Announcing ImageGlass 10 Release Candidate

Following the successful beta releases of the complete rewrite, this Release Candidate (RC) milestone brings ImageGlass 10 closer to a final stable release. This version introduces a refreshed Fluent 2 design, a comprehensive built-in Settings GUI, a brand-new Quick Setup experience, and critical security hardening for the plugin ecosystem.

ImageGlass 10 is built from the ground up using a modern .NET stack and the Avalonia UI framework, moving the application beyond Windows to run natively across multiple platforms from a single, unified codebase.

⚠️ Security Alert: Fake Repositories and AI Threat Mitigation

Automated malicious campaigns are actively deploying AI tools to impersonate trusted software. They stand up fake GitHub profiles and standalone Gists designed to trick users into downloading compromised packages. Please enforce the following verification steps on every installation:

Only use official channels: Always download ImageGlass directly from the official website (https://imageglass.org). Never download binaries from third-party mirrors, unverified GitHub forks, or standalone GitHub Gists.
Verify the repository source: The only authentic spaces for this project on GitHub are the official d2phap/ImageGlass repository and the ImageGlass Organization. Any other profile or fork promising 'portable patches', 'extended releases', or alternative mirrors is completely unauthorized and highly likely to contain malware.
Check the URL: Double-check your browser address bar to ensure you are not visiting a typosquatted domain.

If you identify an unauthorized mirror, submit a report immediately to help keep the community safe.

Community Plugins and Tools Showcase

I have created a dedicated space to explore and download extensions for ImageGlass 10. You can visit the showcase directories directly:

ImageGlass Plugins: Native plugins to extend ImageGlass capabilities.
ImageGlass Tools: External applications integrated with ImageGlass features.

The ecosystem is already growing, highlighted by the release of the ImageGlass Ithmb Plugin, which stands as the first .ithmb codec plugin for the platform.

New Features

1. Native Settings GUI and Quick Setup

This release introduces a fully-fledged, native application settings interface. Key additions include:

Support for searching settings by key and localized name.
A dedicated GUI dialog to add and edit custom toolbar buttons.
Official support for hotkey remapping.
Codec name visibility within file type associations to show exactly what is decoding your images.
An integrated interface to view and manage your plugins.

A new Quick Setup window will now greet you on the first launch to streamline configuration. If you need to bypass this dialog on deployment, you can set the QuickSetupVersion value to 10 in igconfig.json or igconfig.default.json.

2. Advanced Diagnostic and CLI Commands

This release adds new command-line arguments for troubleshooting, profile tracing, and system integration:

--ig-startup-trace: Enables the startup profiler and writes an ig_startup_trace.log file to the _logs folder in the Config directory.
--ig-photo-trace: Enables the photo loading profiler and writes an ig_photo_trace.log file to the _logs folder in the Config directory.
--ig-no-quick-setup: Suppresses the forced startup Quick Setup wizard for the current launch.
--ig-set-default-viewer: Registers the app as the default photo viewer for supported extensions (Windows only).
--ig-remove-default-viewer: Unregisters the app as the default photo viewer (Windows only).

A new DPI tag has been added to the image information overlay. Additionally, you can enable the EnableAutoSwitchSiblingDir setting to automatically switch to a sibling directory when you reach the end of your current image list.

Improvements and Security Hardening

Fluent 2 Design: The application GUI has been updated to follow Fluent 2 design principles, including improved accent color shade computation for better readability.
Hardened Plugin Security: To ensure user safety, plugins are now hashed and require manual validation before use. The app will automatically detect and disable plugins that change unexpectedly. Administrators can also manage plugin policies using the new 'PluginTrust' setting, which blocks plugins from overriding built-in codecs (Magick, Skia) by default.
Core Upgrades: Under-the-hood dependencies have been upgraded to Magick.NET v14.15 and Avalonia 12.1.
Smart Precaching: Slideshow playback will now always precache the next image, even if 'CacheMaxMemoryInMb' is set to 0.
App Scope for Default Viewer Setting: Setting ImageGlass as default viewer now auto-detects per-user or per-machine installations and updates registry keys accordingly.

Bugfixes & Stability

This update resolves several critical platform-specific and core stability bugs:

Color Profiles: Fixed an issue where CMYK-based color profiles failed to apply correctly.
HEIC Format: Fixed a Magick MaxItems policy limit that blocked users from opening and exporting multi-frame HEIC files.
Windows Fixes: Resolved a critical startup crash on Windows 10 LTSC 2021.
macOS / Linux UI: Standardized tooltip font sizes on macOS and fixed an issue where the dialog footer background remained entirely transparent.
Linux Sandboxing: Fixed a bug preventing external tools from running within sandboxed Flatpak deployments.

Try ImageGlass 10 RC

Please ensure you only download ImageGlass releases from the official website to safeguard against security risks.

If you encounter bugs, have suggestions, or want to read more about the development timeline, check out the official Roadmap Update Discussion.

Download ImageGlass 10 RC