Shrike

A fast, free, open-source image viewer for Mac. Press Space and the next photo is already on screen.

Download for Mac · macOS 14 or newer · Apple silicon and Intel · MIT license

What it does

• Move through photos instantly. Space or the arrow keys. Shrike decodes the next photos before you ask. Pinch to zoom, drag to pan, hold Z for a loupe, A for 100 %, B to fit the window.
• Browse a whole folder. Folder list, thumbnail grid, list or filmstrip. Names sort naturally, so IMG_2 comes before IMG_10. Thumbnails are saved between launches.
• Cull quickly. Rate with 1–5, flag with Q, add Finder tags. Copy, move, rename or trash from the keyboard, with undo. A RAW file and its JPEG show as one photo.
• Know your photo. Info panel with EXIF and a histogram. Open the photo's location in Apple Maps when it has GPS.
• Compare. Up to four photos side by side, with zoom and pan in sync.
• Light edits. Crop, rotate (also by any angle), resize, colour adjustments and levels. Shrike keeps a copy of the original, and File ▸ Revert to Original takes you back.
• Batch and print. Convert, resize or rename many photos at once with templates. Print a photo, or make a contact sheet (A4 or US Letter).
• Slideshow. Full screen, with timing, fade or dissolve, random order and loop.

Formats: JPEG, PNG, HEIC, WebP, AVIF, GIF, TIFF, BMP, Photoshop (PSD) and RAW from most cameras (RAW support comes from macOS).

There is a Mac shortcut set (the default) and a FastStone-style set, for people coming from Windows. All shortcuts are in the app under Help ▸ Keyboard Shortcuts (⌘/).

Speed

Shrike prepares the next photos in the background. On a Mac with an M2 Pro chip, the median time from a key press to the next photo on screen was about 33 ms when the photo was already prepared. Thumbnails: 80 or more per second for 12-megapixel JPEGs on 4 cores. These are Shrike's own measurements on one Mac; yours may differ.

Install

1. Download the DMG from the Releases page.
2. Open it and drag Shrike onto the Applications folder. Start Shrike from Applications, not from the DMG.

Shrike is not notarized by Apple. Notarization needs a paid Apple Developer account, and Shrike is a free project. The public app uses an ad-hoc signature, which does not identify a publisher. macOS can show an unnotarized-app or unidentified-developer warning. A downloaded update may require approval again.

macOS 26 (Tahoe)

1. Open Shrike from Applications.
2. macOS asks for your Mac's password to allow it. Enter it.
3. If you see "Shrike Not Opened" instead, follow the macOS 15 steps.

macOS 15 (Sequoia)

1. Open Shrike from Applications. Click Done in the message.
2. Open System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security and scroll down.
3. Click Open Anyway next to Shrike. Enter your password. Click Open Anyway again.

macOS 14 (Sonoma)

1. In Applications, right-click (or Control-click) Shrike and choose Open.
2. Click Open in the message.

Not sure which macOS you have? Choose Apple menu ▸ About This Mac.

• Folder access. When you open photos from Desktop, Documents, Downloads or an external drive, macOS asks once if Shrike may read them. Click Allow.
• "Shrike is damaged and can't be opened"? The download is broken. Delete it, download it again, and compare its SHA-256 checksum (published with the release) with the output of shasum -a 256 ~/Downloads/Shrike-<version>.dmg.
• Advanced: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Shrike.app skips the first-launch step.

Privacy

Shrike never connects to the internet. There are no accounts, no analytics, no crash reporting and no automatic update check. Your photos are read from your disk and stay there.

• To get a new version, download it from the Releases page.
• Two actions you start yourself hand over to other apps: Show in Maps opens Apple Maps at a photo's GPS position, and Open in External Editor starts the editor you chose.
• Shrike keeps its thumbnails, ratings and edit backups in your Library folder, on your Mac only. When you rate or flag a photo, Shrike also writes that rating or flag as a small hidden note on the file (a macOS extended attribute), so it survives if you move the file in Finder. You can turn this off in Settings. Shrike changes the content of a photo only when you save an edit.
• If your photos are on a network drive, macOS may ask for permission to use the local network. That is only for reaching your own drive.

Build from source

You need:

• macOS 14 or newer
• Xcode 26 (Swift 6)
• XcodeGen: brew install xcodegen

xcodegen generate
xcodebuild -scheme Shrike -configuration Debug build

The build is signed ad-hoc by default, so it works on a fresh clone. To sign with your own Apple Development certificate, copy Config/Local.xcconfig.example to Config/Local.xcconfig and put your team ID in it. That file is git-ignored.

Shrike.xcodeproj is generated from project.yml and is not committed. Regenerate it after you change project.yml or pull new sources. You can also run open Shrike.xcodeproj and build in Xcode.

Run the tests (the code lives in a local Swift package):

cd Packages/ShrikeKit
swift test

Some tests open windows, so run them on an unlocked screen.

Signing

The project signs ad-hoc with the hardened runtime unless Config/Local.xcconfig exists (see "Build from source"). With that file it signs with your Apple Development certificate.

Install and package

Scripts/install-local.sh      # build, sign, verify, install into /Applications
Scripts/make-package.sh       # dist/Shrike-<version>.dmg and its .sha256

More about the scripts is in Scripts/README.md.

Layout

Path	What is in it
App/	The app shell: main.swift, app delegate, Info.plist, entitlements, asset catalog.
Packages/ShrikeKit/	Local Swift package with the library modules and their tests.
Packages/ShrikeKit/Sources/ShrikeCore	Image sources, decode queue, thumbnail cache, metadata store, preferences.
Packages/ShrikeKit/Sources/ShrikeRendering	The Metal image view and colour pipeline.
Packages/ShrikeKit/Sources/ShrikeUI	Viewer, browser, compare, batch and settings windows.
Packages/ShrikeKit/Sources/ShrikeEdit	Crop, resize, rotate, colour adjustments, levels, batch and contact sheet.
Packages/ShrikeKit/Sources/ShrikeIO	File operations, Finder tags, external editors, folder watching.
Scripts/	Install, package and test-fixture scripts.

Shrike is a Swift 6 app. The shell and windows use AppKit, the photo canvas is a CAMetalLayer, and Settings and the inspectors use SwiftUI. The only third-party dependency is GRDB, which stores ratings, tags and recent folders.

License

MIT. Copyright (c) 2026 voyd.

"Mac" and "macOS" are trademarks of Apple Inc.