PreviewQt v2.0 - plasmoid and remote control

Published: 5th of April, 2024

PreviewQt 2.0 brings some major improvements to its performance and functionality (including rotating images), including two new and convenient ways to interact with PreviewQt.

Passing files to PreviewQt

If you like the idea of having a file previewer, but you don't want to associate every single filetype with such an application, there are currently two alternative ways you can easily and quickly pass a file on to this one:

There is a remote control application which is nothing but a small semi-transparent square without any window decoration that should always stay in the foreground. You can move it somewhere out of the way, and whenever you drop a file on it, that square passes it on to PreviewQt. If you want to remove that square, focus on it and press Ctrl+Q (or close the window in any other way). That application (if enabled at build time) is aptly called PreviewQtRemote.
If you are using KDE Plasma 6, there is a now a plasmoid that integrates nicely with your desktop. You can find that plasmoid over in the KDE store, and, once added either to your desktop or the panel, you can drop any supported file on it to get an instant preview with some basic interaction possible. Double clicking on the preview opens the full PreviewQt for further handling.

If you have another way that PreviewQt can easily integrate into your desktop, please let me know! With enough interest I'd be happy to come up with something for all kinds of different workflows.

The vision behind PreviewQt

You might wonder what the point is of PreviewQt. Right now it supports the same filetypes as PhotoQt, but with way less functionality – so why do this?

PreviewQt is intended to be more than "just" an media viewer like PhotoQt. Going forward it will start getting support for more and more filetypes that might not be an appropriate fit for PhotoQt. For example, files that do not have a nice visual representation might instead show some useful meta information and other information instead.

Essentially, PreviewQt in part is a playground to see how many filetypes it can possibly support in one way or another, while being useful to as many people as possible. What exactly PreviewQt will look like in a year from now, nobody knows. This depends mostly on feedback and comments by people like you.

PreviewQt is still very new, I welcome any feedback or comments you have. What do you (not) like? Anything you think should be changed? Please let me know either by email, or open an issue in its GitLab repository.

You want to help out? Why not join the translation team for PreviewQt/PhotoQt over on Crowdin. If your language is missing you can simply request it directly on Crowdin or send me an email/message and I will add it to the project.

If you are considering supporting PhotoQt by donation, please consider donating to the humanitarian relief in Ukraine instead, for example to the Ukrainian Red Cross.

Enjoy PreviewQt,

Lukas