Fly Photos
Fly Photos is a blazing-fast, ultra-lightweight photo viewer for Windows that revives the beloved user experience of the discontinued Google Picasa Photo Viewer . Designed as an ideal replacement, it offers immediate loading of large images — including raw files over 100?
Features
Properties
- Lightweight
- Distraction-free
- Minimalistic
Features
- Fullscreen support
- No Tracking
- Ad-free
- Built-in viewer
- Works Offline
- No registration required
- Dark Mode
Tags
- transparent-background
Fly Photos News & Activities
Recent activities
POX added Fly Photos as alternative to Imagot- TBayAreaPat updated Fly Photos
- TBayAreaPat reviewed Fly Photos
Nice that Fly Photos creates its own "open with" in context. There's tiny thumbnails in strip form at the bottom and rather high transparency by default. Transparency can be adjusted, but thumbnails can only be enlarged to 60x60. FastStone will make much larger thumbnails. Program uses a number of Microsoft labeled files. Runs surprisingly heavy for standard images.. was it my system?
- BarnMTB reviewed Fly Photos
Fly Photos deserves to be the spiritual successor to the beloved & renowned Picasa Photo Viewer, which was discontinued along with Picasa. Fly is fast, extremely fast. It is simple & easy to use. No complex features or billions of menus and options that 99% of people don't use. It is modern. It has modern design and is built as a native app for Windows, with options for blurred Acrylic glass background (along with Picasa's classic dark background) And it simply feels good to use.
I've...
- BarnMTB updated Fly Photos
- BarnMTB added Dark Mode as a feature to Fly Photos
BarnMTB added Fly Photos as alternative to Picasa- BarnMTB liked Fly Photos
lucasffg added Fly Photos as alternative to LeafView- lucasffg added Distraction-free as a feature to Fly Photos
Fly Photos information
Developed by
riyasyLicensing
Open Source and Free product.Written in
Alternatives
54 alternatives listedSupported Languages
- English
AlternativeTo Category
Photos & GraphicsGitHub repository
- 268 Stars
- 6 Forks
- 15 Open Issues
- Updated
What is Fly Photos?
Fly Photos is a blazing-fast, ultra-lightweight photo viewer for Windows that revives the beloved user experience of the discontinued Google Picasa Photo Viewer . Designed as an ideal replacement, it offers immediate loading of large images — including raw files over 100?MB — thanks to its efficient in-memory caching and optional disk previews.
Key Features
- Full-screen view with a transparent, spotlight-style background reminiscent of Picasa
- Super-fast startup and navigation between photos, using arrow buttons or keyboard shortcuts (< / > for previous/next)
- Long-press navigation to "fly through" cached images, rendering thumbnail browsing nearly obsolete
- Safe read-only mode that never writes to your image files
- Respects Windows Explorer's image sorting
- Optional thumbnail strip (experimental) for quick overviews
- Familiar controls: ESC to close, click outside to exit full-screen, scroll/CTRL+scroll to switch images, etc.
Comments and Reviews
Fly Photos deserves to be the spiritual successor to the beloved & renowned Picasa Photo Viewer, which was discontinued along with Picasa. Fly is fast, extremely fast. It is simple & easy to use. No complex features or billions of menus and options that 99% of people don't use. It is modern. It has modern design and is built as a native app for Windows, with options for blurred Acrylic glass background (along with Picasa's classic dark background) And it simply feels good to use.
I've struggled to find any alternatives after Google abandoned Picasa, along with its excellent Picasa Photo Viewer. While it did get better, Windows' stock Photos app is still not quick enough, not to mention it doesn't scratch that same Picasa itch. All other commonly recommended photo viewer app all looks ancient, complex, hard to use with trillions of cascading menus that will never be used. When I discovered Fly Photos it was like dream come true.
Right now, Fly does not register itself as a handler for image files (it will come at a later point) BUT you can manually just set the .exe manually: Right click an image file ➡️ "Open With" ➡️ Scroll to the bottom and choose "Choose another app" ➡️ Scroll to the bottom and choose "Choose an app on your PC" ➡️ Browse to the folder you installed Fly Photo and select the FlyPhotos.exe file. ➡️ Done. You don't need to do this every time you update as long as you install it at the same location.
Now, Fly Photos is optimized to be as fast as possible by default, so it won't look & feel like Picasa Photo Viewer out of the box. But you can easily set the settings in Fly Photos to make it feels as close to Picasa Photo Viewer as possible: Enable "Zoom in on file Open, Zoom out on file Exit" animation — Enable "Show Checkered Background" for transparent images — Set "Image to Screen Fit" to around 70-80 • Enable "Show thumbnail strip" — Enable "Auto Fade UI Controls" Just a loose guidelines. Adjust as you see fit. It'll feel right at home for anyone moving from Picasa. Though Fly Photos is still actively being developed so new features may change.
Nice that Fly Photos creates its own "open with" in context. There's tiny thumbnails in strip form at the bottom and rather high transparency by default. Transparency can be adjusted, but thumbnails can only be enlarged to 60x60. FastStone will make much larger thumbnails. Program uses a number of Microsoft labeled files. Runs surprisingly heavy for standard images.. was it my system?