Browse 100,000 photos.
At the speed of thought.
FlashView is a fast, lightweight photo viewer for Windows — built for photographers who want to see and cull huge archives at speed.
Open a folder with thousands of photos. Scroll through them at full speed. Rate your keepers with a single keystroke, flag the rejects, filter down to what matters, and export ratings as standard XMP.
Fast enough for 100,000+ photos. Rate with a single keystroke — one at a time or a thousand at once. Standard XMP, readable in Lightroom, Bridge, Photo Mechanic and digiKam.
What sets it apart
Built for massive folders
No pre-indexing wait — open the folder and start scrolling immediately. Stays responsive across archives of 100,000+ photos.
Speed of thought
Cursor keys, mouse wheel, scroll — every input moves to the next image without perceptible lag, even on large, high-resolution JPEGs. That’s the Flash in the name.
Native Windows workflow
Right-click any image → Open with FlashView → you’re in the Loupe right away, with the entire folder already loaded. Press G for the grid.
Endless archive scroll
Recursive view across every shoot — no catalog, no waiting. Open your photo folder and scroll through everything in real time. Group depth controls how shoots stack in the grid; click in for the deep-dive.
Built for
Whether hobbyist or pro: open your photo archive and scroll in real time through every shoot — no other tool does that. On top of that, FlashView fits these workflows in particular:
Wedding
2,000+ frames per event, the client wants highlights by Wednesday. Batch-rate hundreds at a time, color-label by stage, hand off to Lightroom via XMP.
Portrait & Studio
Sharpness checked pixel-precise, the client watches along. 1:1 zoom for eye-focus check, F11 sends the current image fullscreen to a second monitor for instant client review.
Wildlife & Sport
Burst series of 30 frames, only one is sharp. Scroll fast through similar frames, 1:1 zoom for the in-focus pick, X to reject the rest in batch.
Event & Press
Deadline in two hours. Keyboard-only triage, instant rate-and-export, no catalog overhead between shoot and delivery.
Features
- XMP metadata, shared with every major toolStars, color labels, and flags written as standard XMP — readable by Lightroom, Bridge, Photo Mechanic, digiKam.
- Batch-rate hundreds at a timeSelect 1,000+ files, press
3, done.Ctrl+Zundoes the last batch. - Live filteringBy rating (at-least, exact, at-most), color label, pick, reject, or hide RAW entirely.
- Keyboard-first0–5 rate, P pick, X reject, G/L grid/loupe, F fullscreen, I EXIF, Del trash. Every action works across many files at once —
Ctrl+Zto undo. F1 shows the full list. - Sort and groupName or date, ascending/descending. Group a parent folder by shoot with configurable depth.
- Five color labelsRed, yellow, green, blue, purple — written as standard XMP.
- Wide RAW supportCanon (CR3, CR2), Nikon (NEF, NRW), Sony (ARW, SR2), Adobe DNG, Fujifilm (RAF), Panasonic (RW2), Olympus (ORF), Pentax (PEF), Hasselblad (3FR, FFF), Samsung (SRW).
- Zoom and inspect1:1 pixel view, fit-to-screen, pan.
- Second-screen modePress
F11to open a fullscreen view of the currently selected image on a second monitor — you keep working in grid or loupe on the main screen while a client watches along on the second. - SlideshowPress
Sto auto-advance through the current selection or filter — speed configurable, runs in the loupe, combines withFfor fullscreen orF11for second-monitor projection. - EXIF panelCamera, lens, focal length, aperture, shutter, ISO, date, pixel size, artist, copyright — toggle in the Loupe with
I.
System requirements
Minimum
- OS
- Windows 10 21H2 or Windows 11, 64-bit
- CPU
- 4 cores
- RAM
- 8 GB
- Storage
- SATA SSD — HDDs are not supported
Recommended
- OS
- Windows 11, 64-bit
- CPU
- 8+ cores
- RAM
- 16 GB
- Storage
- NVMe SSD, ≥ 1 GB/s sequential read
Frequently asked
Does FlashView import Lightroom catalogs?
No. FlashView works on folders only — no database, no catalog, nothing to import. Ratings are stored as XMP: inside the file for JPEG, as an XMP sidecar next to the file for RAW. Readable in and out of any XMP-compatible tool (Lightroom, Bridge, Photo Mechanic, digiKam).
How are ratings stored?
As standard XMP. Inside the file for JPEGs, as an XMP sidecar next to the file for RAW. No proprietary database, nothing you can’t later get out of.
Color labels not recognized?
Lightroom Classic stores color labels in the UI language: German Lightroom expects “Rot, Gelb, Grün …”, everything else (English Lightroom, Bridge, digiKam, Capture One, darktable) the English values. If FlashView writes the wrong variant, the tool doesn’t recognize the label — Lightroom shows a white flag, other tools show nothing or the wrong color. Fix: Settings → General → Metadata → Color labels compatible with — set this to your main tool. On first launch FlashView guesses based on UI language. Reading works either way.
How long does the beta last?
The beta runs 6 months from the day you install it — a small beta-tester goodie. Before it ends, we’ll reach out in time with the next step. Your settings and ratings are preserved either way.
What does “not code-signed” mean for me?
Browsers and Windows show warnings because the publisher isn’t (yet) certified. Your antivirus still scans the file. Code-signing costs money — for a hobby project, a lot. If FlashView ever becomes a big success, we’ll take care of it.
RAW performance?
RAW preview uses the embedded JPEG from the RAW file — not the full RAW resolution. Canon, Nikon and Sony are tested extensively and run nearly as fast as JPEG. Other formats (DNG, RAF, RW2, ORF, PEF, 3FR, FFF, SRW) work too, with somewhat lighter test coverage. Deliberate choice: more than enough for viewing and review, and orders of magnitude faster than full RAW decoding.
When does FlashView slow down?
Two hard limits: HDDs are not supported — FlashView works heavily in parallel and spinning-disk heads can’t keep up. And weak hardware: old CPU, low RAM. Large, high-resolution JPEGs on an underpowered machine will eventually feel sluggish — usually still faster than other tools, but at that point it’s physics.
Color management / ICC profiles?
FlashView works purely in sRGB — no profile conversion, no color management pipeline. Deliberate choice for speed: anyone who needs to judge color pixel-perfect needs the editor anyway. For viewing and culling it makes no difference.
Is there a cache?
Yes, a thumbnail cache — otherwise previews would have to be re-decoded every time you switch view. The cache lives locally and holds only generated thumbnails, none of your images or data. Size is shown in Settings; you can clear it there anytime.
What’s the difference between “Standard” and “Performance” thumbnails?
Standard (480 px) gives sharper previews and is the recommended default. Performance (320 px) is better for slower computers and uses less disk space for thumbnails. Switch any time via Settings → Display → Thumbnail.
Does FlashView replace Lightroom / Photo Mechanic?
FlashView is primarily a fast, lean, clear photo tool for Windows — for viewing. Rating comes on top and supports real workflows: culling with models, or — combined with StarRate (Nextcloud plugin) — with external reviewers too.
Is my data sent anywhere?
FlashView works purely locally. Single network call: the update check, once per day — it lets you know in a friendly way when a new version is out.
What do “Recursive” and “Group depth” do?
Two different things, often confused.
Recursion (key R): scans all subfolders, no depth cap. There’s no mode that limits this — deliberate, because a photo folder either contains the images you want or it doesn’t; nesting depth doesn’t change that.
Group depth (toolbar / settings): controls the visual grouping in the grid, not the scan. Only active when “Group images by folder hierarchy” is enabled in settings. Defines which folder level becomes the divider: at depth 1, all images from “2025/*” sit together in one block; at depth 2, each shoot gets its own group — all images from “Wedding-Mueller” land together in the grid, separated from the next shoot. Does not limit how deep the scan goes.
What does the cloud icon on some of my images mean?
The cloud icon marks files that currently live only in your cloud storage (OneDrive, Nextcloud, Dropbox, iCloud …) and haven’t been downloaded locally yet. FlashView intentionally skips thumbnails for these files — otherwise opening a large folder would silently pull gigabytes from your cloud.
If you do want previews, the preferences offer a setting called “Auto-load thumbnails for cloud-only files”. Heads up: with this on, FlashView downloads each original image to build the thumbnail — on big libraries that quickly turns into many GB of local disk and cloud traffic.
Mac / Linux?
Mac: no. Linux: doable, but far on the roadmap.
Behind FlashView
FlashView is built by Mathias Mischler, a hobby photographer of 15 years. The idea came from testing other photo viewers for sister project StarRate — every one of them choked on large archives with recursive views. A quick prototype was already dramatically faster on day one. That was the spark for FlashView.
People and portrait photography: @merlin1.de on Instagram →
Beta access & feedback
FlashView is in closed beta — a small group of photographers testing the limits of what a Windows viewer can do.
If you shoot in volume and care about speed, we’d be glad to hear from you.