pViewer 2.2.0

New

• Remove background (Effects › Remove background): the subject stays and the background becomes transparent. To keep it, save as PNG or WebP (a toast reminds you when the file is a JPEG or BMP).
• It runs on your PC with the ISNet network through ONNX Runtime, about 2 seconds for a photo. No picture leaves the PC.
• The model (170 MB) is downloaded once, the first time you use it and only after asking; its size and checksum are verified. It is kept in %LocalAppData%\pViewer and removed by the uninstaller.
• Works best with a clear subject (people, animals, objects). Undo and redo work as for every edit; a key can be assigned in Settings › Keyboard shortcuts.

The installers are about 4 MB larger.

See CHANGELOG.md for the full history.

Downloads

• pViewer-Setup-2.2.0-Full.exe: includes the .NET runtime, works everywhere.
• pViewer-Setup-2.2.0-Light.exe: needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).

Both install per user without administrator rights and upgrade earlier 2.x versions in place; settings are kept. pViewer 2.0.7 and later offer this update automatically.

pViewer 2.1.1

Fixed

• Closing pViewer right after it opened an image showed "An unexpected error occurred". The image menu, built once the window is idle, was being built after the window had closed. Errors that happen while pViewer is ending are no longer shown at all.

See CHANGELOG.md for the full history.

Downloads

• pViewer-Setup-2.1.1-Full.exe: includes the .NET runtime, works everywhere.
• pViewer-Setup-2.1.1-Light.exe: needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).

Both install per user without administrator rights and upgrade earlier 2.x versions in place; settings are kept. pViewer 2.0.7 and later offer this update automatically.

pViewer 2.1.0

Images open about three times faster, and ImageSharp is replaced.

New

• Ready in the background: after the first use, one hidden pViewer waits, already started, for the next image you open and shows it at once: about 0.2 s instead of 0.7 s from the double-click to the picture (measured on one PC). It stays after the window is closed, keeps about 20 MB of RAM while it waits and does nothing else. Each window is still its own process.
• On by default for a pViewer installed with the setup; Settings › Startup turns it off. Setup, updates and uninstall stop it by themselves.

Changed

• ImageSharp is gone. Its 3.1 line no longer gets security fixes (five advisories in October 2026 are fixed only in the version that needs a license key). Its work is now done by Skia (through SkiaSharp) and by code of pViewer itself: animated GIF, WebP and PNG, TGA, QOI and PBM/PGM/PPM files, the effects, resizing, saving WebP and GIF all work as before.
• Reducing a photo to the 256 colors of a GIF is a little more accurate than before.
• BigTIFF files (TIFF larger than 4 GB, a rare variant) no longer open. Ordinary TIFF is read by Windows as before.
• The installers are about 3 MB larger.

See CHANGELOG.md for the full history.

Downloads

• pViewer-Setup-2.1.0-Full.exe: includes the .NET runtime, works everywhere.
• pViewer-Setup-2.1.0-Light.exe: needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).

Both install per user without administrator rights and upgrade earlier 2.x versions in place; settings are kept. pViewer 2.0.7 and later offer this update automatically.

pViewer 2.0.10

The GitHub account moved from MarcoTrombetta to FirekeeperPhate: automatic updates, links and the release page now use https://github.com/FirekeeperPhate/pViewer. No other changes from 2.0.9.

Please update to this version: earlier versions look for updates under the old account name.

Downloads

• pViewer-Setup-2.0.10-Full.exe: includes the .NET runtime, works everywhere.
• pViewer-Setup-2.0.10-Light.exe: needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).

Both install per user without administrator rights and upgrade earlier 2.x versions in place; settings are kept. pViewer 2.0.7 and later offer this update automatically.

pViewer 2.0.9

Bug fixes from the tenth review pass.

Fixed

• Two-page view without edits: Ctrl+S now says there is nothing to save, and Save As proposes a name like "p0-p1.png" instead of the first page's own file (accepting it replaced that page with the joined spread).
• Settings: a settings.json briefly held by another program (OneDrive, Dropbox, backup, antivirus) could make pViewer start with the defaults and write them over your settings on exit. It is now read again for a moment, and never overwritten while it stays locked.
• Page pairing (F12) is kept after F5, Delete, Rename and batch rename; deleting the last page shown alone no longer splits the spread before it.
• Command line: a folder passed as "C:\Pics" opens (Windows hands it over as C:\Pics"), and a trailing backslash no longer stops Save As into that folder from updating the list.
• Hostile PNG files: many compressed chunks just under the size limit share one budget (together they reached GBs in the metadata window); the status bar shows the real file size.
• A corrupt or oversized archive page is no longer read again each time it is prefetched (a slowdown introduced in 2.0.8).
• Rename and Set as wallpaper wait until the next image is shown, like Delete.
• Updates: another user's pViewer is detected for an all-users install in any folder; a release with an unusable installer size is ignored instead of showing an error.
• Light setup: a per-user .NET runtime in %LocalAppData%, which pViewer cannot use, no longer counts as installed.

See CHANGELOG.md for the full list.

Downloads

• pViewer-Setup-2.0.9-Full.exe: includes the .NET runtime, works everywhere.
• pViewer-Setup-2.0.9-Light.exe: needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).

Both install per user without administrator rights and upgrade earlier 2.x versions in place; settings are kept. pViewer 2.0.7 and later offer this update automatically.

pViewer 2.0.8

Bug fixes from two review passes, including safer automatic updates.

Updates

• pViewer closes only once the installer has really started: refusing the administrator prompt of an all-users install leaves it open, and the installer waits for pViewer to exit instead of stopping with "pViewer is running".
• Changes made while the update downloads (edits, undo, redo) are asked about before pViewer closes; an open dialog, a save or an archive being opened is allowed to finish first.
• Other open pViewer windows are reported before downloading (another user's pViewer no longer blocks a per-user install).
• A download that stops responding fails after 30 s; old downloaded installers are deleted; a clock that had been set ahead no longer stops the daily check.

Fixed

• Holding Delete no longer deletes the following images one after another before they are shown; holding Esc no longer goes on from leaving full screen to closing the window.
• A PNG with a crafted text chunk or color profile that inflates to hundreds of MB opens at once instead of taking tens of seconds and GBs of memory.
• Saving a lossless WebP keeps it lossless.
• A rectangle lower than its pen (an underline) no longer fails; Brightness/Contrast and Hue/Saturation at zero no longer mark the image as changed.
• A page that could not be read (still being copied, locked by another program) is read again when shown.
• Archives: the "Opening… (Esc to cancel)" hint disappears when the opening ends; Esc pressed just as an archive finishes opening still cancels it; a slideshow stops at the last volume when the next one cannot be opened.
• Archive pages with names Windows does not allow (made on a Mac or Linux) can be batch-processed and saved.
• Fit height keeps refitting after scrolling sideways; zooming while dragging no longer makes the image jump; Resize never proposes a side of 0; Slideshow › Custom accepts the decimal comma.
• Shortcuts: a key moved away and back leaves the command on its defaults; a misspelt key in settings.json keeps the defaults.

See CHANGELOG.md for the full list.

Downloads

• pViewer-Setup-2.0.8-Full.exe: includes the .NET runtime, works everywhere.
• pViewer-Setup-2.0.8-Light.exe: needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).

Both install per user without administrator rights and upgrade earlier 2.x versions in place; settings are kept. pViewer 2.0.7 offers this update automatically.

pViewer 2.0.7

Automatic updates.

New

• Automatic updates: once a day, shortly after startup and in the background, pViewer asks GitHub whether a newer release exists (it sends nothing else) and offers to install it: Update now, Skip this version or Later.
• Update now downloads the installer of your edition (Full or Light) from GitHub, checks it (size and SHA-256), asks about unsaved changes, closes pViewer, installs the update and reopens pViewer on the same file.
• On by default; it can be turned off in Settings › Updates. Help › Check for updates checks right away.
• Copies not installed with the setup open the download page instead.

This is the first version that can update itself: from the next release on, updating from 2.0.7 is automatic.

See CHANGELOG.md for the full history.

Downloads

• pViewer-Setup-2.0.7-Full.exe: includes the .NET runtime, works everywhere.
• pViewer-Setup-2.0.7-Light.exe: needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).

Both install per user without administrator rights and upgrade earlier 2.x versions in place; settings are kept.

pViewer 2.0.6

Licensing release: no changes to how pViewer works.

Changed

• Third-party notices: THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt with the copyright notices and license texts of the bundled components (ImageSharp, MetadataExtractor, XmpCore, SharpCompress, CommunityToolkit.Mvvm) is now installed next to pViewer and linked from the About window.
• The Full edition also installs the .NET runtime's license and third-party notices (dotnet-LICENSE.txt, dotnet-THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt).
• README and About name each library's license as granted (ImageSharp: Apache 2.0) and list XmpCore.

See CHANGELOG.md for the full history.

Downloads

• pViewer-Setup-2.0.6-Full.exe: includes the .NET runtime, works everywhere.
• pViewer-Setup-2.0.6-Light.exe: needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).

Both install per user without administrator rights and upgrade earlier 2.x versions in place; settings are kept.

pViewer 2.0.5

Robustness and polish release.

New

• Cancellable archive opening: press Esc while a large or nested archive opens to stop it and stay on the current image; opening something else stops it too.

Fixed

• Safer with unusual files: crafted or broken images and archives can no longer crash pViewer, make it allocate gigabytes, or freeze it (endless EXIF chains, tiny files claiming huge sizes, decompression bombs in archives or PNG color profiles, GIFs with thousands of frames).
• Saving over a file keeps its creation date and attributes; files dropped while a dialog is open are refused; Ctrl+S on an already saved pasted image does nothing.
• Comics: later parts of multi-part RARs are no longer taken for separate volumes, and the F12 page pairing of a volume is kept when you come back to it.
• Keyboard shortcuts: restoring a default no longer leaves a key on two commands; Esc cancels recording; keys reserved by Windows are refused; punctuation keys are shown as on your keyboard.
• Window: a maximized window saved on a larger monitor fits the current one; hidden images opened from Explorer are shown correctly.
• A hand-edited settings.json with wrong values no longer breaks pViewer.

Installer

• Setup and uninstall ask to close a running pViewer.
• Unticking "Open with" on an upgrade removes those entries.
• The Light edition also finds .NET runtimes installed per user or in custom folders.

See CHANGELOG.md for the full list.

Downloads

• pViewer-Setup-2.0.5-Full.exe: includes the .NET runtime, works everywhere.
• pViewer-Setup-2.0.5-Light.exe: needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).

Both install per user without administrator rights and upgrade earlier 2.x versions in place; settings are kept.

pViewer 2.0.4

New settings.

New

• Configurable keyboard shortcuts: Settings › Keyboard shortcuts lists every command with its keys. Click + and press a key combination to add it (a key used by another command is moved, with a note), ✕ to remove a command's keys, ↺ to restore its default; "Restore all default shortcuts" resets everything. The defaults are the usual pViewer keys. Menus, toolbar tooltips and the F1 help always show the current keys.
• Toolbar and status bar options: "Show the toolbar" and "Show the status bar" in Settings › Appearance (the same as T and the view menu).

See CHANGELOG.md for the full history.

Downloads

• pViewer-Setup-2.0.4-Full.exe: includes the .NET runtime, works everywhere.
• pViewer-Setup-2.0.4-Light.exe: needs the .NET 10 Desktop Runtime (x64).

Both install per user without administrator rights and upgrade earlier 2.x versions in place; settings are kept.