Direct2D dual-node pipeline.
• Soft Proofing: Professional simulation of output profiles (e.g., CMYK, Printer profiles) directly in the viewport.
• V4 Support: Full compatibility with the latest ICC v4 and Compact ICC profiles.

🧭 Advanced Navigation (#118)

• Natural Sorting: Browsing order now matches Windows Explorer perfectly.
• Circular Loops: Enhanced cross-folder navigation with independent toggle controls.
• Interactive Tooltips: Complex settings now feature detailed descriptions on hover.

🛠 Reliability Improvements

• Resolved HeavyLanePool deadlock during rapid navigation (#85).
• Fixed window resizing and info panel constraints (#88, #89).
• Fixed AVIF HDR gain map decoding crash (#124).
• Fixed manual rotation coordinate drift on zoomed images (#91).

🤝 Acknowledgments

Special thanks to @Dimmitrius for optimization of the Russian translation, and our community for continuous feedback.

QuickView v4.2.5 - Comparison & Precision Master

QuickView v4.2.5 - Comparison & Precision Master
Release Date: 2026-03-22

This update introduces our highly anticipated Compare Mode, significant UI refinements, and specialized Pixel Art support. We've focused on making QuickView the most precise tool for image inspection.

🔍 Compare Mode (Visual Benchmarking)
Side-by-Side Analysis: Compare two images with synchronized zoom/pan and rotation.
Precision HUD: Real-time RGB envelope histograms, dual-curve analysis, and quality metrics (Entropy/Sharpness).
Interactive UI: Smart divider with transparency and a dedicated 'C' shortcut to toggle Comparison modes.
🎨 Rendering & Visuals
Smart Interpolation: New automated interpolation modes with specialized Pixel Art compatibility for crisp scaling.
Zoom Integrity: Added visual edge indicators for better viewport orientation and refined scaling anchors.
SIMD JXL: Faster JPEG-XL decoding leveraging SIMD-optimized pixel swizzling paths.
⚙️ Window & Interaction
Advanced Window Locking: Highly customizable window lock behaviors with dedicated settings for different workflows.
Workflow Shortcuts: Native support for Home/End (Jump to First/Last) and PgUp/PgDn (Page Prev/Next).
Gallery Context: Right-click any gallery thumbnail to instantly enter Compare Mode or open in a new window.
🤝 Acknowledgments
@hortiSquash for providing critical testing assistance and bug reports throughout the development of this major update.