Kuk 1.7.0

Search your photos by what's in them, folders right in the grid, and Escape that always gets you back.

Content search

• Find images by their content: type English words like "dog", "beach" or "car", or combine them ("dog beach")
• Text inside photos is searchable too: receipts, signs, screenshots (Czech and many other languages)
• Search the current folder or album, or switch to Everywhere to search all open folders and the Photos library at once
• "Show in Enclosing Folder" jumps from a search result to its folder
• Turn it on in Settings → Search. Images are analyzed on this Mac with Apple's Vision framework, nothing leaves your computer. The index is kept between launches, so only new or changed images are processed again, and the folder you are looking at goes first

Folders in the grid

• Optional folder tiles above the images (Settings → Browsing): subfolders plus a ".." tile for the enclosing folder
• Arrow keys, Home / End and Page Up / Down move across folders and images; Return, Space or a double-click opens a folder

Sidebar

• Optional image counts that include all subfolders (Settings → Sidebar)

Escape

• Escape now works wherever the focus is: it leaves fullscreen, then clears a multi-selection, then Selection Mode, and finally closes the open photo

Kuk 1.6.0

Faster browsing of big folders, persistent culling flags and keyboard folder navigation.

Faster

• Photos are decoded at the size of the viewer instead of the whole screen, so stepping through large files takes a fraction of the time and memory
• A photo that is already loaded (going back, or a prefetched neighbour) appears with no delay
• Camera RAW files are shown from their embedded full-size preview; the raw data is only developed when you zoom in
• Folders with thousands of images stay smooth: selection, sorting and scanning no longer slow down with the folder size
• Rows below the visible area are preloaded while scrolling the grid

Culling

• Pick and Reject flags are now saved as green and red Finder tags, so they survive quitting, travel with the files and show up in Finder and Spotlight
• Copy or move picked images in the background, with progress in the status bar

Navigation

• New Go menu: next / previous folder with images (⌥⌘↓ / ⌥⌘↑) and enclosing folder (⌘↑), also in fullscreen
• Page Up / Page Down in fullscreen, thumbnail size is remembered

Photos library

• Photos are shown at screen size without exporting them first
• Edits made in Photos are shown, and albums refresh when the library changes

Fixes

• Animated GIF, APNG and WebP play without loading the whole file at once; multi-page TIFF and RAW files are no longer treated as animations
• Files that could not be moved to the Trash no longer disappear from the grid
• ⌘⌫, ⌘A and ⌘↑ in the filter field edit the text instead of acting on the photos
• Batch rename can renumber files that already use the target names
• Info panel labels and several other texts are now translated to Czech

Kuk 1.5.0

Apple Photos library support, convert & rename, faster loading and navigation

Kuk 1.4.0

folder tree with subfolder browsing, multiple
folders open at once, per-folder image counts, remove folder from
recents, settings window (General + About) with reopen-at-launch
option

Kuk 1.3.0

bitmap copy, drag out, keyboard deletion, move to bin undo, gps link to maps, zoom shortcuts, slideshow setting

Kuk 1.2.0

New app icon

Kuk 1.1.0

…

Kuk 1.0.0

First release of Kuk — a fast, native macOS image viewer built with SwiftUI.

• Fast grid browsing with QuickLook-backed thumbnail cache
• Instant navigation with prefetching and cancellation
• Detail view with zoom, fullscreen mode with slideshow
• EXIF metadata panel, live folder watching, Finder integration

Requires macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later.

Note: the app is not notarized — on first launch, right-click → Open, or allow it in System Settings → Privacy & Security.