IrfanView 4.76

Most image viewers ask you to wait. IrfanView opens before you have let go of the mouse.

That is the whole appeal: a 3MB program that reads well over a hundred formats, converts a folder of them in one pass, and has been maintained by the same developer since 1996.

It is not trying to be Photoshop, and it is much better for it.

Which Download to Take

Three builds are offered and the choice is simpler than it looks. There is also a separate PlugIns pack, and most people do want it.

• 64-bit - the right answer on any modern PC. It handles very large images and very large batches without running out of memory.
• 32-bit - for older machines, and for the handful of third-party PlugIns that were never rebuilt for 64-bit. It runs perfectly well on 64-bit Windows if you prefer it.
• 64-bit ARM - for Windows on ARM laptops, such as Snapdragon X machines, where it runs natively instead of through emulation.
• PlugIns pack - a separate installer that adds the modern and specialist formats. Install it unless you only ever open JPEGs.

Windows XP through 11 are all supported, which is unusual and genuinely useful if you keep an old machine running.

What It Opens

The everyday formats need nothing extra: JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, ICO, TGA and PCX all open on a clean install.

The modern ones come with the PlugIns pack, which is IrfanView's own add-on rather than a Windows codec. That covers AVIF, HEIC, WebP, JPEG XL and JPEG 2000, plus camera RAW files from most manufacturers.

If you are here because a specific file will not open, our Codec Finder will tell you what it actually is before you install anything. The full list IrfanView claims is on the developer's formats page, with an asterisk marking everything that needs a PlugIn.

The Parts That Save Real Time

Plenty of viewers have a feature list. These are the four that people actually come back for.

• Batch conversion - convert, resize, crop, rename and filter hundreds of images in one pass. This is the single biggest reason people keep IrfanView installed alongside something prettier.
• Thumbnails and directory view - a folder of a few thousand photos opens as a grid without the pause you get from Windows Photos, which matters most on older or slower machines.
• Multipage TIFF editing - view, edit and pull out individual pages, which is a scanning and document-archive job most viewers simply refuse.
• Screen capture - grab a window, a region or the whole screen and edit it in the same program, with no second tool in the chain.

Beyond those, it takes Adobe Photoshop filter plugins directly, searches a collection by name, date or size, and lets you move the toolbar or reskin it if the defaults grate.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

The interface is dense and unapologetically old-fashioned, and that is the trade for the speed.

• You want a modern, touch-friendly viewer - nomacs is the cleaner-looking option.
• You want a full photo manager with tagging and cataloguing - that is XnView.
• You shoot RAW and want proper developing rather than viewing - darktable does that job.
• You want a viewer with a built-in capture and annotation workflow - FastStone Image Viewer pairs with FastStone Capture.

What Is New in 4.76

• Support for animated AVIF files.
• The toolbar can now sit on the left or right edge instead of the top, under Properties then Toolbar.
• Freehand selection, under Edit then Set selection shape, for cropping around something that is not a rectangle.
• Multi-monitor wallpaper: pick which screen gets the image from the Wallpaper menu, or set it per screen from a script with the new /monitor=number switch alongside /wall.
• The Thumbnails window gained a Favorite folders list, up to fifteen, and you can now paste a folder path straight into its folder box and press Enter.
• Zoom Magnifier changes, including a different starting zoom and CTRL plus click to jump to 100%.
• Paint PlugIn: smooth lines as an option, and a fix for the Clone tool.
• Several PlugIns were updated, so reinstall the pack after upgrading.

The full version history goes back to 1996 if you want to see how little has been broken along the way.