Who doesn’t like capturing moments in today’s world? But sadly, a lot of us face issues in Windows Photo Viewer, thanks to its slow, lagging, and bloated features, that just makes the entire process really frustrating.
Microsoft has revolutionized the classic Windows Photo Viewer world by introducing the brand new Photos app — which according to the reviews isn’t any faster or lightweight. This had the users search for alternative apps which offer a streamline process for viewing photos. But no more! There are tons of new photo viewer apps that not only streamlines photo viewing but also offers quick-loading, limited necessary features, and most importantly, platform compatibility. Looking for something similar? Keep reading as we discuss the best photo viewer for Windows 10/11.
WPS Photos — Best AI-Powered Windows Photo Viewer
What's the most important aspect of viewing photos on Windows? No lag, no complexity, and most importantly, the quality. Keeping all such features in mind, we couldn’t think of any other app than WPS Photos!
WPS Office has recently introduced their new product, the WPS Photos. If you are looking for a fast image viewer of 2025, WPS is your answer - the perfect balance of functionality and performance to its easy-to-use design, it deserves the first spot on our list. Their main focus was to look after both; professional as well as amateur photo editors. WPS Photos offers a variety of tools for enhancing, editing, managing, and storing images.
Key Features
1. AI-Powered Photo Enhancements
WPS AI has changed the game for all the photo viewer apps out there! Not only has it exceptionally improved work performance for its user but has also impacted the intensity of workflow. It helps you write well-drafted documents, eliminates repetition of tasks, and most importantly, offers suggestions to improve work. One feature of WPS AI that stands out is its ability to edit images within the documents rather than going back and forth.
2. Annotation Tools
WPS offers annotation tools using which you can enhance the quality of your photos and make additional changes to it. For instance, you can add images using the annotation tools such as logos or your company’s stamp. You can also insert text to your images such as signatures or watermarks.
3. Built-In Editor
WPS editor, also termed as the 10x faster editor, offers free cropping, rotating, and flipping of your images. It also supports text extraction which can eliminate the hassle and lessen the time of typing the text on your own. You can also use its AI Image Enhancer under the built-in editor to convert your blurry images into high resolution images. This allows cross-platform compatibility and seamless integration across all Microsoft formats.
4. Adjust Colors
Not every picture captures the true essence of the atmosphere, but with WPS Photos, you can actually bring back the vibe to your photos. Its color adjusting feature has built-in filters that can change the photo’s orientation (portrait, landscape), add additional text or images to it, and most importantly, change the color tone of the image to add the original natural atmosphere to it.
5. Auto Backup and Sharing
One fear that people have is whether what you do is secure and safe or not. Well not with WPS Photos because it now offers sync with WPS Cloud ensuring your document/images are secure in case of any unexpected error or issue.
Pros
It integrates seamlessly with all Microsoft formats.
It offers an easy to understand User Interface with no complexities.
If you want quick edits that require no extra steps, WPS is for you.
It offers WPS Cloud where you can store your images.
It offers built-in templates for Microsoft formats.
Cons
You need to login for sync in the WPS Office.
Basic editing tools in the free version.
XnView MP — Most Versatile Windows Photo Viewer for Format Support
Another great name for the best photo viewers of 2025 is the XNView MP photo viewer. It is commonly popular for viewing, organizing, converting, and editing images along with file management. It also supports batch renaming of pictures, image scanning, and has a built-in hex inspection tool. What makes XNView stand out is its ability to examine the images in depth i.e. it will allow you to view an extensive amount of metadata, and other areas such as ISO, or GPS location.
Key Features
1. Image Formats
XNView MP photo viewer supports over 500 image formats - so if you are a professional looking for an easy to go photo viewer, this is the one!
2. Metadata Editing
With XNView MP, you can now edit information such as author, copyrights, date, time, captions, and more in your images.
3. Filters
It offers a range of built-in filters and effects to alter and enhance your images.
Pros
Allows conversion, renaming, and resizing of batch images.
Allows users to customize its interface according to their workflow.
Cons
Its UI is outdated.
Too complex for first timers or basic users.
It has a lot of missing features such as floating-point, advanced color-picker, etc.
Its interface feels less intuitive.
ImageGlass — Fast & Lightweight Windows Photo Viewer
Supporting over 80 common image formats, ImageGlass stands third on our list. With its modern aesthetics and no-fuss features, ImageGlass promises nothing less than a streamlined experience. As compared to any standard image viewer, ImageGlass has a practical approach towards functionality - it allows you to open a number of image formats (including Photoshop files) to edit them using simple, easy-to-use tools.
Key Features
1. Customizable themes
You can enhance your images with ImageGlass customizable themes with seamless functionality.
2. Animation Playback
ImageGlass offers GIF/WebP animation playback which allows you to create an illusion of motion in between images. This way you can switch between a number of images smoothly.
Pros
As compared to Window Photos, ImageGlass is really lightweight and fast.
It offers a free version for personal and commercial use.
Cons
Very slow loading with large images.
It has no editing tools.
FastStone Image Viewer — All-in-One Windows Photo Viewer
When it comes to the perfect mix of speed and functionality, FastStone is the choice! It excels as an image convertor and renaming tool that enables the users to rename, resize, crop, rotate, and edit their images in no time. Its user-friendly interface caught our attention, bringing it as fourth on the list. It also offers text and image addition (logos and watermarks) in batch mode.
Key Features
1. Batch Rename and Convert
With FastStone, you can now process several images in one go. This allows changing of names and format all at once.
2. Transition Effects
FastStone offers around 150+ transition effects in slideshows, allowing users to customize their slides according to their own preferences.
Pros:
It accepts a variety of image formats such as RAW image formats.
Supports customization of hotkeys according to your workflow.
Cons:
The interface is outdated.
Its image editor lacks features and effects.
HoneyView — Simplest and Fastest Windows Photo Viewer
If you have a gallery full of images with different extensions, nothing to worry about - HoneyView is compatible with most formats. It allows streamlined navigation, fast loading, and a variety of formats, along with showing EXIF data for each photo. This way you can keep an eye on the size’s file, date, and other parameters. It also provides GPS location for your images via Google Map and moves them to different folders via app.
Key Features
1. Slideshow Support
HoneyView allows users to compile several slides with images and animations.
2. GPS Data
HoneyView provides geographic context of images i.e. the latitude and longitude embedded within images.
Pros
Its interface is beginner friendly.
It displays EXIF information i.e. GPS data for JPEG files.
Cons
It has little to no advanced feature sets for editing.
It has an unintuitive interface i.e. most users find it suitable for Windows 08 only.
Why WPS Office Is the Ideal Companion for Any Photo Viewer
If you want a smarter visual workflow that doesn’t lag, works fine with larger bulk of photos, isn’t complex and most importantly complements your viewer app, WPS Office is what you are looking for!
While working with WPS Office, what made it stand out was the number of features it offers while being so simple and easy to use. It was really surprising how fast the work was being done - instantly in just a single click.
From a number of filters and effects to edit an image, to its ability to rename images in batch form, remove watermarks using annotation tools, and adding logos, it truly brings ease to the professional world by eliminating hassle.
Here are some additional features of the WPS office. It allows you to:
Directly paste images into your documents regardless of the grammage. Works well with all; Word, Spreadsheet, and PPT.
Access WPS Cloud where you can easily organize your downloaded/scanned photos.
Edit your image-based notes and documents using WPS AI (auto-summarize)
Sign photo-based documents through WPS PDF.
FAQs
Q1: What’s the fastest photo viewer on Windows?
If we talk about the fastest photo viewer, ImageGlass and HoneyView take first place. They are extremely lightweight and fast, with the easiest UI interface.
Q2: Can I edit photos with these viewers?
You can edit your photos using WPS Photos and FastStone only since the other three are view-only.
Q3: Is WPS Photos free?
Yes — it’s a part of WPS Office and is completely free of cost.
Summary
Modern day problems require modern day solutions. Ever since Windows upgraded to the new Photos app, people have been surfing the internet, struggling to find alternatives to Windows Photo Viewer.
When looking for the top 05 windows photo viewers of 2025, our utmost search was for the best quality along with little to no complexities, lag, and capacity of holding the load of large quantities. While all 05 are the best on their own, we cannot emphasize enough on WPS Photos. From no-fuss interface to WPS AI, accepting larger formats, supporting slideshows, PDFs, Word Docs, and WPS Cloud to store your images - we cannot think of anything better!
