Xee journey
Xee³ was $3.99 worth lightweight, minimalist styled photo viewer. Until Xee2, it was free app but the author stop his/her support. Later when Xee³ was continued it became a paid app with a short free trial period. Since I liked the lightweight style of Xee2, I was okay to get the paid version of Xee³. After the recent upgrade to M1 Mac (non Intel), I tried to download Xee³ from macOS AppStore but I noticed an error.
Xee³ support
Since I purchased that app using Apple account, I was able to pull the email and sent an email to support@macpaw.com asking for help. I got an acknowledgement email mentioning that they would get back in 72 hours and also mentioned how Russia-Ukraine war has affected their team located in Ukraine.
Update: Xee³ support team responded back saying they payment and purchase service has changed but they honored my old purchase by providing with a registration key. They were prompt and helpful.
Replacement for Xee³
As I am waiting for response back, I started to explore a replacement for Xee³. My criteria were
- Simple and light way to preview images in a folder
- Ability to delete with delete button (achieved usually by custom shortcut)
- Ability to undo a deleted image
- (Optional) Privacy option to disable file history
After exploring different apps, qView became the winner.
Picturama – You need to add the folders that has images and scan them. This app creates thumbnails and previews like modern photo apps. All of this is done locally so good for privacy lovers. This app doesn’t provide ability to undo a deleted image. Also folders already included the settings needs to be removed.
qView – This seems to be the best replacement for Xee³ as it fulfills all my criteria and also supports installing using homebrew. It has ability to delete and undo image within the app and also control file history caching.
ApploOne app – Provide more features and ability to preview, crop and rotate images. It is photographer friendly, provides good way to preview RAW images. Has ability to delete both jpg and RAW together or independently. But it doesn’t have ability to undo a delete image.
Phiewer (Lite) – Has side bar preview and provides good way to browse images. Deleting images is not customizable, cannot undo a deleted image. History of opened folders cannot be cleared.
Pixea from ImageTasks – Is decent for browsing images of same size. But if you have different dimension the window keeps resizing and the only way to control this is to going full-screen which personally is not preferred option. It has good keyboard shortcuts support but no customization support. So yet again this app has the same problem like other free apps. Deleting images is not customizable, cannot undo a deleted image.
Based on my evaluation qView seems to be good replacement for the criteria that I have listed above.
