New Features in XnViewMP

[jkm]

Scroll Down in This Thread for Info on Other Versions.

New Features in 1.10.1
Tue Feb 24, 2026


XnViewMP 1.10.1 was just released, so I wanted to give everyone an overview of the new features.

This is another big update. A tremendous amount of coding and testing went into this update, so hopefully everyone will find it beneficial.

A big Thank You to Pierre, as always!

There are some really nice new features and changes in this version.

The biggest new feature is is a radically enhanced Details View, with customizable, user-configurable metadata columns, and saved column presets:

Enhanced Details View with Customizable (Exiftool) Columns

Now any metadata accessible with Exiftool can be added as a column in Details view! This allows you to create completely customized columns, presenting whatever metadata you need.

If you right-click on the header row in Details view, you will get the option to go to a new Settings page for adjusting the columns in Details view, to replace the old right-click menu. It's located at Settings:Browser:Details Columns

In this dialog, you'll see on the right a tree view of available metadata fields on the right, and down there at the bottom is a tree of all the Exiftool fields for your images. This allows you to create customized columns, using all the metadata accessible with Exiftool. There is a filter available at the top: just start typing your field name, and you'll see the matches. Double click a field, or select it and use the left-arrow button to add it. You can add as many columns as you like.

In the left-side of the dialog, the first entry field (Label) allows you to configure a custom label that will be displayed as the column header.

Once your Exiftool columns are in the Details view, you can re-order them or sort by them (by clicking the column header) as you would with any built-in field.

This is a very powerful new feature. For anyone that has ever used the "Exiftool-GUI" utility, you'll recognize that you'll be able to get easy and valuable insight into your images using this functionality. Basically anything that you used to have to use Exiftool-GUI for, you can now do natively inside XnViewMP!


Details View Presets

This is another very powerful feature.

In this Details columns settings dialog, you can also define and load different configurations of columns.

So you can show a particular set of columns, set their widths and order just as you like, and then save that as a preset. You can save as many different column set presets as you'd like. When you select a saved preset, the view will be restored exactly as it was when you saved it.

This eliminates a lot of hassle when trying to view different sets of data, so that you don't have to have everything on one endlessly-horizontally-scrolling view.

Once you define your presets, you will also be able to quickly select them directly by right-clicking on the column headers.

This is really great for quickly switching between different datasets... You could for example have one preset with all your essential EXIF data, and another preset with all your descriptive IPTC or XMP tags.

It makes Details View much more nimble and efficient.


Autocomplete for Exiftool fields in the Search dialog
When you're in the Search dialog and adding an Exiftool Value to search by, there is now an autocompleter available. As you start typing the field name, possible matches will instantly appear under your entry field. You can select one to use the autocompletion.

For some field names, like WhiteBalance, you may see duplicates appear with different prefixes, such as EXIF: and Makernotes: . This is normal, because some tags in different metadata groups have the same name. So your camera may have a EXIF:WhiteBalance field and also a Makernotes:WhiteBalance field. The fields may contain the same information, or different information. That's up to your camera manufacturer, and does not indicate any sort of defect in Exiftool or XnViewMP.

Use Specific Exiftool values in Labels or the Info Overlay
When displaying values in Labels or the Info Overlay, you can now access a specific tag out of several with the same name by specifying the metadata group for the specific tag you want. The syntax is {Exiftool:group:tag}. Group can be exif, makernotes, xmp, iptc, or other groups supported by Exiftool. (Read the Exiftool documentation for more information.) So for example, to return the White Balance tag from the XMP data in the file, you would specify:
{Exiftool:xmp:whitebalance}

Create File Listing has been enhanced
-This function now has a menu to choose for the file listing one of the user-defined Details Columns presets, or the current Details View layout
-The function now allows changing of the delimiter character

This is a very helpful enhancement for those that use the File Listing function. Using Details View or a preset is now the easiest way to create the format for file listing reports, as it allows easier insertion or reordering of new columns.


There are many other nice enhancements, based on a lot of user feedback:

-Many more fields are available in the Details view. All EXIF, IPTC, and XMP fields are available.
For the first time, any field or tag available in XnViewMP can be a column in Details view. Everything is sortable, and this means all fields are also available in the file listing.

-Improved EXIF Metadata Editing
There is a new "Edit EXIF" function available from the Metadata menu, to allow you to visually edit common EXIF metadata.

One note about "Edit EXIF": The checkboxes by the date fields will enable the writing of dates to a file that does not have the date field. If you leave them unchecked, the fields will not be added.

Catalog Filter Improvements
-Any Tree in the catalog filter can be individually hidden if you don't need it. Click the gear/settings button in the top-right corner of the Catalog Filter pane.

-Scope and match mode of the catalog filter are now visible instead of hidden behind a menu

-Counts are now available for more nodes in the Catalog Filter, like Color or Rating. Counts will update when tags are changed or items added or removed from the catalog.

-Counts on the Properties (EXIF) tree will now update when changing scope between Global and Current Folder.

-Counts can be right-aligned by use of the hidden option:
[Browser]
catAlignRight=true

Layout improvements
Any layout can now be made into a filmstrip-style layout. Create a layout based on any of the preconfigured layouts, and make your browser 1 thumbnail tall (or wide, for vertical filmstrips), and save the layout. Now edit the layout#.dat file corresponding to your layout: A=1,B=2,C=3,D=4,E=5. In the [Browser] section, you can add a line:
scrollDirection=

The possible values are -1, 0, or 1 for -1=default, 0=horizontal, 1=vertical.
So scrollDirection=0 will change the browser to horizontal scroll.
Save your edit to the layout#.dat file, and then in XnViewMP, reload the layout to activate the changes.

Thumbail Display Size (Thumbnail Scaling) is now saved and restored with a Saved Layout. This is the size of the displayed thumbnail, set with the toolbar slider, or View->Thumbnail Size. This allows you to have different saved layouts with different thumbnail sizes appropriate to the size of the browser pane.

-Additional User Interface Updates

-Sessions (open tabs) can be manually loaded/saved with File->Session

-In the metadata menu, Tag/Untag has been changed to Check/Uncheck for clarity.

-The "Edit Metadata" function has been renamed "Add/Replace Metadata" for clarity

-Indentation of the tree in the Folders panel can be adjusted with a hidden setting:
[%General]
treeIndentation=18

18 is the default, but can be increased or decreased to your preference.

A long post, but there are a lot of enhancements!

With the excellent new Details View enhancements, for the first time in XnViewMP you can easily view all the information about your files at once. Metadata is also a lot more accessible than before. And there are Layout and Interface improvements that people have been asking for.

Hopefully everyone will find something that they really like in this new update.

[jkm]

New Features in 1.9.6
Tue Dec 02, 2025

XnviewMP 1.9.6 was released today, and this brings some major improvements to the app. A big "Thank you!" to Pierre for his excellent work!

Since Pierre is a man of very few words, especially in the Changelog, there are some notes there that may undersell what some of the new features are, so I thought I would do a post to describe some of them in a bit more detail.

The major enhancements in 1.9.6, which then drive some other new capabilities, are:

• Comprehensive Camera Metadata Support through Exiftool, including Makernotes
• Advanced Search grouping and multiple boolean operators
• Smart Albums

Based on those new capabilities, several other improvements have been made:

• New searchable field: Exiftoolvalue
• Using Exiftool fields in Labels has been improved
• Items in the search dialog can be moved and re-ordered with drag and drop
• There is an option to automatically dismiss the search dialog on Browse
• Collections
• Album Improvements
• Bonus: Show files in subfolders now works in the Favorites pane

So briefly, here's a description of the new features:

Full Exiftool metadata support
XnViewMP can now process and store ALL data accessible using exiftool, including makernotes, and all this data is instantly searchable. This is a real game-changer for metadata support in XnViewMP.

In Settings:Metadata there is an option under Import called "Exiftool". (Formerly found in Settings:Catalog as "Store Exiftool Fields") If you check this, and then click the "Update metadata" button, XnViewMP will scan all the files in your catalog, and cache in the database all the exiftool information. This process is multithreaded and is quite fast, although the total time will depend on the size of your library and the speed of your system. Once this box is checked, if you browse to a never-before-browsed folder or import new images, all their metadata will be automatically imported, so clicking the "Update Metadata" button is only necessary when you first enable the feature.

It doesn't matter what camera your images were taken with. If exiftool supports your camera (the support is very comprehensive) then it will automatically be supported in XnViewMP.

All this new data will also be instantly searchable; simply check "Search in Catalog only" in the search dialog. In the Search dialog, there is a new searchable field: "Exiftool Value". Simply add this item to your Search, and you will be presented with two fields, with a changeable operator in between. In the first field, enter the name of the field as shown by exiftool, without spaces. In the second field, enter the value you're searching for. The default operator is "contains" but you can change it.

So for example, to search the field "White Balance 2" you could enter:
Exiftool Value ____whitebalance2_____ contains _____manual_____

This would find all files where the "White Balance 2" field contains the word manual. Field names and values are case insensitive. The field name support wildcards, so you could enter "white*" to match against all fields starting with "white", which would look at fields including "White Balance", "White Balance 2", "White Balance Temperature" and so on.

Sometimes, camera metadata contains fields with duplicate names. For example, there is a standard Exif Field named "Exposure Mode" but some manufacturers also have a separate "Exposure Mode" field in MakerNotes that contains different data. XnViewMP allows you to disambiguate these fields. Simply preface the field name with the exiftool reporting group, like this:
makernotes:exposureprogram

This will search the "Exposure Program" field in the Makernotes group, instead of the one in the Exif group. You can use "exif:", "makernotes:", or "composite:" The "file:" prefix is not needed, since XnViewMP supports all that data internally using fields selectable from the menu.

This metadata support is an incredibly powerful new feature, and it has extra significance in that it provides XnViewMP with a certain amount of future-proofing. New cameras come out all the time, and manufacturers change metadata formats. Exiftool is constantly updated to keep up with these changes. If there's a new version of Exiftool that supports your new camera, simply replace the version of exiftool that comes with XnViewMP with the updated exiftool, run "Update Metadata" again, and all the newly supported metadata will be added to the XnViewMP database.

Unfortunately there is no way at present to display the Exiftool fields like makernotes in a Details view, but "Lens Model" has been added.
(Update: Details View was later enhanced to allow the display of Makernotes and other fields in version 1.10.1)

Lastly, if you have this feature turned on, then using {Exiftool:} items in Labels will be instantaneous, since it will pull the information from the database, instead of using exiftool to re-read the information from the files every time you browse a folder.

Advanced Search grouping and multiple boolean operators
This new feature radically upgrades the Search dialog in XnView MP.

From the Search Dialog, click Add and select GROUP. You can add as many groups as you need.

Each group has its own internal boolean operator for matching within the group (he intra-group operator). The "Match All / Any" buttons in the top-right corner of the Conditions area specify the boolean operator that applies BETWEEN groups (the inter-group operator); All corresponds to AND, and Any corresponds to OR.

This allows you to build complex searches that were previously impossible, for example:

(Exif:FocalLength=300mm AND Exif:F-Number=4) AND (Exif:Maker=Nikon OR Exif:Maker=Canon)

This would show you the 300mm f/4 images in your catalog taken with Nikon or Canon cameras, but excluding Sony or Fuji cameras.

Each group can have as many items as necessary. Items can be dragged and dropped to move them between groups if necessary to make it easier to build your search.

Smart Albums
Smart Albums appear in the Catalog Pane. As in other image cataloging software, a Smart Album is an album with dynamic contents based on specified criteria. In essence, a smart album is a saved search. Any set of criteria you can conceive to make a search, you can save as a Smart Album. There is a new "Save as Smart Album" button on the Search dialog, or you can Right-Click on the Smart Album tree to Create a New Smart Album.

You can also create a Smart Album using the Catalog pane. Simple select multiple items in the Catalog Pane using Control-Click. Then you can Right-Click on one of those items and you'll have the option to "Create Smart Album from current filter". So you could, for example ctrl-click to select 4-star, 5-star, and Color:To Do, and then create a smart album that contains 4 and 5 star images with the To-Do (blue) color set.

You can right-click on a Smart Album to Edit it, Delete it, Rename it, etc.

Collections and Album improvements
You may be familiar with other software which has "Collections", or a set of Albums. This allows you, for example, to create a Collection for a particular client, and then have individual albums within that, each representing separate jobs or assignments. Or you might have a Collection "Holiday Photos" and within it separate albums for all the different travel holidays you've had over the years.

XnViewMP can now do this too. It's all done though the Albums tree. One Album can contain other Albums, just like collections. Modifying or deleting albums has also been made easier. Adding photos to new albums via right-click is also easier, since the Album list is now dynamic, with no need to restart the application. Create a new album, and you can immediately right-click on images and add them to the newly created album.



I think I've hit the major points.

Hopefully this will help people to make full use of the fantastic new capabilities in the app that Pierre has worked very hard to provide.

[jkm]

New Features in 1.9.4
Mon Sep 29, 2025

Since there are so many new features in XnViewMP 1.9.4, I thought it would be helpful to have a thread dedicated to general questions or comments about these new features.

First, thanks to Pierre for adding so much capability to the app. Bravo!

I'll start us off with a tip:

When you launch 1.9.4 for the first time, you can see a message that says:
"You need to update the catalog (Settings>Catalog>Update metadatas) if you want to use new node in 'Catalog Filter'"

Here's what this is about, and what to do (for people that have the Catalog enabled)...

Date and Exif Properties Trees in the Catalog Filter
In the Catalog Filter pane, there are several new items, including a "Date" tree and a “Properties” (EXIF) tree. These new trees allow you to browse your images by metadata.

In order to populate this information in the Catalog Filter, your database must be updated. Go to Settings:Catalog and you will see an "Update Metadata" button in the lower right corner. Clicking this button will update your database and refresh the metadata. This process will take a short time, from a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on the size of your catalog.

Another tip that is not obvious:
The "Date" tree by default organizes files by "Date Taken" from the metadata. This metadata field would ordinarily be set by your camera. You can change to using a Date from another source by right-clicking on the word "Date" at the top of the Date tree and selecting an option from the menu that appears.

Another tip... It's listed in the release notes as a bug fix but actually there's a new feature.
The QuickFilter now has an option to search XMP data. Click on the "magnifying glass" icon at the left end of the Quick Filter box and you'll see a checkbox to enable XMP fields.

Favorites Tab in the Info Panel
In the Info Panel, there is now a Favorites tab, where you can add the metadata items from any of the other tabs that you use most.
Simply right-click on an item to add it to Favorites. If something is in the Favorites panel, you can remove it by right-clicking.

New version of Exiftool
XnViewMP is now bundled with a modern version of Exiftool that is much faster when collecting metadata, and supports many more cameras/lenses/fields than the previously bundled version.

[jkm]

New Features in 1.10.4
Thu Mar 12, 2026

Version 1.10.4 was mostly a bug-fix release, but it does contain one new feature...

Multiple Output Sizes with Batch Convert

In the Batch Convert function, it is now possible to produced multiple resized versions of an input file in a single step. The function is primarily intended to produce "thumbnail" versions of files.

The new feature is located on the Output tab of the Batch Convert dialog.
To the right of the folder entry field you will see a "Multiple resolution..." button and immediately to its left a checkbox to enable it.

Enable the checkbox, and click the Multiple Resolutions button, and you will be presented with a dialog to configure the additional sizes you want.

In that dialog, you can use the + button to create multiple output resolutions.

The entry field on the left of each line is the directory where that particular resolution will be placed; so you can create 4 different resolutions in 4 different directories if desired.

It is important to understand this "Multiple Resolutions" feature is processed at the output stage, after all Actions at the Action stage have been applied. So you will get resized versions of your final converted image, as processed in Actions. The aspect ratio of any images created by the "Multiple resolutions" dialog will match that of the image after processing by the Actions stage. Since these are additional copies aside from the main conversion, the convert progress dialog may report 1 new file, even if you have 4 additional files (for a total of 5) created in the multiple resolutions dialog.

The dialog will remember the last used settings. You can remove entries you've added with the - button.

Some additional notes on this feature that might not be obvious:

• If you leave the folder entry field blank, that file will be placed in the normal output directory for Batch Convert alongside the main output file
• The directory entry fields will not honor typed-in relative paths, like "../thumb ". Those will be treated as non-existent directories.
• Unless you leave the directory field blank, it must contain an already existing absolute path. For non-existent directories, the output file will not be created.
• All the resizing done by the multiple resolutions dialog is proportional; your exact x-y dimensions will be ignored as necessary to preserve aspect ratio.
• Although it looks like you can enter arbitrary dimensions, sizes larger than the Actions-processed output image will not be honored. This dialog produces only smaller versions. If you enter dimensions larger than the size created by the Actions tab, it will be reduced in execution to the size delivered from the actions tab. So in other words, if on the actions tab your resize is to 800x600, and you enter 2000x2000 on the multiple resolution dialog, the multiple-resolution copy will be 800x600, not 2000x2000.
• Output files will have the final dimensions in their name.
• All the files created by the "multiple resolutions" feature also get "thumb" in their name. e.g. "OutputFilename_thumb_128x128.jpg"
• You can control the location and dimensions of the "Multiple output" files, that's it.

[jkm]

New Features in 1.11.1
Tue Mar 28, 2026

Version 1.11.1 is mostly about bug fixes, but there are some notable enhancements worth mentioning...


Right at the top, an important note!

IMPORTANT NOTE:
To enable new functionality in this version, after upgrading to XnViewMP 1.11.1 you MUST perform a one-time "Update Metadata" found in Tools->Settings:Catalog. This may take a few minutes, depending on the size of your catalog.


Now, about those new features...


Audio Companion Files
XnViewMP now support Audio Companion files!

Some cameras have the capability to make small audio recordings as you're taking still images, for comments by the photographer or other purposes. These files are now seamlessly supported in the app. To be considered an Audio Companion File, standard naming rules must be followed: the audio file must have the same base name as the image file, and be in the same directory.

There are some settings associated with this feature:

• To ensure your companion files are seamlessly handled with your master files, make sure you add the extension for your audio companion files to Settings:File List:Companion Files for the appropriate master file type.
• You can enable an overlay icon for Audio Companion Files in Settings:Thumbnail:Overlay Icons
• Settings:View:Misc:Auto-play audio companion files
  This setting will automatically play the audio companion file when you select the image in the Browser, or open it in the Viewer.

If you don't enable automatic playback, you can still play the Audio Companion File manually.

• In the Viewer, there is a menu command on the View menu: Play Stop Audio Companion
• Additionally, there is a command, cmd_AudioCompanion, that can be added to the toolbars, the right-click menu, or assigned to a shortcut key. This command can be used in the Browser or Viewer.

Show Highlight/Shadow Clipping
This is a really helpful update to Viewing capabilities, and something users have been wanting for many years.

Clipping is accessed primarily though the Histogram (the Panel in the Browser, or the Overlay in the Viewer). In the left and right corners of the histogram are triangle indicators that when clicked will activate Shadow Clipping and Highlight Clipping. You can also right-click on the Histogram to access a menu that includes options for Clipping.

There is also an option for Channel Clipping. With Channel Clipping, it will indicate pixels that are clipped (above the limit) in any of the Red/Green/Blue channels. Expect to see more pixels indicated with Channel Clipping than standard Highlight Clipping.

There are two commands for Clipping, that can be assigned to shortcut keys or to toolbars:
cmd_showClipping
cmd_channelClipping

These are by default assigned to J and K respectively.

You can also set custom threshold and color values in the [Viewer] section of the xnview.ini file.
Examples are as follows. Color values are given as Red Green Blue triplets.

shadowClipping=2
shadowColor=0 0 255
highlightClipping=253
highlightColor=255 141 35

Blinking the out-of-range values is not possible at this time, other than manually toggling the display on and off with the hotkey.

Clipping can be displayed in the Viewer, in the Preview Pane of the Browser, or when Comparing files.


High-ISO Support
XnViewMP now has much improved support for High-ISO, or Extended-ISO images.

The EXIF:ISO tag by specification is limited to holding a maximum value of 65535, but for a long time many cameras have been capable of taking photos as ISO values much greater than this limit. When this happens, the camera has no choice except to store 65535 in the EXIF:ISO tag, and this is what you have always seen displayed in XnViewMP, both in the Metadata panel, and elsewhere like the Catalog Filter Properties Tree.

Different camera manufacturers use different techniques to record the actual, or "True ISO", extended ISO value in their images.

XnViewMP now has a much more sophisticated algorithm to extract the True ISO value from High-ISO images, and this will be displayed and used throughout the application.

True ISO is displayed in the Metadata panel, and in the Properties tab of the Info panel
True ISO will be used in the Search dialog when searching for "EXIF:ISO Value"
True ISO will be used in the Properties tree in the Catalog filter

You can still see the standard EXIF ISO value (limited to 65535) by looking at the ISO field on the EXIF tab of the Info panel. The Exiftool tab will of course show all available tags.

NOTE: Some High-ISO cameras do not conform to standards for storing extended ISO information. High-ISO images from these cameras will continue to show 65535.

IMPORTANT NOTE: To allow the True ISO value to work properly in the Catalog Filter, after upgrading to XnViewMP 1.11.1 you MUST perform a one-time "Update Metadata" found in Tools->Settings:Catalog. This may take a few minutes, depending on the size of your catalog.


Histogram Improvements
The Histogram has received some refinements for this release.

In addition to the controls for Clipping, the Histogram has been enhanced to better show different color channels.

Instead of using the old transparency effect that largely obscured one channel behind another, now the histogram blends colors where channel graphs overlap. Where Red, Green, and Blue overlap it will show magenta, yellow, or cyan as appropriate. When all three channels overlap, it shows white, instead of the blue tone it showed before.


Update Catalog from files has been enhanced

Update Catalog from Files now has new options for greater control and efficiency.

When you choose "Update Catalog from Files +Options" from the Metadata menu, you're presented a dialog box with a few options...

First, you choose to update from "Sidecar/Master files" or "Master files only"

"Sidecar/Master files" is the way the function worked in previous versions. It will update metadata from Sidecar files when they are present, and the master image file when no sidecar is present.

"Master files only" is a new option to increase compatibility with external applications that don't support sidecar files. When this option is chosen, metadata is read directly from the image files, ignoring any sidecar files present. The sidecar is not modified. Metadata read from the master file is not "added to" the files previous metadata in the database, it replaces it. So if a file had XMP keyword ratings in the Sidecar file, but not in the master file, and you Update Catalog from Master, then those keywords will no longer be applied to the file in the database.

If you want to ensure metadata is not lost when Updating from Master or Sidecars, you can enable Settings:Metadata:Sidecar:Update Master File" and then do an "Update files from Catalog". This will write all your sidecar metadata to the master file (to the extent possible) so that when the master is modified by your external application, all the metadata is there.

"Master files only" allows a new capability with XnViewMP. Previously, if it was your practice to use Sidecar files, but you made some metadata changes in an external program (or even Windows Explorer) that did not support sidecars and wrote the changes directly to the image file, it was impossible to incorporate those changes into XnViewMP, without deleting the sidecar file, because metadata in the master file was always ignored if a sidecar was present. With this function, you can now incorporate this metadata.

After doing an "Update Catalog from Master" you could then "Update files from Catalog" which would write the metadata read from the master out to the sidecar file.

The other option is to "Use modified files only".

This option will update the catalog using only the selected files that have been modified since the last time XnView checked. This differs from the old "Update Catalog from files" which updates from all selected files.

The difference is if you select 1000 files and "Update catalog from files" (without use modified files checked) it will process all 1000, which could take some time. But "Update Catalog from Modified files" will only process the (perhaps) 8 files that were altered, finishing very quickly.


Metadata options for processing files changed on disk have been improved.
There is an updated option in Settings:Metadata "Update Catalog when file is modified outside".
When enabled, this option will automatically update metadata in the database when it sees modifications to sidecar files, or files without sidecars. This facilitates more seamless integration with external applications that use sidecar files.


Searches for NULL values now work better
When using the Search dialog for Exiftool values, you can now use NULL entries (leave the value field empty) to search for the presence or absence of tags.
So for example: exiftool_value {tag} IS {empty field}
will return all the files where that tag is not set.
Likewise: exiftool_value {tag} IS NOT {empty field}
will return all the files where that tag is set.

This makes it easier to find files with missing metadata.

Time Formatting
There is a new "placeholder" for time formatting: h (lower case)
This provides for display times in a 12-hour format with AM/PM automatically appended.

So you can now have a usage such as:
{EXIF:Date Taken [a d/b/Y h:M:S]} will give you something like Sun 25/Sep/2005 9:45:38 PM

Metadata panel and histogram no longer blank when rating an image
A small tweak, but it helps.