PhotoQt v4.3

Published: 29th of February, 2024

The all new version 4.3 of PhotoQt is available now. The focus of this release is on quality improvement and bug fixes, but it also brings a few new features nonetheless. Thank you to everybody who provided feedback!

Some of the major changes in this new release

Ability to detect QR and bar codes in images. Accessible through the context menu and by shortcut, PhotoQt will look for any QR and bar code it can find in the image, highlights the region, and provides buttons to copy the encoded text to the clipboard. If the text is an URL, it also offers a button to open that URL in your default browser.
Animation for mirroring images/videos. Up to now, mirroring an image would apply the effect immediately. Now, PhotoQt animates this process by a flipping animation. The old behavior can always be restored in the settings.
Improved video navigation. A new shortcut has been added to jump 5 seconds forwards/backwards in a video, with a default shortcut of Alt+Left/Right. There is also an optional feature to perform this action with the normal arrow keys whenever a video is loaded, regardless of what shortcut action they are connected to.
Improved layout of settings manager. The selection of categories and their subcategories has been streamlined and made easier to navigate. At the same time they also take up less space on the screen leaving more space available for the settings themselves.
Fixed handling of network paths on Windows. PhotoQt is now (again) able to navigate to Windows networks paths as if they are normal folders. In addition, the path in the file dialog shows a special network icon including the name of the network device.

Some other notable additions/improvements

Motion/Live photos respect the play/pause animation shortcut.
Add some visual feedback to clarify some quick actions (e.g., quick starting a slideshow).
Touch-and-hold on a touchscreen opens the context menu.
Clicking a value in the metadata copies that value to the clipboard.

Some other bug fixes

As much as I try to avoid this, no piece of code is perfect. There have been a few bugs and quirks that have been found in PhotoQt (shout out to everybody who reported one or more) that have now been fixed:

Links/Shortcuts to files/folders are now handled properly on all platforms.
Motion/Live photos are shown every time an image is (re-)loaded.
Motion/Live photos respect the orientation information stored in the metadata.
No more duplicate down array at the end of path shown in file dialog.
Loading paths with CJK characters on Windows no longer crash the application if the language for non-Unicode programs was set to a CJK language.
The file dialog no longer pops up randomly when the application window is resized to a small size.

These are just some of the highlights. You can find a more complete list of everything that has changed in this release in the Changelog.

Get involved

I love to hear from people using PhotoQt. In order to get in touch with me for feedback/support/etc., there are a few different ways you can do so:

You can always send me an email: (you need to enable javascript to see the email address)
Feel free to open an issue over in the GitLab repository.

If you want to help PhotoQt, there are a few ways you can get involved:

Join the translation team over on Crowdin. If your language is missing you can simply request it directly on Crowdin or send me an email and I can add it to the project.
Give feedback of what you like/don't like, or what you think is missing from PhotoQt. To give feedback, send me an email or open an issue on GitLab.

If you are considering supporting PhotoQt by donation, please consider donating to the humanitarian relief in Ukraine instead, for example to the Ukrainian Red Cross.

Enjoy PhotoQt,

Lukas