Overall, ImageGlass is a great Windows Photo Viewer alternative and I am sure you will love the performance jump from the native Photos app. You want to rotate an image, just click on the rotate button and there you have it. Unlike nested menus, it has quick access to all important features like rotation, zoom, print, etc on the top bar. What I love about ImageGlass is the quick menu on top of the image. The image loading time is almost negligible and you get an instant preview of the images the moment you open it.
It’s a simple, modern looking photo viewer without any bells and whistles, but the performance is vastly superior to the native Windows 10 Photos app. If you want similar performance like Irfanview, but with modern aesthetics, then ImageGlass is a great alternative. While IrfanView is a complete powerhouse of an app, it looks dated in terms of user interface and design.
Install IrfanView from its Website ( Free) 2. So if you are looking for the best Windows Photo Viewer alternative, just install IrfanView and say goodbye to the laggy mess that is the Windows 10 Photos app.ĭownload IrfanView from Microsoft Store ( Free) Basically, the functionalities are very similar to the earlier Windows Photo Viewer and you will get all those perks with IrfanView. You can also zoom images and switch to different images with the scroll bar. The difference in performance is simply day and night given that IrfanView is a pretty lightweight app. It has a footprint of just 3 MB so there’s no bloatware embedded in the app.īesides the performance, it supports countless media formats, has decent image editor built in, can convert media files, batch edit images and a lot more. Unlike the Windows Photo Viewer, it’s extremely snappy and loads images in no time. You are absolutely going to love this app if you are coming from the default Windows 10 Photos app. IrfanView is the best application for viewing photos on Windows PCs, hands down. Now without wasting any time, let’s get started. Also, you can go through the simple guide to restore the old Windows Photo Viewer. If you browse a lot through your local image galleries, I’m sure you’ll appreciate Picasa Photo Viewer – it is faster, has more features and it just looks and works better than either Photos or the good old Photo Viewer in Windows 8.In this article, I have mentioned a total of 10 Windows Photo Viewer alternatives which perform way better than the native Photos app. In the new window, scroll down and click on “More Options”, then find “Picasa Photo Viewer” and click it. If for some reason Picasa is not the default viewer, you can set it as such by right-clicking any image, then selecting “Open with -> Choose default program”. This is exactly what we need: just click “Select All” and you’re set – after clicking “Finish”, the app will replace the default Photos app.Įxtra tip. Step After clicking continue, you’ll be given the choice of using Picasa Photo Viewer as the default viewer for all of the popular image formats. I recommend choosing the latter as it’s less resource intensive, but if you want to use Picasa as the go to app for picture viewing, editing and upload (to online services like Picasa Web or Facebook), you can choose to index your whole computer.ģ. Step On first start, you’ll be given the option to search all of your folders for photos or just the My Documents, My Pictures and the folders on your desktop. The installation is easy and problem-free – just follow the directions and it should be done in less than a minute.Ģ. Step First, you’ll need to download and install Picasa – you can get the latest version from.
Here’s how to install it and set it as the default picture viewer:ġ. The app looks great, works fast and generally makes a better impression than Windows Photos. Luckily, there are a few alternatives to it – and the best one around is the Picasa Photo Viewer from Google, which comes with the Picasa picture management/editing suite. Replacing Windows Photos with Google Picasa Viewer
However, it has a few drawbacks – it consumes a disproportionately large amount of resources, it has practically no features other than viewing pictures and it’s a Metro UI app that works in full screen only.
Windows 8 comes with the aptly named Photos app installed by default, which is decent enough for viewing any images and photos you might have on your computer. Replacing the default Windows image and photo viewer In this tutorial I’ll show you how you can easily install it as the default viewer in Windows 8. The default Windows Photos viewer may be good, but there’s a better and faster alternative out there – Google’s Picasa Viewer.