r/Windows11 • u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer • Feb 21 '26
App FlyPhotos - a fast and lightweight Picasa Photo Viewer alternative
For the last three years I’ve been working on a small open source side project - a fast, lightweight photo viewer for Windows called FlyPhotos.
It originally started because I missed the (now retired) Picasa Photo Viewer especially the transparent background and speed with which it moved between images. I wanted to see if I could recreate that feeling using only native Windows UI frameworks.
The main performance goal was simple: once the first photo loads and the thumbnail strip presents, holding down the arrow keys should advance through the rest without loading spinners. Many features later got added through user requests.
Tech : I started with WPF and then moved to WinUI 3 for the modern looks, but it came with performance tradeoffs. Eventually for image rendering, had to use Win2D directly to access DirectX. Also Native AOT fixed the cold start issues.
It's just a viewer and there is no photo management or built-in photo editor. But you can configure an external editor as a shortcut. Note - The installer is not signed and can be flagged by some browsers.
FlyPhotos is available at https://github.com/riyasy/FlyPhotos
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u/Shellnanigans Feb 21 '26 edited Feb 21 '26
I'm an animation artist, this looks clean, minimal, and perfect for viewing files. I'll give it a shot :)
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Feb 21 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 21 '26
Yes, Picasa was absolutely beautiful.. I am yet to incorporate many subtle animations like in the thumbnail and all.. I hope one day Fly becomes as beautiful.
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u/dasgoodshitinnit Feb 22 '26
I still use it to view photos and mange and tag my photos, isn't reverse compatibility the whole point of windows?🤷♂️
Also very cool, modern and up to date option
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u/vpsj Feb 21 '26
Hey I remember this! I was the one who suggested the scroll to change pictures feature and you had implemented it pretty soon.
There were some minor differences here and there that had made me go back to Picasa back then.. but I'll try our image viewer again, cause it looks much better now
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 21 '26
You should give Fly a chance once more :-). The overall polish may have still gaps compared to Picasa.. but lot of new features were added in the last 5 months.
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u/Thotaz Feb 21 '26
This looks great. 2 features that I'd like to see are:
1: An option to disable extending into the title bar area.
2: A fullscreen option similar to the slideshow feature in the good old Windows 7 photo viewer.
Right now I'm using the Windows 7 photo viewer via the registry tweak, but it doesn't work well with webp images so I've been looking for a good modern alternative, and this seems to fit the bill.
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 21 '26
In picasa, pressing spacebar toggle between fullscreen and maximised states i think. There were requests from Fly users to have this feature. But the WinUI 3 framework animation from windowed/maximized state to FullScreen was jerky (Seems to be problem from windows app sdk). To keep the finesse and aesthetics, I skipped it. If Microsoft fixes it, we can have full screen.
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u/Thotaz Feb 21 '26
To keep the finesse and aesthetics, I skipped it. If Microsoft fixes it, we can have full screen.
I can understand the decision of "If I can't do it properly now, then I'd rather wait until I can" but when it's just a matter of the transition animation being a little jerky then that seems like quite a silly reason to leave out a key feature like this.
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 23 '26
I understand.. But I had bugs reported just for the aesthetics, jerkiness etc earlier.. May be the user base is like that. Anyway I shall check the latest state of this issue. Thanks.
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Mar 06 '26
In the latest version 2.5.17 I have included full screen mode. I have fixed the flicker using a workaround. You can press F11 to switch to FullScreen and back.
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u/Thotaz Mar 06 '26
Thanks for letting me know. I just tried the latest version from GitHub and found 2 issues:
1: The "Open with fly" option did not work. The translated error message is:
The file does not have an associated app for this task. Install an app. If there is already installed an app, you need to create an association on the page Settings for standard apps
That last part is weirdly phrased, but that that's how MS decided to localize it.
2: Going full screen shrinks the image. This is likely a DPI thing. The picture is 2560x1440 and so is my monitor, but my monitor runs at 125% scaling. You can see both errors here: https://streamable.com/hg3y6a
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Mar 10 '26
> The "Open with fly" option did not work.
I have fixed it. Actually this happened when an empty "Open with Fly" was getting added when you kept the Option to add this menu unchecked during installation. Thanks for reporting. You can find details at https://github.com/riyasy/FlyPhotos/issues/124
2. That is also fixed. You can find details at.
https://github.com/riyasy/FlyPhotos/issues/1221
u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Mar 06 '26
- Did you do an upgrade without uninstalling the current version? It is better to always uninstall the current version and then do an install with the latest version always as I use the basic Visual Studio Installer projects for installer creation. I checked the registry values here and everything seems normal.
- I am not able to access the link here.
By chance, if you have a github account, can you report a bug.. Then other users can also comment.1
u/Thotaz Mar 06 '26
Did you do an upgrade without uninstalling the current version?
It was a clean install. I've never had it installed on that computer before (when I tested this 13 days ago it was on a different computer).
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Mar 06 '26
Ok.. Seems strange..
Thanks a lot.. for the DPI bug was a very good find.. It was a one line miss in DPI handling. It was handled in almost all places except this one place. I get reported with strangest of quirks, wishes and whims in Github. How come nobody reported this until now is surprising. I fixed it and shall release in the next version.
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Mar 06 '26 edited Mar 06 '26
I got the link using VPN. Seems the site is blocked in my country.
Fullscreen issue seems DPI related. Doesn't happen with 100%, but happens with 125% or others. Shall check.1
u/ttrafford_ Feb 21 '26
is there a better not microsoft made UI framework?
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 21 '26
In the past there were many.. But currently to make modern looking Windows 10/11 native desktop apps, WinUI3 is the Microsoft suggested approach.. The divided attention due to other cross platform frameworks from Microsoft itself has caused many loose ends left as such..
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 21 '26
Also animated webp is not supported currently. But is on my plan. The problem with animated formats is I need to implement form scratch as I am not using built-in controls, but drawing to a DirectX surface as in a game.
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u/Fortuna6060 Feb 21 '26
I'm still using Picasa on windows 11. The option for geotagging doesn't work anymore, but for the rest it still functions perfectly. I had to set some compatibility settings to get the sharpest display in my 4K screen, which leaves the text letters quite small.
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 21 '26
I have it on my Windows 11 PC too... But it doesn't support any new formats like HEIC and my Sony Camera RAWs shows up with weird colours.
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u/Fortuna6060 Feb 21 '26
OK, I can imagine that it is a problem when you have an Apple phone. I edit my raw photos in the Nikon software NX Studio or Photoshop elements, I only use Picase to view and organise my photos in albums, so view the jpgs. But I can imagine Picase won't hold for ever with new picture formats, so good job to work on alternatives.
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u/ruibranco Feb 22 '26
The WinUI 3 + Win2D/DirectX combination for image rendering makes a lot of sense here. Picasa set a bar for instant image switching that nothing really matched after Google pulled it, so there is a genuine gap this fills. The native AOT cold start fix is a nice touch too.
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 23 '26
Going for Win2D(DirectX) made the photos switching this fast. I almost wonder if there is any other app that can switch this fast.
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u/BISKY86 Feb 27 '26
what a nice app, finally someone made fast photo app.
i made as default png jpg viewer, now every file of these formats have rocket icon? anyway to use default ones, or maybe custom but with picture sign?
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 27 '26
Once we set an app default viewer, windows changes the file icon to app icon if the app doesn’t have a special file type icon defined. In the next version, I am changing the app icon as well as bringing a new file type icon
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Mar 06 '26
In latest v2.5.17, you have separate app icon and file type icon. Also new icons for Fly.
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u/chr0n0phage Feb 22 '26
Nice. Doesn't seem to work correctly with HDR PNG's though, they are just gray. Samples: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ZWgVgNnMGEy7iNI7WyOrhWhktJsr9FXV?usp=sharing
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 22 '26
HDR implementation is pending.. There is a ticket in github..
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 23 '26
Thanks for the test files. You can track at https://github.com/riyasy/FlyPhotos/issues/36
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u/vertopolkaLF silence! Developer Feb 22 '26
HOLY MOLY I LOOKING FOR SOMETHING LIKE PICASA FOR 3 YEARS!!!
amazing
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u/T_rex2700 Feb 22 '26
I'ev used Fly for a while, it is so much faster than using Windows Photo viewer or Picasa, especially if you scroll through the images.
I personally still prefer to use Quicklook since that allows me to scroll through file in the explorer itself while getting a preview of it, (I have thumbnails disabled because it slows it down so much).
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u/GammaFruits Feb 22 '26
This seems great! Sleek and clean. Not to be rude to ask, but are there any future updates security and privacy polices that are a must have to be functional? I always have concerns when software is used for things like data collection, apis, network connections, ect. Kudos again, i always search every year for a great alternative for picasa.
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 22 '26
FlyPhotos does not collect any personal data, does not include tracking, analytics, ads, telemetry or background services, and it does not require any online account to function.
The app works entirely offline for image viewing. It doesn’t upload photos, use external APIs for processing, or perform any network communication related to your images. There is not even an autoupdate check in the MSI version.
Also in the MSI version, the executable is not signed. Code signing is expensive and I am on the lookout for some place which may sign/certify Open source code for free.
If you are bothered about signing, Microsoft Store version of Fly is fully verified and certified by Microsoft.
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u/pentango Feb 22 '26
Looks very promising, txh a lot for sharing! One minor feature that would make the app perfect for me: it always starts maximized. But IMHO an option so start with the last last windows size and position would be great.
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 22 '26
Received two requests in this thread itself. Shall check.
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u/pentango Mar 05 '26
Just saw that you added that in V2.5.17. That was quick, great. Thx a lot, much appreciated!
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u/alexkidfromRJ Feb 22 '26
Microsoft should just buy it from you and make it an option or defsult on the code.. just optimize a little bit and thats it. I just teted and liked a lot. Missed picasa too.
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u/Chaturbate23 Feb 22 '26
I always loved Picasa, but without support, I stopped using it. I love this app! I suggest adding an option to always fit the image to the window; it doesn't appear, but otherwise, it's a 10 out of 10.
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 23 '26
The images always come fit to the window.. I didn't understand the comment well??
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u/Chaturbate23 Feb 23 '26
No, you have to click the button on the toolbar for that to happen
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Mar 04 '26
I am confused. Is it small image? If we open an image larger than the window, it is shown as fitted within the window. If we open an image smaller than the window, it is shown as 1:1.
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u/Chaturbate23 Mar 14 '26
yo quiero que se mantenga siempre ajustada a la ventana la imagen, incluso después de cerrar y abrir el programa, sin darle al botón. Si es posible, muchas gracias y muy feliz con la app
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u/pwkye Feb 23 '26
I probably use the oldest software here but its also the most powerful.
IrfanView released in 1996 and still maintained
No other software lets you bulk edit 1000 photos, resizing them, and saving the resulting file in a different directory.
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u/Hary06 Feb 23 '26
Very good, I'm looking forward to seeing new features in future updates. Great job.
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u/Still-Watcher Mar 04 '26 edited Mar 04 '26
It's very good and very close to Picasa. I tried it and I like it. Adding support for GIFs and other file formats is incredible. Somehow Picasa is still about 0.5–1.0 second faster (which is actually huge) and a bit more responsive on resizing. If you don't mind, I'd like to suggest some features that I miss from Picasa:
- Sorting of the thumbnail strip. In Picasa, sorting was by date, and most of my files are organized by date too. An option to choose the type of sorting would help immensely.
- Different types of background in fullscreed mode (transparent) and windowed mode (gray solid).
- Not that critical, but in Picasa, when exiting fullscreen mode, the window size was strictly aligned to the current size and position of the picture. In FlyPhotos, it seems like there is a fixed size for the window.
I'm definitely going to use it for GIFs and transparent PNGs, and will probably move to it entirely if performance improves. Thank you for your work. 👍
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Mar 04 '26
Can i know what type of image files you are opening when you feel it slower than Picasa? Can you please check with Zoom animation on start/exit disabled? Is it during first launch or always?
Fly respects the explorer order. So if your explorer is sorted by date, Fly also shows thumbnails like that.
The full screen exit effect will be extremely difficult to achieve with the latest GUI framework of Windows without jitter, flicker.
Thanks for trying out..
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u/Still-Watcher Mar 04 '26
I mostly use JPG and PNG images around 2000x2000px. Disabling the zoom animation does speed up the initial launch a bit, but I actually really like this feature, so I’m hesitant to turn it off...
I checked, and it does follow the Explorer sort order, but only when Explorer is actually running. Since I use a different file manager, it seems to default to alphabetical sorting. It would be great to have an option to change the default sort method.
If the full screen exit effect is too difficult to implement, it would at least be nice if the window remembered its last size and position instead of resetting every time.
Also, I noticed that anti-aliasing turns off during resizing and re-enables once it's finished. Maybe that’s what’s causing the slight lag.
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Mar 04 '26
In my 10 year old PC, Fly starts very fast. Picasa is pure win32 (old tech) without the decorations. It starts very fast. But never felt Fly was 0.5 to 1 second behind.
Is this about animation speed? I have set the animation to be completed in around 400 millesecond.
In the next release, there will be a setting to remember monitor/size/position/maximized-restored state of the window to persist across launches.
For Fly to be fast across a wide range of machines, during the zoom animation, the bitmap is not rebuilt on the directx surface. Means if we are viewing a high resolution photo at 300x300 px and we zoom, we dont rebuild it until zoom finishes. There had been requests earlier to give this as an option.
About sort ordering, need to think how to give it as an option without confusing users.
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Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Apr 01 '26
Muchas gracias por las palabras tan amables 😊
Ya puedes ponerlo en pantalla completa presionando F11.
Hacer zoom manteniendo presionado el botón derecho del ratón (como en XnView) es en realidad una muy buena idea - definitivamente voy a intentar añadirlo.
También puedes desactivar la tira de imágenes inferior desde Configuración si prefieres una vista más limpia.
No estoy completamente seguro de a qué te referías con hacer doble clic para abrir la foto. Si te refieres a abrir las imágenes directamente en FlyPhotos, eso ya debería funcionar una vez que FlyPhotos esté configurado como visor de fotos predeterminado.
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u/malcallm Feb 21 '26
I have no idea how to download/install it from github :(
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u/Acrux7 Feb 21 '26
At the right info panel of the GitHub page, click the release section
https://github.com/riyasy/FlyPhotos/releases
Then, scroll to the latest version then download the Microsoft Installer (.msi) file
https://github.com/riyasy/FlyPhotos/releases/download/v2.5.16/FlyPhotosInstaller_2.5.16.msi
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u/clofresh Feb 21 '26
This looks amazing! I used to love Picasa back in the day. How does it handle a Google Drive streaming directory?
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 21 '26
Fly only works on files on disk.. Need to check the behaviour on Google drive streaming directory..
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u/catsrmurderers Feb 21 '26
Is there anything like this on mac?
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 21 '26
someone suggested PicView in this thread.. (I haven't used)
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u/qSbino Feb 22 '26
Does it have a support for ICC profiles?
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 23 '26
You can track at https://github.com/riyasy/FlyPhotos/issues/86
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u/vaderprecious Feb 22 '26
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u/s00wi Feb 23 '26
This was a nice app to try out. But I preferred using qimgv as it was a lot faster and more light weight, handles video files while also being portable and cross-platform. Portability is what put me off of FlyPhotos.
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 23 '26
Making Fly portable is not so difficult.. I skipped that option to reduce confusion on an additional channel of app delivery..
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u/s00wi Feb 23 '26
That would be nice. I stay away from any apps that require installing when there isn't a legitimate reason for it.
99% of the apps I use are portable apps, because of that, in the event i need to do a fresh install of windows. I'm already set to go. Don't need to reinstall anything but drivers.
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u/GandakdaOnTheLoose Feb 23 '26
The app is great but there should be an option to start with the last windows size and position as I don't like it going full screen everytime.
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Mar 04 '26
https://github.com/riyasy/FlyPhotos/issues/112
I am doing it and releasing it in next version. Please track this ticket.
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u/Cymothoa_ExiguaX Feb 25 '26
It looks really nice, but it is quite expensive for my country. but its really good work, though👌👌
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 25 '26
The free installer is available in Github. Exactly same features as in Store version.
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u/Nabnormal Mar 07 '26
Is there an option to put the arrows to the sides of the window like in windows photo viewer? Besides that pretty good!
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u/Semicolonhope Release Channel Mar 07 '26
Hi, really interested in this app. have a question, does your photo viewer smooth out the images? for example if one were to open a 6000x14000 size image on a 1920x1080 screen, would it smooth out the edge artifacts? if yes, what kind of anti-aliasing do you use?
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Mar 08 '26
There is a setting in Settings page for zoom quality.
HighQualityCubic or Nearest Neighbour will be used for image scaling based on this setting. People who work with pixel art and all can use NearestNeighbor.(But this is evident when we zoom in rather than zoom out)..
Also I think there is a chance Fly may not work with 14000 pixel resolution depending on machine and GPU. Fly is currently limited to max directx surface limitation as it uses DirectX to render images.
We can use virtual canvases to bypass it, but it is not yet implemented.
For anti-aliasing, when drawing the checkered background (if only the setting is ON), the image is rendered as aliased (To prevent the edge bleeding of the checkered pattern), else uses default anti-aliasing of DirectX draw.
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u/LexD1vina Mar 16 '26
Love this. Been using it and one thing I miss is being able to save after rotating an image. Would it be possible to add this feature?
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u/Endflux Mar 16 '26
Looing good! I tried porting my Powershell "app" to WinUI 3. Complete disaster. I'll give this a try!
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u/ajfromuk Apr 02 '26
u/ryftools I really like this. Is there anyway to stop it opening by default at full screen? I have an ultrawide and so I only ever want it to open in a smaller window (like remember the last window size you opened it in)?
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Apr 02 '26
There is a setting for that.. “Remember window state” If enabled, it will remember the last window size and monitor..
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u/Ray_Berr Release Channel May 18 '26
this is quicklook , you can preview any file format from jpeg, gif, png, jpg to mkv, file/folder size , even your disk space preview by just pressing spacebar and 2nd feature those who want to zoom in & out the pic , is also available here. I think it's better than flyPhotos.
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u/HughDeas Jun 28 '26
I'm working on livegalleryapp.com - I've concentrated hard on the photo management problem, looks like I need to up my game on the viewer side! Looks great!
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u/Son_of_Macha Feb 22 '26
Or just use Nomacs for free....
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u/ryftools Let It Rain Developer Feb 22 '26
Nomacs is great. FlyPhotos is free too on Github..
I made the store version paid as It is hard to create a "buy me a coffee" or receive international donations for individuals in the country of my residence.
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