Show HN: FlowVision – Waterfall-Style Image Browser for macOS (Open-Source) | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: FlowVision – Waterfall-Style Image Browser for macOS (Open-Source)

github.com

56 pointsnetdcy23 comments

Introducing our open-source, free waterfall-style image browser designed exclusively for macOS. Prioritizing privacy with no network connections, this app ensures your data stays local while offering a visually stunning and highly performant experience.

Key Features:

- Open Source & Privacy-Focused: No network connections, safeguarding your privacy.

- Adaptive Layout: Enjoy a beautiful waterfall/adaptive layout with both light and dark themes, providing an immersive image viewing experience.

- Easy File Management: Seamlessly manage files with operations akin to Finder.

- Intuitive Navigation: Right-click gestures and quick navigation to the next/previous folder with images/videos – perfect for rapid bulk image browsing.

- Performance Optimized: Engineered for smooth performance with large image libraries(10,000+ Images).

- Multithreading Thumbnails: Generate thumbnails on-the-fly without waiting too long.

- High-Quality Image Scaling: Superior image scaling to reduce moiré patterns and other artifacts.

- Video Thumbnails: Support for video thumbnails, seamlessly integrating images and videos.

[GitHub Repository Link] https://github.com/netdcy/FlowVision

This is great! Already installed on two laptops. Finder is frustrating, to say the least.

Of course feature request time: some kind of search? Would be really nice to match against folder names (e.g. searching for "images" and filenames e.g. "logo")

Thank you for your suggestion. Yes, I am planning to add a search function in the future.

This is really nice! "Waterfall-style" doesn't mean anything, though. What are you actually referring to?

The lack of a simple, efficient image browser on Mac (or Windows, for that matter) has been a daily annoyance. This thing browses efficiently, lets you move files, and doesn't try to build a "database" that you have to maintain. Good job!

Are there build instructions anywhere? I don't know how to resolve the missing frameworks. I tried cloning the project recursively, but this didn't add anything.

Thank you. I will provide more detailed build steps later. Currently, it's not implemented via git submodules; you need to manually download the relevant dependencies to the specified location.

Thanks!

Oh yeah, one issue I noticed is that there's no Back button on the full-screen view, so there's no indication of how to get back to the gallery view.

Can anyone explain "Waterfall-Style" in this context? Is it related to what used to be called "mosaic layout"? Just guessing here but it's used in a way that seems to presume lots of people are familiar with the term so I must have slept through that meeting.

It's more commonly known as a masonry layout, popularized by Pinterest. It's similar to a mosaic layout, but with a tighter fit for different height images. If one image is 200 pixels high, and another is 100 pixels high, you can draw them next to each other, and put another image in the remaining 100 pixels of the right column.

Actually masonry was I was thinking of. Where do this waterfall business come from then?

Same thing, different name. It's kind of like a waterfall in that it's a continuous vertical layout.

I was equally confused by this. I tried everywhere to find what the heck that even meant in this context and discovered that it is apparently a term they invented themselves.

Nope. I have no idea why that name is used term here. There is nothing remotely waterfall-like about what's shown on that page.

I thought it was going to be something like CoverFlow (the page-flipping paradigm that Apple tried to popularize years ago in iTunes), but vertical.

Regardless, this little utility looks very nice! It addresses the irritating lack of a simple image browser that lets you move files around.

Sorry, I didn't realize that this name would cause confusion. Perhaps the term "masonry layout" is more widely used, but you can still find many results about "waterfall layout" by googling it.

I'd just never come across it before.

Funny how tech can be like that. Something is widely understood in some circles for some time periods and is completely new outside that. I used to be a lot more involved in Web UX stuff but I've been doing other things for a few years and it seems like there was a collective change in terminology!

Waterfall is the more accurate term of your app uses masonry and infinite scrolling vs pagination.

Awesome work! One question on a killer feature I need for an app like this. Recursive mode: where a folder will show every image in all sub folders recursively. Does your app have something like this?

Try Phoenix Slides for this. That app is so fast!

Yes, FlowVision exactly has.

pretty! and i love that it still supports Big Sur.

Thank you!

No offense to the developers, but how do I know this binary is safe?

No way to know. Neat product but I just can't risk installing it. Been burned before, even though my gut tells me this is completely safe.

Yes, it is hard to verify. You can compile it yourself.

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