Image Viewers

30 Best Free and Open Source Graphical Image Viewers

One of our favorite adages is “A picture is worth a thousand words”. It refers to the notion that a still image can convey a complex idea. Images can portray a lot of information quickly and more efficiently than text. They capture memories, and never let you forget something you want to remember, and refresh it in your memory.

Images are part of every day internet usage, and are particularly important for social media engagement. A good image viewer is an essential part of any operating system.

Linux offers a vast collection of open source small utilities that perform functions ranging from the obvious to the bizarre. It is the quality and selection of these tools that help Linux stand out as a productive environment. This is particularly true when it comes to image viewers. There are so many image viewers that are available for Linux that it can make selection difficult.

Here’s our verdict captured in a legendary LinuxLinks-style ratings chart. Only free and open source software is eligible for inclusion.

Ratings chart

Click the links in the table below to learn more about each image viewer.

Graphical Image Viewers
fehFast and light Imlib2-based image viewer
RegardsModern image viewer with OpenGL/OpenCL support
LoupeWritten with GTK 4, Libadwaita and Rust
PhotoQTGood looking, highly configurable, yet easy to use and fast
gThumbAdvanced image viewer and browser
GeeqieLightweight Gtk+ based image viewer
qimgvQt5 image viewer with video support
VookiLightweight viewer with fast image preview
GwenviewSimple image viewer for KDE
QuickViewerGraphic image viewer for comfortable browsing
nomacsHandles most image formats including RAW images
qViewImage viewer designed with minimalism and usability in mind
OculanteHardware-accelerated image viewer
GPicViewSimple and fast image viewer
Tacent ViewImage and texture viewer
Eye of GnomeFast and functional image viewer
vipsdispTiny GTK+ image viewer
Pineapple PicturesLightweight image viewer with Stay-on-Top window
ViewniorDesigned with usability in mind
sxivSimple X Image Viewer
PreviewQtPreview all kinds of files
pqivPowerful image viewer with minimal UI
RistrettoView and scroll through images
FotemaSimple photo gallery software
CoreImageLightweight image viewer; part of the C suite
swayimgImage viewer for Wayland
ParaParaImage viewer created with lightweight and high-speed operation
LXImage-QtLXQt image viewer and screenshot tool
ImageFan ReloadedTab-based image viewer
BeeRefSimple reference image viewer

Image viewers that display output direct in the terminal are explored in a separate roundup.

This article has been revamped in line with our recent announcement.

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James Smith
James Smith
3 years ago

Regards is hard to get running on Debian, just get lots of crashes.

DBZgi
DBZgi
3 years ago

How is Regards so high on this list?! Its a slug to use, painfully slow performance compared to something as quick and fully featured such as XnView MP (closed source but free to use, no ads) or digiKam. Both quicker and more stable than Regards on Arch, Debian, and Ubuntu.

Linuxer
Linuxer
1 year ago

You might have a look PLIO Image Viewer, especially if you want to change the order of the images (sort temporarily while viewing, or persistently by bulk-renaming the files) …

Rangjut
Rangjut
17 days ago

Can’t you reduce the candidates to a few truly “better” ones?
A list of 30 is pretty useless.

waka
waka
15 days ago
Reply to  Rangjut

On the contrary, this list is very helpful. Had to make a fresh install of my system, and forgot the name of the image viewer I was using. Didn’t find it in the repository, but found it here: qimgv.