XnView 2.52.5 / XnView MP 1.11.6

XnView opens more than 500 image formats and lets you browse, sort and batch-convert a whole photo folder from one window.

It comes in two editions, and unless your PC is old or runs 32-bit Windows, the one to install is XnView MP.

It is free for personal, educational and non-profit use, while companies are required to buy a licence.

What XnView Actually Does

XnView is three tools in one program: a viewer, a photo browser and a batch processor. The main window works like File Explorer filled with thumbnails, so you can scan a folder of pictures at a glance and double-click any of them to open it full screen.

Light editing is built in - crop, resize, rotate, brightness and colour fixes, plus lossless JPEG rotation, which turns a photo without re-saving it and losing quality. You also get side-by-side comparison of up to four images, a duplicate file finder, slideshows, printing, scanning and screen capture.

The batch tools are where it saves real time. You can convert, rename or change the dates on hundreds of files in one pass, and edit metadata - the camera details, captions and keywords stored inside each photo - without opening every file.

XnView MP or XnView Classic?

Both editions come from the same developer, XnSoft, and they share the same way of working.

XnView Classic is the original Windows program, and XnSoft now lists it as legacy. XnView MP is the rebuild - 64-bit, available for Windows, macOS and Linux, and the edition the developer recommends.

The quickest tell is where your photos come from. If they come off an iPhone, choose MP - Classic cannot open HEIC files at all.

Classic still earns its place on a 32-bit or very old Windows PC, and some long-time users simply prefer the interface they already know.

Which File to Download

The download page lists seven files, and they are not seven copies of the same thing. Every Classic file there is a zip, so each one runs without installing, including the two not labelled portable.

To check which Windows you have, open Settings, then System, then About, and read the line called System type.

With the MP zip, extract the folder somewhere permanent such as Documents rather than running it from inside the zip. Then start XnView MP from that folder, and pin it to Start if you will use it often.

Batch Jobs, and XnView's Two Siblings

The batch converter is the feature people stay for. Point it at a folder and it can turn every HEIC into a JPG, shrink a holiday album for email or rename a whole shoot into date order, all in one run.

XnSoft also offers the same engine as two standalone tools. XnConvert is the batch converter on its own, and NConvert is the command-line version for people who script their image jobs.

Both sit in the Graphics section, and our guide to converting HEIC to JPG in XnConvert walks through the most common job step by step.

For one or two files you would rather not install anything for, you can convert HEIC or HEIF photos to JPG in your browser instead.

What XnView Does Not Change in Windows

XnView MP opens HEIC, AVIF and JPEG XL inside its own window, but File Explorer and the Photos app do not use XnView to read them. They rely on decoders installed in Windows itself, which is why those files can still show blank icons in Explorer after XnView is installed.

For iPhone photos, Windows needs the HEIF Image Extensions together with the HEVC Video Extensions.

For camera RAW files, the Raw Image Extension does the same job.

The other two formats have their own fixes, covered in our guides to viewing JPEG XL files on Windows and viewing AVIF files on Windows.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

The tell is whether you want to sort and look at photos or change what is in them. XnView's editing stops at fixes and adjustments, with no layers and nothing like a full retouching toolkit.

For layered editing and retouching, GIMP and paint.net are the free places to go.

If you shoot camera RAW and want to develop the files rather than just preview them, darktable is built for exactly that.

At work, the licence matters. XnView needs a paid licence for company use, whereas nomacs is open source with no paid tier, and the Classic edition of ImageGlass is open source too.

If you only want a quick viewer with none of the organising, JPEGView opens images and gets out of the way.

IrfanView and FastStone Image Viewer are the two all-rounders XnView is most often weighed against.

Everything else is in the Image Viewers section.

Quick questions

Download XnView MP 1.11.6 or Classic 2.52.5 and see how it handles your photo folder, or tell us how you got on if you have used it before.