Mac has a feature-packed photo viewer called Preview App. But you will agree when you run into certain limitations, quirks, and hindrances that may prod you to search for an alternative photo viewer. So if you are looking for better options, you came to the right spot. Here, I have curated the list of best image viewer apps for Mac which are mostly free and offer snappy performance, along with the best Mac apps. So without further delay, let’s get started.
List of Top Photo Viewer Apps for Mac
Are you looking for a more extensive image viewer app for your Mac? Here’s our list.
1. Phiewer
The Phiewer is the best image viewer app for Mac, hands down. You are absolutely going to love this app as it lets you easily and quickly view your images, videos, and even audio files. Unlike the default app, the Phiewer is extremely snappy and loads the image quickly. Packed with a highly responsive user interface, the Phiewer offers a smooth transition and is fluid while switching between different viewports.
Besides the performance, it supports different image, video, and audio formats and has quick controls and shortcuts, such as Play/Pause, rotating, browsing, and much more. You can also toggle the full screen for definite viewing.
Among all this, you can toggle the info panel to see detailed information about a file like EXIF. Moreover, the app gives you Slideshow with the ability to tweak the settings, such as slideshow speed, transition effect, background music, etc. The best part of this app is it receives frequent updates.
2. Apollo One – Photo Video Viewer
Apollo One is quite a popular image viewer on macOS. What makes Apollo One stand out from other image viewers is that its UI is localized in 11 languages. It is super fast and efficient and never stutters or lags while opening multiple images at once, watching Slideshow, or editing images. Coming to the interface, it has a standard look with a context menu for the features that you use frequently.
Besides this, the app displays camera AF points that help you focus on some things, such as detecting faces. Moreover, unlike the Phiewer, you also get controls for altering different settings as needed and have a set of EXIF tools for changing, shifting creation dates, synchronizing XMP metadata, and more.
Moreover, among all other features, the Apollo One offers the easiest and fastest image browsing experience.
3. Xee³
If you are looking for the closest alternative to a preview app on your Mac, then Xee³ is the best option to go with. It’s fast & reliable and consumes less memory than the other photo viewer in this list, which is good considering how crucial it could be if you have a machine with less memory. Besides this, the app supports a large number of image formats, including PCX, Maya, IFF, and Amiga IFF-ILBM. It also includes basic aspects like Full-screen, copy-move, rename, delete, etc.
Furthermore, it supports the Mac with a touch bar, so you can use it to perform certain operations. Talking about other features of Xee³ – apart from EXIF data of JPEG files, it also shows additional metadata like XMP or IPTC to offer more in-depth information about your image.
4. Lyn
Lyn is a simple and lightweight photo viewer for Mac. It includes an extremely pleasant interface with a stable performance. Image loading is quicker, and I won’t find any lag issues. Further, the app has different image editing aspects such as brightness, color temperature, contrast, highlights, color tones, and more.
In addition, the sharing features within the interface let you easily share files across channels like Dropbox, Flicks, and Smug Mug. Moreover, Lyn also provides EXIF data to give extensive information for your image. Similar to some other image viewers in the list, Lyn receives frequent updates.
Moreover, the app also provides a full-screen and Slideshow with the ability to control its transition speed, animation, and background music.
So to conclude, if you are looking for a simple yet stable image viewer for your Mac, Lyn is an excellent app.
5. qView
qView is an open-source image viewer for Mac, which means besides using the app as it is, you can modify and make changes as per your requirements if you know how to. In addition to that, you also get a myriad of configurable preferences to make the app entirely yours.
From the beginning, the qView is designed to be visually minimal; the interface only includes your image and title bar. And despite its minimal interface, it offers all the basic operations, such as rotating, mirroring, GIF control, and multi-thread preloading.
Also, it supports all common image formats, including GIF, BMP, jpg, png, tiff, and webp. And the best part is that you can get all these at no price. Yes, qView is a free image viewer app for Mac.
6. Image One
The Image One is lighter, faster, and smoother photo viewer software you can use on your Mac. Image viewing takes nothing more, just double-click, and it will respond to you in no time, and the best part is it lets you organize your images, videos, and audio in one place flawlessly.
In addition to that, it offers full-screen slideshows to browse smartly through large libraries on your Mac with just a few combinations of clicks.
Unlike the other image viewer in this list, you can view EXIF information to understand your image’s different properties deeply. You can edit the image by altering some of the settings like brightness, exposure, contrast, sharpness, etc. All together makes it one of the best free Mac image viewer apps.
7. XnViewMP
The XnViewMP is a one-stop solution for image operations. The software has a clean UI, letting you easily browse and organize your images. XnViewMP provides different views, such as thumbnail, full-screen, and filmstrip. Plus, it provides the Slideshow and image comparison, among other options, to deliver a better viewing experience.
What’s more, the software lets you view EXIF data for your images and allows image operations such as resize, rotate, crop, brightness, contrast, color temperature tweaking, and more. And the best of this software is that it supports 500 different image formats. What else do you need?
8. Picturama
Picturama is a Mac image viewer that does all things. It supports various image formats, such as JPG, PNG, TIF, Webp, HEIF, and HEIC. It lets you browse the image with some basic separation by date. Moreover, there are some basic features like rotate, tilt, and crop.
Besides all of this, you can export the image in JPG, PNG, or Webp. It’s the best image viewer for those who need the app for basic tasks and is free to download.
Final Thought!
While the Preview app is on to go, many people have different needs. So if you are looking for a third-party image viewer app for Mac, you would definitely get the suitable option from the list. If yes, do let us know your pick in the comment box.
Jaysukh Patel is the founder of howtoisolve. Also self Professional Developer, Techno lover mainly for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch and iOS, Jaysukh is one of responsible person in his family. Contact On: jaysukh.pharma@gmail.com [OR] admin@howtoisolve.com
