PhotoQt v4.7

Published: 29th of November, 2024

After a short break due to a big move across continents, PhotoQt is back with a new release full of exciting additions, many quality of life improvements, and also some bug fixes.

Here are some of the highlights coming with release:

Accent colors: PhotoQt already supported selecting an accent color from a list, but now it is possible to choose any color** as accent color. It is recommended to stick to rather black or white colors to make the interface stand out less, but if you like your computer to be bright and colorful, hey, go wild.
Base directory for thumbnail cache: PhotoQt follows the freedesktop.org specification regarding thumbnail caching. However, if you prefer the thumbnails to be stored in a different location, then you can now choose a custom base directory. The thumbnails will still be sorted in different subfolders according to their size.
Up until v4.6, the right edge of PhotoQt was fixed to be the main menu. This can now be changed, either to a different action or it can be disabled altogether. Thus, in case the main menu is removed, the main context menu was regrouped with a new group added that allows for some basic management of PhotoQt (settings manager, opening files, etc.).
Many images have embedded color profiles that PhotoQt can detect and apply automatically. If such an application fails, an infinite "busy" indicator could be shown but no image of any sort. PhotoQt does some more rigorous error checking for applying color profiles now to make sure it actually works. If the application of a color profile fails repeatedly then it will automatically turn off that feature, but it can always be enabled again in the settings.
Screen pixel density: More and more screens come with a higher pixel density with the desktop shown at some scale. Before, the main image would be scaled along with the interface, artificially making them appear to be larger than they actually are. PhotoQt now respects the pixel density of your screen and adjusts the image accordingly to be the proper size. If you prefer the old behavior, you can switch back to that in the settings manager ("Image view" tab in the "Image size" section).
If you ever loaded a video in PhotoQt, you might have noticed a stutter in the video shortly after it started playing. This was due to a bug in the minimap which was being set up in the background (both for the video and any other file that was preloaded in the background). The minimap now makes use of the thumbnail image (as it should have in the first place) no longer resulting in a short freeze of the interface (hence the stutter).

These are nothing but some of the highlights. There have been a range of smaller improvements and bug fixes, including:

Zooming an image in absolute percentage points instead of relative
Escape key now properly only closing menus
Temporary storage devices being hidden in the file browser
Copying an image from an archive/document to clipboard only copies what is displayed
Better/Correct way of handling file URIs
No longer hide the mouse cursor in the map explorer
Fix showing the pin for a specific location in the map explorer
The bread crumbs no longer pass a right click to the background
The bookmarks header is now always visible in file browser
Properly switch between name and natural name sorting without restarting
Proper setup of images during slideshow with some effects
Maximized/Normal state of window is now remembered properly (not on Wayland)
On Window the right icons in the file browser are loaded

Additionally, there have been some improvements with some of the provided packages:

Video playback in the Flatpak package now makes advantage of proper ffmpeg for smooth playback
The Appimage now has a much wider feature support than before
The uninstaller on Windows now completes within seconds instead of minutes
A new snap package is available.

All in all, there should be plenty of exciting things in this release for everybody. You can find a more complete and compact overview of all this 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