Alternatives to nsxiv
A minimal keyboard-driven image viewer for X11 with a thumbnail mode, forked from sxiv. The listings below can replace it for an important use case. Each note says what changes if you switch.
The original
nsxiv
A minimal keyboard-driven image viewer for X11 with a thumbnail mode, forked from sxiv.
Replacements
Listings that take over the same core job as nsxiv.
feh
Lightweight, keyboard-driven image viewer for X11 that also sets wallpapers and lists image files.
feh is a keyboard-driven X11 viewer with slideshow, thumbnail and list modes that also sets wallpapers and supports custom shell actions, without recompiling for configuration.
vimiv
An image viewer controlled with vim-like keybindings, with a thumbnail mode and basic editing.
vimiv uses vim-style keybindings with a thumbnail mode and adds basic editing, though the keybindings take time for non-vim users.
Swayimg
A customizable image viewer for Wayland compositors and DRM with Lua scripting, gallery and slideshow modes.
Swayimg targets Wayland compositors and DRM instead of X11, with Lua scripting, gallery and slideshow modes and JPEG XL, HEIC and RAW support.
qimgv
A fast, configurable image viewer with basic cropping and resizing and optional video playback.
qimgv is a configurable keyboard-friendly viewer for Windows and Linux with a graphical interface, basic crop and resize, and optional video playback.
Geeqie
Browse and organize images with a Unix desktop viewer.
Geeqie is a fuller Linux desktop viewer for browsing and organising collections, trading nsxiv's minimal keyboard-driven design for a traditional graphical interface.
Oculante
A fast, simple cross-platform image viewer with basic editing tools and wide format support.
Oculante is a fast Rust viewer for Windows, macOS and Linux with basic editing tools and wide format support, though the project is in maintenance mode.
Gwenview
KDE's image viewer for browsing collections of images, with simple editing and annotation tools.
Gwenview is KDE's image viewer with simple edits and annotation tools, offering a full graphical interface rather than a minimal keyboard-driven one.
Similar software
Related functionality, not a direct replacement.
gThumb
An open-source image viewer and browser for the GNOME desktop on Linux.
LXImage-Qt
A lightweight image viewer and screenshot tool from the LXQt desktop project.
Ristretto
A simple, fast image viewer developed as part of the Xfce desktop environment for Linux.
ImageMagick
A command-line image toolkit that creates, edits, converts and composes images across more than 200 formats.
ExifTool
Reads, writes and edits metadata in almost every image, audio and video format there is, and is the reference tool for the job.
