# Private image viewers for Windows 11 **URL:** https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/private-image-viewers-for-windows-11/41536 **Category:** Questions **Created:** 2026-10-16T22:39:10Z **Posts:** 7 ## Post 1 by @CrispOwl20 — 2026-10-16T22:39:10Z Hello, I would like to ask for help to find alternatives to the native Windows 11 image viewer, since I uninstalled it on the recommendation of the forum, now I would like to find a safe and private alternative. I heard about ImageGlass ( [GitHub - d2phap/ImageGlass: 🏞 A fast, open-source, modern image viewer for 90+ formats – including WEBP, GIF, SVG, AVIF, JXL, HEIC and more – built for smooth browsing across Windows, macOS, and Linux. · GitHub](https://github.com/d2phap/ImageGlass) ) but I don’t know if it’s really safe. What is your favorite private image viewer? Thank you. --- ## Post 2 by @ph00lt0 — 2026-10-16T22:40:12Z Where did you get that advice? Seems like bad advice tbh. I don’t think replacing the photo viewer makes any sense, but I might be missing something. --- ## Post 3 by @CrispOwl20 — 2026-10-17T11:53:59Z Hi, I couldn’t find the link where it was suggested that uninstalling the image viewer wasn’t a bad idea—it was here on PrivacyGuides. In that same “post” I discovered that I could use Winget to update and install programs more securely. It listed a number of programs pre-installed on Windows 11 that might or might not be useful.:thinking: For now, I’ve installed Nomacs. :laughing: Btw I always hated Windows native image viewer lol --- ## Post 4 by @crossroads — 2026-10-17T13:09:49Z I use nomacs. Simply because it’s a simple useful program that does what image viewer should do > **[nomacs](https://nomacs.org/)** > > nomacs is a free, open source image viewer, which supports multiple platforms --- ## Post 5 by @BiggishDoctor — 2026-10-17T18:48:46Z Depends on how you use it and what image types you actually use. digiKam is more of a photo management tool (think photo album organisation). But it’s very fully featured and can of course view pretty much any image type. It’s what I ended up using most of the time I looked at photos. My current pick for a photo viewer is qView. Mostly for startup time compared to digiKam. But it’s basic. Basically just a box with the photo in it. I have used ImageGlass before. It’s a longstanding project, given that I last used it before 2020. It’s well designed and loaded quickly, though I think it did some sort of smart background preloading based on the order photo’s are navigated in. It is made by a lone developer in Vietnam. But the app is well built, well designed and has been that way for basically the last decade. There’s a reason it still tops many open source lists. --- ## Post 6 by @elliotmarlow — 2026-10-18T14:43:28Z nomacs is a solid choice. Since an image viewer opens files from all over the place, the main thing I’d look for is that it’s open source and gets regular updates, because image parsing bugs do get found from time to time. Installing and updating it through winget like you mentioned covers that nicely. If you go with ImageGlass, it’s worth looking through its settings for automatic update checks and turning off anything you don’t want phoning home. --- ## Post 7 by @CleverOrca95 — 2026-10-18T18:42:39Z I think if you’ve already installed nomacs and you’re happy with it, there’s probably no real reason to switch again. One thing I’d consider though is that privacy and security aren’t necessarily the same thing. I could be wrong, but as far as I understand it, even an image viewer that works completely offline can still have security issues, especially when opening images from unknown sources. A lot depends on the libraries it uses to process those files. That’s why I’d probably pay more attention to whether the software is still maintained and getting updates, rather than just whether it’s open source. From what I’ve seen, nomacs seems to be doing reasonably well in that regard. As for ImageGlass, I had a look at their privacy policy, and they say they don’t upload your images, filenames or folder paths. That sounds good, although I’m not sure how much we can conclude from a privacy policy alone. Personally, I’d just go with something lightweight, actively maintained, and without unnecessary cloud features or network activity. I also wouldn’t necessarily say the default Windows Photos app is unsafe. I think it really depends on what you’re trying to avoid. Just curious, is your main concern Microsoft telemetry, or are you more worried about the security risks of opening potentially malicious image files?