μPhotos

μPhotos is an open source GPU-accelerated cross platform immersive photo viewer and organizer. It is written in C# and uses the Skia 2D graphic library for drawing.

Features

μPhotos was inspired by the Picasa photo viewer. I could not find some of the Picasa features in other picture viewers, so I decided to write my own. Here is a list of features, that make μPhotos special:

  • Performance: μPhotos is very fast. My library has around 100k photos from the last 20 years.
    • μPhotos can scroll through 100k thumbnails in a second with 60fps.
    • Full screen photos are loaded instantly, so skipping 20 images per second with arrow keys is possible.
    • Short application startup time. It is around 1 second on my laptop.
  • Immersiveness: μPhotos blends out all the windows, buttons and borders to concentrate on the photos.
  • Cloudless: no need to upload the pictures into a cloud.
  • Filters: filter your photo library by year, folder name, country, nearest city or camera model. Useful when trying to find a particular photo.
  • Synchronization: sync the high resolution thumbnails to your mobile device via Wi-Fi. Required storage space is about 2% of what is required for the full size photos (20GB instead of 1TB in my case). The quality is sufficient to view full screen pictures on a mobile device. Full size images can be viewed when you are in Wi-Fi range. The connection is encrypted using the AES GCM algorithm.
  • Supported image formats: .jpg, .jpeg, .gif, .webp, .heic, .png, .bmp. The desktop version also supports .tif, .tiff, .svg.

In development

μPhotos is in development. The source code is available on Github.

Downloads

  • μPhotos Desktop: the fully open sourced viewer for Windows and Linux:
    • Windows installer (x64):
    • Windows portable (x64):
    • Linux (x64) tar.gz:
    • Linux (x64) AppImage:
  • μPhotos Desktop with a Photo Server: this version contains a network server to syncronize thumbnails with your android device (contains closed source code):
    • Windows installer (x64):
    • Windows portable (x64):
    • Linux (x64) tar.gz:
    • Linux (x64) AppImage:
  • μPhotos for Android: μPhotos on Play Store

System requirements

  • Windows 10, 11, most modern Linux distributions (more info) and Android 12+ are supported
  • At least 4GB of RAM
  • Graphics chip with OpenGL 3.3 support:
    • Nvidia GeForce 400 series and newer
    • AMD Radeon HD 5000 Series and newer
    • Intel HD Graphics in Intel Ivy Bridge (3XXX) processors and newer

Feedback

Any feedback is appreciated.

Changelog

Version 0.2.9.232 - 03.04.2025

  • feature: AppImage format for linux
  • feature: linux: create start menu entry item in settings to automatically create a .desktop file
  • fix: bugfixes for linux

Version 0.2.8.226 - 25.02.2025

  • feature: syncronize favorites via network
  • feature: import favorites from picasa.ini
  • fix: fixed some concurrency issues

Version 0.2.6.223 - 10.01.2025

  • fix: update to .NET 9.0
  • feature: μPhotos has been open sourced
  • feature: multiselection in thumbnail view (right click on desktop, tap and hold on android)

Version 0.2.4.211 - 22.02.2024

  • fix: update to .NET 8.0
  • fix: fixed bugs

Version 0.2.2.208 - 06.07.2023

  • fix: fixed bugs

Version 0.2.1.206 - 27.06.2023

  • fix: fixed bugs

Version 0.2.0.204 - 15.06.2023

  • feature: two way synchronization: upload new photos from the mobile device to the pc
  • feature: improved filters: recently used filters will be saved, active filters overview menu
  • fix: fixed several bugs

Version 0.1.12.187 - 12.04.2023

  • fix: fixed bugs (mostly android)

Version 0.1.11.185 - 10.04.2023

  • feature: signed Windows installer
  • fix: fixed bugs

Version 0.1.10.180 - 05.04.2023

  • feature: extract GPS position information from images (image library will be reindexed on first start)
  • feature: filter by country and nearest city
  • feature: show image location on the map
  • feature: basic image editing (crop)
  • fix: fixed several bugs

Version 0.1.9.165 - 27.02.2023

  • feature: reduced startup time by about 30%

Version 0.1.8.162 - 25.02.2023

  • feature: support for display scaling on Windows
  • fix: minor bugs fixed

Version 0.1.7.160 - 23.02.2023

  • fix: fixed "Dll was not found" error message on windows machines without installed VC runtime
  • fix: fixed startup crash on mac

Version 0.1.6.159 - 19.02.2023

  • feature: polished up the UI, menu and icons
  • feature: favorites
  • feature: rotate image button

Version 0.1.5.147 - 12.02.2023

  • feature: show error message in a notepad window, if OpenGL window creation fails
  • fix: fixed several minor bugs

Version 0.1.4.143 - 11.02.2023

  • feature: memory usage optimization
  • feature: support for large images (50MP+)
  • feature: imporved error handling
  • feature: exclude (folder, year, ...) filters
  • feature: added HEIC, TIF and SVG support via ImageMagick
  • fix: fixed 'out of memory' crashes

Version 0.1.3.129 - 28.01.2023

  • feature: initial public release