An image viewer for viewing images really well and nothing more.

Features

LowKey Image Viewer is a fast and simple image and video viewer for macOS and Windows that supports .jpg, .png, .gif, .mp4, and .webm file types. Designed for a visually rich experience that puts the images first with no distractions. Supports easy navigation with Mouse and Scrollwheel or Trackpad modes. View entire folders in folder view with options for recursive image discovery, sorting, and file type filters.

Simple Low Clutter UI

No Wasted Space - Only your Images

Folder Based Navigation and A Better List View Experience

Support for the most common Animated and Video File Types (mp4, gif, webm)

No Subscriptions, No Auto Update, No Connecting to the Internet for Any Reason

Lowkey Image Viewer also does not create any aditional photo database, or connect to the internet. It uses your file system directly for images.

Options and Settings

Lowkey Image Viewer supports many customization options so you can set it up for the way you prefer to browse images.

Sort Order

File Filtering

Scaling Modes

Control Modes (Mouse or Trackpad Optimized)

Full Screen and Always on Top

See the help selection below for more information on changing settings. Is there a setting you'd like but don't see? Send me a feature request and I will add it if it makes sense.

How to Use Lowkey Image Viewer

Lowkey Image Viewer is designed to be as simple as possible, but it does have some important features that will help you get the most out your experience.

Opening an Image or Video

You can open an image by using your native file browser. Just select a supported image type and open it using LowKey Image Viewer, which should be added to the list of available programs automatically.

Window Controls

To close the program, or enter and exit fullscreen mode use the colored controls in the settings panel. Red to close, yellow for windowed mode, green for fullscreen. By default Lowkey Image Viewer opens in fullscreen mode.

Choosing a Control Mode

The control mode determines the method used to pan photos, and to flip through folders in the directory.

Mouse and ScrollWheel Mode

You flip through photos using the scroll wheel, and you pan photos by clicking, holding, and dragging.

Trackpad Mode

You flip through photos by clicking to the right side of the image or on the left side to flip backwards, and you pan photos by scrolling with your trackpad or Magic Mouse.

View all images in current directory

Move your mouse to the bottom right corner of the screen. A folder icon will appear, click on it to view all images in the current directory.

Include files in subfolders with Recursive Mode

Open the settings panel by moving your mouse to the bottom left corner of the screen. Click the settings gear icon to open settings. Click on the recursive option to toggle the inclusion of images in subdirectories. Recursive mode may take a while to load if there are over 50,000 images.

Jump into subfolder while in recursive mode

While in Detail View. Right click on an image while in Recursive mode and if it is not in the root directory, your active directory will be set to the directory containing the image.

Changing the active directory

Open the settings panel by moving your mouse to the bottom left corner of the screen. Click the settings gear icon to open settings. Click on the current folder name to display a file browser, change your path, and select new path.

Change the image scale

Open the settings panel by moving your mouse to the bottom left corner of the screen. Click the settings gear icon to open settings. Click on the current image scale to change image scaling method.

Hotkey: C

Change sort order

Open the settings panel by moving your mouse to the bottom left corner of the screen. Click the settings gear icon to open settings. Click on the current sort order to toggle sort method. Currently only supports last modified date, and alphabetical order.

Hotkey: S

Change file type filter

Open the settings panel by moving your mouse to the bottom left corner of the screen. Click the settings gear icon to open settings. Click on the current sort order to flip through the file type filtering method. Currently supports (All Files, Static Files, Gif Files, Video Files, and Motion Files).

Hotkey: A(For All) S(For Static Only) G(For Gif) V(For Videos) M(For Motion)

Save settings for next time

Control video files

Shuffle and Random Image

Press the X key to shuffle images. In detail mode you will be show a random image. In list view the list will not shuffle until you scroll for the first time after pushing X button.

Support and Satisfaction Guarantee

Still have a problem not answered here? Send me an email and I'm happy to help! There is also a seperate email for feature requests. All development of Lowkey Image Viewer is driven by feature requests from the community and updates are free forever.

Credits Thanks and Attribution

The following projects were used in the creation of Low Key Image Viewer. Thank you for making your work available for others to use.

Twemoji by Twitter via CC-BY4.0

Unsplash used for samples in demo videos.

Beeple used for samples in demo and tutorial videos.