New Features

• FilePilot Sort Order Support

CactusViewer now detects and matches the sort order from FilePilot in addition to Windows Explorer.

If you browse to a folder in FilePilot and open an image, CactusViewer will automatically sort your images to match FilePilot's current sort order (by name, date, size, or type).
This can be toggled in settings under "Check FilePilot for sort order."

• Paint/Draw Mode

Draw directly on images with a customizable brush! Thanks to @Orcenhaze who implemented this feature.

• Toggle paint mode by holding Shift or pressing B
• Adjust brush size with the scroll wheel
• Pick any color from the color picker
• Toggle anti-aliasing for smooth or hard brush edges
• Eraser mode available to remove strokes
• All drawings can be saved with the image

• Verbose Debug Logging

A detailed debug log is now written to help diagnose crashes and issues in release builds: %APPDATA%\CactusViewer\debug.log

If you experience any crashes or unexpected behavior:

1. Navigate to %APPDATA%\CactusViewer\debug.log
2. Save the log file before restarting CactusViewer. (Otherwise it WILL be overwritten!)
3. Try to reproduce the issue
4. Create a GitHub issue describing the problem and attach the relevant log file.

Bug Fixes

Sorting Stability Overhaul

• Fixed crashes caused by COM cross-thread marshaling.

The previous sorting code iterated through Windows Explorer's shell items from a background thread, which could cause intermittent crashes due to COM apartment threading rules.

• Complete rewrite of sorting algorithm

CactusViewer now only queries the sort order from Explorer/FilePilot (name, date, size, type + ascending/descending), then sorts files locally using file metadata. This is faster, more reliable, and eliminates the COM threading issues entirely.

• Natural string sorting

File names are now sorted naturally, so "file2.png" correctly comes before "file10.png".

• Other Fixes

Various minor bug fixes and stability improvements

This release adds a few requested features, and improves loading performance on images and stability.

New Features

• File Deletion Support - You can now delete files directly from within CactusViewer
• Escape Key Setting - Exit-by-pressing-Escape is now optional and can be toggled in settings
• Immediate Image Display - Images now display immediately with deferred folder scanning for faster perceived load times
• Improved status bar readability - Status bar text/layout is now easier to read

Bug Fixes

• Fixed crash when rotating non-square GIFs
• Fixed shuffle file folder bug - Shuffle mode now works correctly across folder contents
• Fixed "Fit In" and "Fit Window" start options - These startup display modes now work as expected
• Fixed possible heisenbug - Addressed a race condition or timing-related issue

PRs included, many thanks to contributors!

• Fix crash when trying to create thumbnail for a corrupted file by @alektron in #48
• Press Escape to quit by @OttoHatt in #51
• Call SetCapture to receive mouse release events outside of window by @HBurd in #58
• Fix crash when rotating non-square gifs by @thomashope in #57

Fixed a crash when opening a file in a large folder, and resolving a perf issue with the thumbs bar
By @Aidanboneham in #45

this update fixes #44 crashes caused by array limits, by introducing a new array type, also improves performance in folders with many files.

Thanks to @Aidanboneham for this PR!

This release introduces a major new feature to Cactus Viewer:
Interactable thumbnail preview strip of current images in the folder (á la Picasa)

This feature is inspired by Google Picasa, which had something like this, a non-intrusive UI strip of thumbnails at the bottom that provided a nice overview of the images in the folder and allows you to jump between files visually. This feature is toggleable in the settings.

Other new additions:

• Added .ppm support through #42, thanks @hkva for the great work!

Note: The thumbnail strip feature is fairly new and involves using WIC to generate thumbnails of the files in the folder and upload them to the GPU, this is done on a separate thread and goes prograde and retrograde of the current file, I've ironed out the bugs I could find but you might discover something I didn't, please consider reporting any issues you can find by creating a GitHub issue here. In case the feature proves broken for you, there's a setting for it in the config menu to turn it off and in the json config in APPDATA under "settings_preview_thumbs".

This patch fixes a crash case caused by memory corruption through unsafe use of swprintf, through #41
Thanks to @hkva for the fix!

This minor update adds features requested in #39

• Added option to always start in fullscreen mode, togglable in the config menu.
• Added option to always show GUI, togglable in the config menu.

This update includes a few QOL features and some bug fixes. These include:

• Cactus now grabs the font file from the system, and no longer has to include the ttf file inside of it, dropping the exe size significantly to 2.7 MB.
• Introducing a simple installer that allows to easily add Cactus to start menu, desktop, add an "Open with CactusViewer" button to the right-click context menu, and associate common image extensions with Cactus. Using Inno Setup scripts added to the repo (improvements to that are very welcome!). Note: this is optional, you can still just use the exe directly with no setup.
• Config file is now in JSON format, this allows to edit settings in the file directly and helps making setting changes backward compatible in the future.
• Added a setting for selecting how an image is zoomed when first open and the settings to "save zoom for each image" is selected, you can now have it either fill the window or zoom to 1:1.
• Added a feature where you can choose the format of the color you copy using the color picker, including Hex, RGB and HSVm with different parenthesis styles. Introduced by @Orcenhaze in #35.
• Fixed commandline loading issues in #25 by @Orcenhaze in #35.
• Fixed the issue of the status bar being 1 pixel too small on the edges which allowed to see the image in the back at the bottom too.

Thanks to @Orcenhaze for the contributions to this release!

• Added the ability to copy images with its current editing to clipboard, thanks to @hkva for this great feature.
• Added navigation with mouse forward and backward buttons to flip through images in a folder.

A little update that makes the viewer redraw the window responsively upon resizing

This patch fixes a few bugs:

• fixed #15 #11 #21 :
  • DPI updates depending on the monitor
  • GIF stops playing upon minimization
  • Updated LibWebP