PhotoQt v5.0

Published: 23rd of December, 2025

PhotoQt v5.0 is finally here! After months of hard work and two beta test versions the all-new release is now ready. It brings a plethora of changes, most notably support for extensions and a new user interface variant.

Over the past few months the code for PhotoQt was completely reworked with the goal of better modularization of the code, but also to add a new user interface variant. There have been a few different iterations as to how two different user interface variant might be implemented, before landing on the current solution which works exactly as desired. On the first start PhotoQt will present to you a startup wizard where you can select which interface variant you want to use, but you can change that settings at any time from the settings manager (default shortcut: P). The “modern” user interface variant is basically the same as before (albeit with some adjustments and improvements to its styling). The “integrated” user interface variant attempts to integrate better into you desktop environment. It adapts the system colors, has a menu bar, a footer with some information always visible, and an (optional) sidebar. For the latter, all elements (except for the integrated file dialog) will be displayed in their own windows.

Another big change with this new release is the addition of support for extensions. A range of features of older versions of PhotoQt has been converted into extensions already, and it is possible to add new extensions. If you want to create an extension for PhotoQt, there will be a guide as to how to do that coming soon in the new year. It is possible to have both QML-only extensions, and QML/C++ extensions. To avoid having PhotoQt run random code accidentally, it implements a verification scheme that requires manual approval from within PhotoQt before an unverified extension will be enabled.

Some other highlights of this new release include:

New settings manager: The settings manager had become a bit cluttered and some options were hard to find or discover. The new settings manager attempts to categorize settings much better and to have no settings page anymore with dozens or more different settings. It also incorporates a new shortcuts manager as the old one did not always work as expected.
The file dialog has some smaller quality-of-life improvements: Moving up a folder pre-selects the previous folder, making it easy to navigate back and forth. Similarly, when viewing an image, opening the file dialog will pre-select the currently viewed image. It is now also possible to quit PhotoQt directly from the file dialog using the Ctrl+Q shortcut. If the integrated file dialog is not what you want, but you'd prefer the same file dialog you are used to from other applications, you can switch to the native file dialog at any time from the settings.
On Wayland when connecting to a running PhotoQt instance, it now checks for an existing XDG_ACTIVATION_TOKEN in its environment and passes it on, resulting in the existing window to (usually) be properly moved to the foreground. If you come across situations where this does not work, please let me know.
Some new shortcuts were added: You can now directly jump to the next/previous sibling folder. A sibling folder is a folder that is a neighbor in the parent directory. You can configure how many levels up and down PhotoQt is supposed to look in order to find the next image to load.
SAI image support: PhotoQt can now support PaintTool SAI documents using the libsai library. This support is still in an early phase as some images might not be displayed perfectly yet. If you come across an image with issues, don't hesitate to reach out.

Some other changes include:

Better handling of scrolling the thumbnail bar no matter what edge it is displayed on.
Additional even smaller minimap variant.
New setting to disable all interface animations globally.
Deleting a file will no longer result in a blank screen in certain circumstances.
Improved speed of loading folder with large number of archives.
Workaround for high-resolution scrolling used for shortcuts when using Wayland.
It is now possible to drag and drop files onto PhotoQt. If the file dialog is shown it will open the corresponding folder, otherwise it will load the respective image for viewing.
The interpolation threshold is now based on the window size instead of a fixed value.
It is now once again possible to pass relative paths to the portable version of PhotoQt on Windows.

There are even more changes than this. You can find a longer list in the Changelog.

Get involved

I love to hear from people using PhotoQt. In order to get in touch with me for feedback/support/etc., the best way to do so is by opening an issue over in the GitLab repository: https://gitlab.com/lspies/photoqt

If this is not an option for you, then you can also always send me an email: (you need to enable javascript to see the email address)

If you want to help PhotoQt, there are a few ways you can get involved:

Join the translation team over on Crowdin. If your language is missing you can simply request it directly on Crowdin or send me an email and I can add it to the project.
Give feedback of what you like/don't like, or what you think is missing from PhotoQt. To give feedback, send me an email or open an issue on GitLab.

If you are considering supporting PhotoQt by donation, please consider donating to the humanitarian relief in Ukraine instead, for example to the Ukrainian Red Cross.

Merry Christmas and enjoy PhotoQt,

Lukas

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