Image Drop ‐ User Manual

Image Drop - User Manual

Version 0.1.2

Image Drop is a small, fast image viewer for macOS, Windows, and Linux. There is no toolbar and no built-in file browser: you drop images onto the window and look at them. That's the whole idea — though if you'd rather not drag-and-drop, clicking the window or pressing Cmd/Ctrl+O brings up your system's own file picker instead (see below).

1. Getting started

Start Image Drop. A small empty window (about 520 × 340) appears with a rounded border and the text "Drop images here".
Drag one or more image files from your file manager (Finder, Explorer, Nautilus, …) onto the window and release.
The first image is displayed and the window resizes itself to fit it.

You can drop anywhere on the window — the bordered area is a visual hint, not a target you have to hit precisely.

No mouse handy for drag-and-drop, or just prefer a file picker? Click anywhere on the drop zone, or press Cmd/Ctrl+O (Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+O does the same thing — it's a second binding for the same picker, not a different one), to bring up your system's own file browser. On macOS and Linux it lets you select any mix of files and folders at once, the same as a drag-and-drop; folders are scanned the same way too (see "Scanning folders" below). On Windows the picker is files only — Windows' own file dialog has no mode that combines folder and multi-file selection — so drag-and-drop is the way to add a folder there. This works at any time, not just on the empty drop screen — opening more images while one is already showing replaces the current set, or adds to it if merge mode (M) is on, exactly like dropping new files would.

2. Opening this manual

You are reading it, so you have probably already found it, but for the record:

Press F1 at any time, or
choose Help -> Manual from the menu.

The manual opens in its own scrollable window. Press Esc or close the window to dismiss it; the image you were viewing is untouched. Pressing F1 again brings the existing manual window back to the front instead of opening a second copy.

3. Supported file types

JPEG — .jpg, .jpeg, .jpe, .jfif (EXIF rotation applied)
PNG — .png (transparency supported)
GIF — .gif (animated GIFs play back)
WebP — .webp (static images)
BMP — .bmp
TIFF — .tif, .tiff
ICO — .ico (Windows icon; the largest embedded image is shown)
XPM — .xpm (X Pixmap)
HEIC/HEIF — .heic, .heif (iPhone photos; EXIF rotation applied)
AVIF — .avif (built-in rotation/mirroring applied)

A file is also accepted if your system reports it as image/jpeg, image/png, image/gif, image/webp, image/bmp, image/tiff, image/x-icon, image/vnd.microsoft.icon, image/x-xpixmap, image/heic, image/heif, or image/avif, even when the extension is missing or unusual.

Everything else — PDFs, RAW camera files, SVG, videos — is not supported.

4. Viewing images

Automatic window sizing

Each time an image is shown, the window resizes to match it:

Large images are scaled down to fit within 1500 × 950 pixels, keeping the aspect ratio.
Small images never shrink the window below the starting size (520 × 340). A tiny thumbnail is centred with empty space around it rather than producing a window too small to grab.
You can always resize the window yourself afterwards by dragging its edge. The image is scaled to fit and is never cropped or distorted.

The window title

The title bar tells you what you are looking at, for example:

sunset.jpg — 4032 x 3024 (2/7)

File name of the current image
Pixel dimensions of the image (after any rotation correction)
(animated) if it is an animated GIF
(2/7) — position in the current set, shown only when you dropped more than one image
[merge] at the very front, only while merge mode (M) is on — see "Browsing multiple images" below

Photo rotation

Photos taken with a phone or camera held sideways carry an EXIF orientation tag. Image Drop reads that tag and rotates or flips the photo automatically, so portrait shots appear upright instead of lying on their side. All eight EXIF orientations are handled, and the dimensions in the title reflect the corrected image.

If a photo still isn't the way up you want — EXIF-corrected but sideways for some other reason, or you just want to look at it rotated — press R to rotate it a further 90° clockwise, or Shift+R for counter-clockwise. This is purely a viewing option: it's never written back to the file, resets back to upright with 0 (along with zoom), and — like navigating to a different image — starts over at upright on the next picture you view. Rotating swaps the window between landscape and portrait to fit the image's new orientation, the same as loading a different image would.

Animated GIFs

Animated GIFs start playing as soon as they are shown:

Frames run at the speed stored in the file.
Frames that only update part of the picture are composited correctly, so you won't see leftover pixels or flickering blanks.
Frames with no delay (or a zero delay) are shown for 0.1 s so playback stays watchable.
The animation loops until you navigate away or drop new files, at which point it stops on its own.

5. Zoom and pan

By default an image is always scaled to fit the window, exactly as described above. Four keys switch to a manual zoom level:

+ — zoom in
- — zoom out
1 — jump straight to 100% (one image pixel per screen pixel)
0 — back to fit-to-window

The first + or - press zooms in or out from whatever fit is currently showing, rather than jumping to 100% first, so zooming feels continuous. Repeated presses keep scaling up or down, clamped between 5% and 1600%.

Scrolling the mouse wheel or trackpad over the image zooms too, and unlike the keyboard shortcuts it zooms around the point under your cursor rather than the image centre, so whatever you're pointed at stays put on screen as you zoom in or out.

Once the image is zoomed in far enough that it no longer fits in the window, the cursor changes to a hand over it to show it can be dragged; click and drag to pan around it — the drag is clamped so you can't pull the image away from the window and leave empty space behind it. While fitted to the window, or zoomed to a level that still fits inside it, panning does nothing and the cursor stays the plain arrow.

Holding Shift while scrolling pans instead of zooming, in whichever direction you scroll — handy for a trackpad two-finger swipe once you're zoomed in, without having to click and drag.

Zoom and pan are per-image: navigating to another picture (with the arrow keys, Home/End, or a fresh drop) always starts that image back at fit-to-window. View rotation (see "Photo rotation" above) resets the same way, and rotating also resets zoom back to fit — a manual zoom level chosen before the turn rarely still makes sense once the image's landscape/portrait axes have swapped.

6. Info overlay

Press I to show a small card in the top-left corner of the window with everything about the current image at a glance:

the file name, and its position in the set (e.g. 3 / 47) if you dropped more than one image
its pixel dimensions (e.g. 1920 x 1080)
its file size on disk
the current zoom level, as a percentage

It updates live as you navigate or change zoom, and — unlike a toast message — stays up on screen until you press I again to turn it off. It's a standing preference like sort order or merge mode: once on, it stays on across navigation and further drops, reappearing as soon as the next image loads even if you briefly return to the empty drop screen in between.

Below that summary, a "Show EXIF data" link opens a separate window with the current image's Exif metadata — camera make and model, lens, exposure time, aperture, ISO, focal length, and capture date, one line per tag that's actually present in the file. E opens the same window directly, without needing the info overlay open first. Location data (GPS coordinates) is deliberately never read or shown. The window updates if you navigate to a different image while it's still open, and — like the manual and About windows — Esc closes just that window, and pressing E again while it's already open brings it back to the front instead of opening a second copy. Files with no Exif data (most PNGs, GIFs, and WebPs, and any JPEG without a camera-written Exif segment) show a "no metadata found" message instead of an empty window.

7. Browsing multiple images

Drop several files at once and step through them with the keyboard:

→ or ↓ — next image
← or ↑ — previous image
Home — jump to the first image
End — jump to the last image

Navigation wraps around: pressing → on the last image returns to the first, and ← on the first goes to the last.

Notes:

The arrow keys only do something when you dropped two or more images.
By default the set is naturally sorted by file name, so IMG_2.jpg comes before IMG_10.jpg even though a plain text sort would put them the other way round. Press S to cycle through four more orderings, and back to name:
- Capture date — the photo's Exif date/time (the same value the Exif window shows as "Date taken"); a file with no Exif capture date - a screenshot, most PNGs/GIFs/WebPs, or a JPEG a camera never tagged - falls back to its filesystem modification time instead of clumping at the very start of the list.
- Modified — filesystem modification time.
- Size — file size, smallest first.
- Unsorted — the raw order the files were handed over by your file manager ("stupid sort" — no sorting at all).
The title bar shows which mode is active ([sort: date], [sort: modified], [sort: size], [unsorted]) - nothing is shown for the default name sort. The image you're currently looking at stays on screen across every switch. Sorting never removes duplicate files, and the preference carries over to the next drop, and across restarts, until you change it again.

Capture date, modified, and size all have to read every file once to sort by it - a stat for modified/size, a raw file read for capture date - which can pause noticeably on a very large recursive drop, with no progress indicator or way to cancel it once started.
Dropping new files replaces the current set and starts again at the first image just dropped, unless merge mode is on. Press M to turn merge mode on or off; while it's on, the title bar starts with [merge] so you can always tell which mode you're in. With merge mode on, a new drop adds its files to the current set instead of replacing it — display jumps to the first file just added, sorting still applies, and nothing is deduplicated, so dropping the same file twice adds it twice. If a merge-mode drop contains nothing supported, the existing set is left exactly as it was and you just get an error toast, not a wipe. Merge mode is a standing preference, like sort order — it stays on (or off) across drops until you press M again, so you don't have to hold anything down mid-drag.

8. Grid overview

Press G to switch to a full-window grid of thumbnails for the current set — handy for finding one particular image in a large drop by sight instead of arrowing through them one at a time.

Click any thumbnail to jump straight to it and return to the normal view, or use the keyboard: the arrow keys move a highlighted ring around the grid (starting on whichever image was on screen when you opened it), and Return opens whichever thumbnail is currently highlighted.
Press G again, or Esc, to leave the grid without picking anything.
While the grid is up, every other key is ignored - zoom, S/M/P/I, Shift+Delete all do nothing until you either pick a thumbnail (click or Return) or back out with G/Esc.
Thumbnails are generated in the background as they scroll into view, a few at a time, so opening the grid on a folder with thousands of images doesn't stall the window waiting for all of them to decode up front.
The grid needs at least one image loaded, and doesn't combine with picture-frame mode - opening one closes the other.

9. Picture-frame mode

Press P to turn the current image set into a full-screen slideshow — handy for letting Image Drop just sit there and cycle through a folder of photos like a digital picture frame.

The window goes full-screen. The image is scaled to fit the screen, keeping its aspect ratio — never stretched or cropped, the same scale-to-fit behavior as the normal window.
Every 10 seconds (by default) the view automatically advances to the next image, wrapping around at the end just like manual navigation.
↑ increases the interval by one second, ↓ decreases it (down to a floor of one second). While picture-frame mode is on, ↑/↓ control the timer instead of navigating — use ←/→ (or Home/End) to navigate manually, which still works as usual and restarts the countdown from the new image.
Animated GIFs are always let finish. If a GIF's full loop takes longer than the current interval, picture-frame mode waits for it to play through at least once before moving on, rather than cutting it off partway.
Your chosen interval is remembered the next time you turn picture-frame mode on — and carries over the next time you launch Image Drop, too.
Press P again, or Esc, to leave picture-frame mode and return to the normal window. Esc only leaves picture-frame mode here — it doesn't also clear the loaded images; press it again afterwards for that.
Picture-frame mode needs at least one image loaded — pressing P on the empty drop screen does nothing.

10. Deleting a file

Press Shift+Delete to permanently delete the file currently on screen from disk — not the OS trash, so there is no undo. A confirmation card appears with two buttons:

Cancel — selected by default
Permanently delete (in red)

Whichever button is currently selected is outlined, so what Return will press is always visible before you press it.

You can respond either way:

With the mouse: click either button directly.
With the keyboard: press → to move the selection onto "Permanently delete" (← moves it back to Cancel) — the outline moves with it — then Return to go with whichever one is currently selected. Esc cancels immediately from either selection.

While the card is up, every other key is ignored — navigation, zoom, S/M/ P/I/G all do nothing until you respond to the prompt one way or the other. Shift+Delete itself is still reachable from elsewhere in the app, but does nothing while the grid overview (G, see above) is showing.

Deleting the current file removes it from the set and shows whatever now takes its place, wrapping around the same way normal navigation does; if it was the only file left, you're returned to the empty drop screen. If the file turns out to already be gone, or can't be deleted for some other reason (permissions, for example), a toast explains what went wrong and the file stays in the set.

11. Keyboard shortcuts

F1 — open this manual
Cmd/Ctrl+O / Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+O — open the system file picker (same as clicking the drop zone; both bindings do the same thing; files and folders on macOS/Linux, files only on Windows — see above)
→ / ↓ — next image
← / ↑ — previous image
Home / End — first / last image
S — cycle sort order: name -> capture date -> modified -> size -> unsorted -> back to name
M — toggle merge mode (next drop adds to the set instead of replacing it); shown in the title bar as a [merge] prefix
G — toggle the grid overview (see above); arrow keys move the highlight, Return or a click opens it, G/Esc backs out
+ / - — zoom in / out
1 — zoom to 100%; 0 — back to fit-to-window (and un-rotates, see below)
scroll (mouse wheel or trackpad) — zoom in/out, anchored at the cursor
Shift + scroll — pan instead of zoom
click and drag — pan around a zoomed-in image
R / Shift+R — rotate the displayed image 90° clockwise / counter-clockwise (view-only; resets on 0 or the next image)
I — toggle the info overlay (file name, position, dimensions, file size, zoom level)
E — open the EXIF data window for the current image (camera make/model, lens, exposure, aperture, ISO, focal length, capture date); also reachable via the "Show EXIF data" link in the info overlay
Cmd/Ctrl+C — copy the current image to the system clipboard, as image data you can paste into another app (not a file)
Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+C — copy the current image's file path to the clipboard
Shift+Delete — permanently delete the current file from disk, after confirming (see "Deleting a file" above)
P — toggle picture-frame mode (full-screen slideshow, see above)
↑ / ↓ (while in picture-frame mode) — increase / decrease the auto-advance interval by one second
Esc — clear the current images and return to the initial drop screen; quits the app if there's nothing loaded to clear (in the manual window it only closes the manual; in picture-frame mode it leaves picture-frame mode first); while a folder scan is still running, it cancels the scan instead (see "Scanning folders" below)

Linux clipboard support. Copying the image itself (Ctrl+C) shells out to an external tool, since Linux has no single built-in way to put image data on the clipboard: xclip, or wl-copy (from the wl-clipboard package) as a fallback for a Wayland session with no XWayland. Most distros don't install either by default — add one with your package manager, e.g. sudo apt install xclip or sudo apt install wl-clipboard on Debian/Ubuntu. Without one, Ctrl+C shows an error toast instead of copying. Copying the file path (Ctrl+Shift+C) is plain text and always works, no extra tool needed. macOS and Windows need nothing extra either way.

12. Menu

Help -> Manual — opens this manual, same as F1

13. Loading feedback

Decoding happens in the background, so the window stays responsive even with very large files.

An animated progress bar appears along the top edge of the window while an image is being loaded, and disappears when it is ready. It is drawn over the picture and never shifts anything on screen.
On the very first drop, the hint text changes to "Loading…".
On later navigations the previous image stays on screen until the new one is ready, so there is no blank flash between pictures.
Key presses made while an image is still loading are ignored. Holding down an arrow key therefore won't queue up a backlog of decodes for images you have already skipped past.
If a slow image finishes decoding after you have already moved on, its result is discarded — you always see the image you selected last.

Scanning folders. If your drop includes any folders, Image Drop first walks them (and every subfolder) to collect supported images before showing anything:

A spinner appears together with a running count, e.g. "Scanning… 42 images", updated as more images are found.
Once the scan finishes, the spinner disappears and the first image found is shown, just like a normal drop.
Drops with no folders skip this step entirely and load immediately.
Press Esc at any point while the spinner is up to cancel the scan. If this was the very first drop, you're returned to the initial drop screen exactly as if nothing had been dropped; if you were merging into an already-loaded set, the images you had before the scan started are left untouched.

14. Messages and error handling

Image Drop shows a dialog box in these cases. Dismiss it with its OK button.

One unsupported file dropped — "…" is not a supported image file
Several files, none of them supported — none of the N dropped files is a supported image
File cannot be read or decoded — could not read "…"
File decodes to a zero-size image — invalid image dimensions for "…"

Mixed drops are handled quietly. If you drop a batch of photos plus a few text files, the supported images are shown and the rest are skipped without any dialog. Only a drop containing no usable image produces an error.

A file that fails to decode is dropped from the set. If a file turns out to be unreadable or corrupt only once you navigate to it (an extension-based check at drop time can't catch everything), it's removed from the set and the next one is shown automatically, wrapping around if it was the last file — you're never left staring at a broken file with the title bar and position count out of sync with what's actually on screen. You just get a toast naming the file that was skipped. If every file in the set turns out to be broken, you land back on the initial drop screen.

Dropped folders are expanded. Dropping a folder scans it and every subfolder inside it for supported images; you can drop any mix of loose image files and folders in one go. See "Scanning folders" below for what you see while a folder is being scanned.

15. Language

The interface text (the drop hint, "Loading…", the menu) can be translated. Image Drop ships with English and follows your system language when a matching translation is available; otherwise it falls back to English. This manual follows the same rule: a German system locale opens the German edition, every other locale opens this English one.

16. Quitting

Press Esc in the image window when nothing is loaded, or close it the usual way for your platform (the red close button on macOS, the ✕ on Windows and Linux). If images are loaded, Esc clears them and returns to the initial drop screen instead — press it again (now that the set is cleared) to quit. Merge mode, sort order, the picture-frame interval, and the window size carry over to the next launch (see their sections above); nothing else does — zoom, rotation, and which image you were looking at all reset.

17. Current limitations

Things Image Drop deliberately does not do (yet):

No mouse-wheel or trackpad-scroll navigation; browsing between images is keyboard-only (arrow keys, Home/End, see above)
No real trackpad pinch-to-zoom gesture; Shift+scroll is the closest stand-in for two-finger pan (see "Zoom and pan" above)
No zoom control within picture-frame mode itself, and no per-image timing override — every image gets the same interval (animated GIFs aside)
No editing, converting, or saving of files, and rotation (R/Shift+R, see "Photo rotation" above) is view-only, never written to disk (deleting is supported - see "Deleting a file" above - everything else isn't)
No support for RAW, SVG, or PDF
No playback controls (pause, step, restart) for animated GIFs
No EXIF GPS/location display — deliberately left out of the EXIF data window (see "Info overlay" above) for privacy

18. Quick reference

Load — drag image files onto the window (replaces the current set)
Open — click the drop zone, or press Cmd/Ctrl+O (or Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+O, same thing), for the system file picker (files and folders on macOS/Linux, files only on Windows)
Merge mode — M toggles it on/off; while on, drops add to the set instead of replacing it, and the title bar shows [merge]
Next / previous — → ↓ / ← ↑ (wraps around)
First / last — Home / End
Sort order — S cycles name → capture date → modified → size → unsorted → back to name
Grid overview — G toggles a full-window thumbnail grid; arrow keys move the highlight, Return or a click opens it, G/Esc backs out without picking one
Zoom — +/- zoom in/out, 1 for 100%, 0 for fit-to-window, or scroll to zoom at the cursor; drag, or Shift+scroll, to pan once zoomed in
Rotate — R/Shift+R rotate 90° clockwise/counter-clockwise, view-only; 0 resets it along with zoom
Info overlay — I toggles a card with the file name, position, dimensions, file size, and zoom level
EXIF data window — E, or the info overlay's "Show EXIF data" link, opens camera make/model, lens, exposure, aperture, ISO, focal length, and capture date for the current image (no GPS/location)
Picture-frame mode — P toggles a full-screen slideshow; ↑/↓ tune the (default 10s) auto-advance interval while it's on
Copy — Cmd/Ctrl+C copies the current image, Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+C copies its file path
Delete — Shift+Delete opens a confirmation card (←/→ to choose, Return to go, Esc to cancel); permanent, no undo
Manual — F1, or Help -> Manual
Clear / Quit — Esc (clears the loaded images first, then quits; cancels a folder scan still in progress instead, if one is running)
Formats — JPEG, PNG, GIF (incl. animated), WebP, BMP, TIFF, ICO, XPM, HEIC/HEIF, AVIF
Max window size — 1500 × 950

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