nive

Lightweight image viewer for Windows.

• Three-pane UI: directory tree, file list, and thumbnail grid
• Image viewer with zoom and pan (Direct2D rendering)
• Archive browsing via 7-Zip (7z.dll)
• Network share (UNC path) support
• Thumbnail caching with SQLite and zstd compression
• Drag & drop file operations with conflict resolution
• Natural / lexicographic / date / size sorting
• AVIF image support via plugin (libavif)
• Plugin API for extending supported formats
• TOML-based persistent settings

• Windows 10 or later (x64)
• 7-Zip (optional, for archive support)

Archive browsing requires 7z.dll from 7-Zip. The DLL is searched in the following order:

1. Application directory (next to nive.exe)
2. %ProgramFiles%\7-Zip
3. %ProgramFiles(x86)%\7-Zip
4. System PATH

If 7-Zip is installed in the default location, no additional setup is needed. For portable use, place 7z.dll alongside nive.exe.

• Visual Studio 2026 (MSVC with C++ workload)
• CMake 3.28+
• Ninja (build system)
• NASM (for libaom SIMD optimizations)
• Git (for submodules)

git submodule update --init --recursive
cmake --preset release
cmake --build --preset release

The output binary is located at build/release/bin/nive.exe.

Note: The default presets use the Ninja generator. If you prefer Visual Studio, use the msvc-release preset instead:

cmake --preset msvc-release
cmake --build --preset msvc-release

All dependencies are vendored as git submodules under externals/:

MIT