A fast image viewer for Linux

Image viewer for Linux · version 0.38.3

Every photo.
In a glimpse.

Glimt is a fast, memory-frugal image viewer, as quick in a folder of a few pictures as in one of several hundred thousand. It brings your Lightroom collections, keywords and stars along, and keeps your files as they are. Free and open source.

Download Getting started GitHub

Glimt with thumbnails in the file list and a photo

The EXIF panel with keywords, comment, alt text and the keyword tree

Four images side by side in a 2 × 2 layout

The Pan view as a calendar, each day with its first image

Glimt in its light theme, the file list as icons

Why Glimt

It keeps up with you

Hold down the arrow key and the images follow: the next ones are decoded ahead, at the size of the window. The list scrolls, searches and sorts as smoothly with hundreds of thousands of images as with ten.

Lightroom comes along

Collections, the keyword tree and stars from a Lightroom Classic catalog. Only read, never changed.

Keywords where others find them

A keyword tree, comments and alt text in XMP sidecars that darktable, digiKam and Immich read.

Find duplicates

By checksum, name, size or likeness.

Your days at a glance

The Pan view lays a folder out by day, as a timeline or a calendar.

A contact sheet of four photos with their names

On paper, your way

Contact sheets, image and page text from templates, a preview of the first page.

Made for every pair of eyes

Orca reads the menus and each image, with its alt text. Text up to 300 %, High Contrast, a focus ring.

$ glimt --remote current | xargs -0 exiftool -Model
Camera Model Name : X-T5
$ glimt --remote select ~/Pictures/*sunset*

Scripts and AI, on your computer

Ask which image is shown, select what a script found. Nothing goes over the network.

Opens what you shoot, scan and measure

JPEG
PNG
WebP
AVIF
HEIC
JPEG XL
GIF
TIFF
SVG
BMP
TGA
Canon CR2 · CR3
Nikon NEF
Sony ARW
Fujifilm RAF
Olympus ORF
Panasonic RW2
Pentax PEF
DNG
Video frames
DICOM
NIfTI
FITS
Whole slides
Zeiss CZI
Leica LIF
Nikon ND2
MRC
HDF5
Photoshop
GIMP XCF

Plugins and formats →

Made for speed and little memory

Glimt is built to be as quick in a folder of several hundred thousand files as in one of a few, and to use as little memory as it can:

Decoding, reading folders and copying run in the background, so the window answers at once.
The file list draws only the rows on screen and reads no file it does not need, so a large folder costs no more per frame than a small one.
Images are decoded to the size they are shown, at full resolution only when you zoom in, and only a fixed number ahead of you.
Each release is tested against the one before with a folder of 500,000 files; it may not be slower or take more memory than half as much again.

Get it running in a minute

Download the file for your system from the latest release, then:

sudo apt install ./glimt_*_amd64.deb

sudo dnf install ./glimt-*.x86_64.rpm

flatpak install --user ./glimt-*-x86_64.flatpak

chmod +x glimt-*-x86_64.AppImage && ./glimt-*-x86_64.AppImage

tar xzf glimt-*-x86_64-linux.tar.gz && ./glimt-*-x86_64-linux/glimt

One binary for any distribution with glibc 2.28 or newer. More about the downloads →

Find out more

ScreenshotsLayouts, Find Duplicates, the EXIF panel, fuzzy search and the Pan view.

Features and formatsRAW, HEIC, AVIF, JPEG XL, science formats through plugins, colour management, slideshows, collections and more.

Coming from LightroomWhat the catalog import brings over, and what it leaves.