Documentation

LiteView documentation

How LiteView decodes images, its keyboard shortcuts, install steps per platform, and fixes for common issues.

How image decoding works

LiteView is built on Neutralinojs: a small native window hosts the operating system's own web rendering engine — WebView2 on Windows, WebKitGTK on Linux, WKWebView on macOS — and that engine decodes every image. Because SVG, WebP and AVIF are all formats modern browsers already understand, LiteView gets native support for them for free, with no bundled codecs and no separate Electron/Chromium runtime to ship.

Supported formats

SVG, WebP, AVIF, PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP and ICO.

Keyboard shortcuts

Key	Action
`← / → / Space`	Previous / next image
`Home / End`	First / last image
Mouse wheel	Zoom at cursor
Drag	Pan
Double-click	Toggle fit / 100%
`+ / -`	Zoom in / out
`0 / 1`	Fit to window / actual size
`R`	Rotate 90°
`G`	Grid view
`F`	Fullscreen
`Ctrl+O / Ctrl+Shift+O`	Open folder / open file
`Esc`	Leave fullscreen / grid

Installation

Windows 10 / 11

Download and unzip the Windows release, then run install.ps1 (powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File install.ps1). This installs per-user to %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\LiteView with no admin rights, adds a Start Menu shortcut, and registers LiteView under "Open with" and Settings → Default apps. Windows requires you to manually confirm the default app per file type: right-click a file → Open with → Choose another app → LiteView → Always. Uninstall with uninstall.ps1.

Linux

Install the WebKitGTK dependency (libwebkit2gtk-4.1-0 on Debian/Ubuntu, webkit2gtk4.1 on Fedora, webkit2gtk-4.1 on Arch), then run packaging/install-linux.sh. This installs per-user, registers a desktop entry, and sets LiteView as the default viewer for AVIF, WebP and SVG automatically. Uninstall with packaging/uninstall-linux.sh.

macOS 13+

Run packaging/build-macos-app.sh to assemble a universal LiteView.app (Intel + Apple Silicon), then drag it into Applications. The bundle is unsigned, so the first launch needs right-click → Open.

Command line usage

Run liteview <image-or-folder> to open a specific file or folder directly. Opening a single image loads its entire parent folder into the filmstrip so you can navigate between neighboring files.

Troubleshooting

LiteView isn't offered as an option when I right-click a file

Reinstall via install.ps1 (Windows) or packaging/install-linux.sh (Linux) to re-register file associations, then try Open with again.

macOS won't launch the app

The app bundle is unsigned. Right-click LiteView.app → Open (instead of double-clicking) the first time to bypass Gatekeeper's warning.

A format doesn't seem to decode

Rendering depends on the OS's web engine version — very old Linux distributions may ship a WebKitGTK build without AVIF support (AVIF needs WebKitGTK ≥ 2.32). Updating your system's WebKitGTK package resolves this.

Source & license

LiteView is MIT-licensed and open source. Full source, issues and releases are on GitHub.