nsxiv is a minimalist X11 image viewer written in C. It began as a fork of the now-unmaintained sxiv and is designed to remain a mostly drop-in replacement while adding sensible extra functionality.
The project also emphasizes customisation, letting users tailor behaviour through configuration, Xresources, and helper scripts.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Supports core image viewing operations including zooming, panning, and rotating images.
- Includes basic support for animated and multi-frame image formats.
- Offers a thumbnail mode with a grid of selectable previews for browsing image collections.
- Can cache thumbnails for faster reloading of previously viewed images.
- Automatically refreshes images when the underlying files change.
- Allows custom keyboard and mouse mappings through
config.h, along with scriptable actions viakey-handler. - Provides configurable status bar image information and a customisable window title.
Website: codeberg.org/nsxiv/nsxiv
Support:
Developer: nsxiv contributors
License: GNU General Public License v2.0

nsxiv is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
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Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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