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XnView vs Xee

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When comparing XnView vs Xee, the Slant community recommends Xee for most people. In the question“What are the best image viewers for OS X?” Xee is ranked 1st while XnView is ranked 4th. The most important reason people chose Xee is:

It's good for browsing through folders with pictures. Double click one picture, then use left/right to go to next previous (Modeled after Windows XP image viewer).

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

Common Questions

What are the best image viewers for OS X?

Pros

Pro
Supports over 500 image formats

Pro
Includes simple editing tools

Typical image editing tools are included. For instance, there are tools for color and size manipulation, several filters and effects.

Pro
Available for macOS, Linux and Windows

Pro
Easy redate and view configuration

Pro
Compare images side-by-side

To delete blurry phone pics, etc.

Pro
Multi-lingual

XnView speaks over 30 languages.

Pro
Portable version for Windows available

Pro
Easy to browse through picture folders quickly

It's good for browsing through folders with pictures. Double click one picture, then use left/right to go to next previous (Modeled after Windows XP image viewer).

Pro
Very good quality pics

Pro
Recompiled open source version 2 can run on Mojave in 64-bit

Version 2.x was open source and so can be recompiled to run on Mojave 64-bit with some source code modification. Thanks to the author who left some old code that works well in 64-bit. But 64-bit has some restrictions. QuickTime.framework is not available so Xee will not open QuickTime files.

You can download and try 64-bit Xee build here.

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Cons

Con
Very poor quality and very invazive on windows 10

Convert all images to 8bit rgb
[not suport 16bit or 32bit, cmyk, Lab, multichannel] so you never be able to see real original image, you only see the result of conversion...on windows 10 it enforced self promotion to default app for every type/format of image...

Con
No Dark mode

Con
No custom installation - if you need i.e. a language package, you need to install the full version

Con
Free only for private use

For use in a company 1 license starts at 26 EUR.

Con
Doesn't show movies on phone in correct position

Some of mp4 files shows in upside down position.

Con
Doesn't pan/zoom fluidly with touchscreen

Con
Abandoned by developer

The developer no longer responds to support or giving info about the app development roadmap.

Con
Lacks next gen image format support

Newer generation of images like HEIC and AVIF are not supported. Developers no longer maintain the app.

Con
M1/2: Fails randomly to load images

Con
Cropping doesn't work

On the latest MacOS (Monterey), cropping no longer works.

Con
Not for new M1 chip Mac's

Cannot handle with new chips M1 of Apple.

Con
Basic features missing

Con
It's free only for 1 month

Con
Not for new systems

Cannot handle Mojave.

Con
Display bugs in copy/move panel and random restarts

Move/Copy panel items randomly disappear. Viewer also randomly restarts a the beginning of a folder if you delete or move files too quickly. Can't assign shortcuts to more than 10 move/copy destinations.