Loupe
GNOME's default image viewer, with metadata display and quick crop, rotate and flip edits.
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About Loupe
Loupe, shown as Image Viewer on the desktop, is the image viewer in current GNOME releases. It opens pictures in a clean GTK window, shows their metadata, and handles quick edits such as cropping, rotating and flipping without opening a full editor.
It is maintained by Christopher Davis and Sophie Herold as part of GNOME, with version 50.0 released in March 2026. The latest version is distributed through Flathub, so it can be installed on most Linux distributions, not only GNOME ones.
Strengths
- Fits naturally into the GNOME desktop
- Shows image metadata alongside the picture
- Quick crop, rotate and flip edits
- Regular releases alongside GNOME
Limitations
- Linux only
- Editing is limited to basic transforms
Details
- Pricing
- FreeFree, developed as part of the GNOME project and supported by donations.
- License
- Open source, license not stated
- Developer
- The GNOME Project
- Platforms
- Linux
- How it runs
- Downloadable app
- Account
- Not required
- Works offline
- Yes
- Best suited for
- Linux desktop users who want a simple, modern default image viewer
- Categories
- Photo tools
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Facts checked against the developer's own pages and store listings, 1 sources on file.
Alternatives to Loupe
Compare allSoftware that can replace Loupe for an important use case, and what changes if you switch.
Eye of GNOME
The classic GNOME image viewer, with a straightforward interface and support for plugins.
Eye of GNOME is the classic GNOME viewer that Loupe replaced as default, adding plugin support but with little editing.
gThumb
An open-source image viewer and browser for the GNOME desktop on Linux.
gThumb is another open-source GNOME image viewer and browser for Linux, oriented more toward viewing and sorting photos in local folders.
Gwenview
KDE's image viewer for browsing collections of images, with simple editing and annotation tools.
Gwenview is KDE's viewer with crop, resize, red-eye reduction and annotation tools, offering more editing than Loupe but integrating best with KDE Plasma.
Xviewer
Linux Mint's simple image viewer, built on gdk-pixbuf and designed to work across desktops.
Xviewer is Linux Mint's plain open-source viewer that handles large images with constant memory use and suits traditional desktops, with no real editing.
Ristretto
A simple, fast image viewer developed as part of the Xfce desktop environment for Linux.
Ristretto is a lightweight open-source viewer from Xfce, quick to open images but with no editing or library features.
Geeqie
Browse and organize images with a Unix desktop viewer.
Geeqie is an open-source Linux and Unix viewer for browsing and organising image collections without a database import, with an older desktop-style interface.
nomacs
A fast image viewer that opens RAW and PSD files and can show the same picture in two synchronised windows.
nomacs adds Windows and macOS builds, RAW and PSD support, batch processing and synchronised windows, though its interface exposes many panels at once.
LXImage-Qt
A lightweight image viewer and screenshot tool from the LXQt desktop project.
LXImage-Qt is a lightweight Linux viewer from LXQt with an Exif panel, annotations, screenshots and multipage TIFF support.
Loupe as an alternative
Listings that name Loupe as an alternative.
feh
Lightweight, keyboard-driven image viewer for X11 that also sets wallpapers and lists image files.
Loupe is GNOME's default viewer with metadata display and quick crop, rotate and flip edits, trading keyboard-driven minimalism for a modern desktop interface.
Koko
A KDE image gallery app for browsing photo albums on Linux desktops and mobile devices.
Loupe is GNOME's default image viewer with metadata display and quick crop, rotate and flip edits, offering a single-image view rather than album browsing.
Oculante
A fast, simple cross-platform image viewer with basic editing tools and wide format support.
Loupe is GNOME's default Linux viewer with metadata display and quick crop, rotate and flip, receiving regular releases but running only on Linux.
Swayimg
A customizable image viewer for Wayland compositors and DRM with Lua scripting, gallery and slideshow modes.
Loupe is GNOME's default viewer with metadata display and quick crop, rotate and flip edits, trading Lua scripting for a simpler desktop interface.
Similar software
Related functionality, not necessarily a direct replacement.
Shotwell
A photo manager for the GNOME desktop that imports, organises and makes simple edits to photos.
ImageGlass
A fast image viewer that opens the formats Windows still argues about: WebP, JXL, HEIC, AVIF, SVG, HDR and raw.
