booru-viewer

Local desktop app for browsing, searching, and saving images from booru-style imageboards.

Qt6 GUI, cross-platform (Linux + Windows), fully themeable.

Screenshots

Windows 10 — Native Light Theme

Windows 11 — Native Dark Theme

Linux — Styled via system Qt6 theme

Supports custom styling via custom.qss — see Theming.

Features

Browsing

• Supports Danbooru, Gelbooru, Moebooru, and e621
• Auto-detect site API type — just paste the URL
• Tag search with autocomplete, history dropdown, and saved searches
• Rating and score filtering (server-side score:>=N)
• Blacklisted tags (appended as negatives)
• Thumbnail grid with keyboard navigation

Preview

• Image viewer with zoom (scroll wheel), pan (drag), and reset (middle click)
• GIF animation, Pixiv ugoira auto-conversion (zip to animated GIF)
• Video playback (MP4, WebM) with play/pause, seek, volume, mute, and seamless looping
• Info panel with post details, clickable tags, and filetype

Slideshow Mode

• Right-click preview → "Slideshow Mode" for fullscreen viewing
• Arrow keys / h/j/k/l navigate posts (including during video playback)
• , / . seek 5 seconds in videos, Space toggles play/pause
• Toolbar with Favorite and Save/Unsave toggle buttons showing current state
• F11 toggles fullscreen/windowed, Ctrl+H hides all UI
• Bidirectional sync — clicking posts in the main grid updates the slideshow
• Page boundary navigation — past the last/first post loads next/prev page

Favorites & Library

• Favorite posts, organize into folders
• Save to library (unsorted or per-folder), drag-and-drop thumbnails as files
• Multi-select (Ctrl/Shift+Click, Ctrl+A) with bulk actions
• Bulk context menus in both Browse and Favorites tabs
• Unsave from Library available in grid, preview, and slideshow
• Import/export favorites as JSON

Search

• Inline history dropdown inside the search bar
• Saved searches with management dialog
• Click empty search bar to open history
• Session cache mode clears history on exit (keeps saved searches)

Install

Linux

pip install -e .
booru-viewer

Or run directly: python -m booru_viewer.main_gui

Windows

Download booru-viewer.exe from Releases.

For WebM video playback, install VP9 Video Extensions from the Microsoft Store.

Windows 10 dark mode is automatically detected and applied.

Dependencies

• Python 3.11+
• PySide6 (Qt6)
• httpx
• Pillow

Keybinds

Grid

Key	Action
Arrow keys / h/j/k/l	Navigate grid
Ctrl+A	Select all
Ctrl+Click / Shift+Click	Multi-select
Home / End	Jump to first / last
Right click	Context menu

Preview

Key	Action
Scroll wheel	Zoom
Middle click / 0	Reset view
Left / Right	Previous / next post
, / .	Seek 5s back / forward (video)
Space	Play / pause (video)
Right click	Context menu (favorite, save, slideshow)

Slideshow

Key	Action
Arrow keys / h/j/k/l	Navigate posts
, / .	Seek 5s (video)
Space	Play / pause (video)
F11	Toggle fullscreen / windowed
Ctrl+H	Hide / show UI
Escape / Q	Close slideshow

Global

Key	Action
Ctrl+P	Privacy screen
F11	Toggle fullscreen

Adding Sites

File > Manage Sites. Enter a URL, click Auto-Detect, and save.

API credentials are optional — needed for Gelbooru and rate-limited sites.

Theming

The app uses your OS native theme by default. To customize, create custom.qss in your data directory:

• Linux: ~/.local/share/booru-viewer/custom.qss
• Windows: %APPDATA%\booru-viewer\custom.qss

A template is available in Settings > Theme > Create from Template.

Settings

• General — page size, thumbnail size, default rating/score, file dialog platform
• Cache — max cache size, auto-evict, clear cache on exit (session-only mode)
• Blacklist — tag blacklist with import/export
• Paths — data directory, cache, database locations
• Theme — custom.qss editor, template generator, CSS guide

Data Locations

	Linux	Windows
Database	~/.local/share/booru-viewer/booru.db	%APPDATA%\booru-viewer\booru.db
Cache	~/.local/share/booru-viewer/cache/	%APPDATA%\booru-viewer\cache\
Library	~/.local/share/booru-viewer/saved/	%APPDATA%\booru-viewer\saved\
Theme	~/.local/share/booru-viewer/custom.qss	%APPDATA%\booru-viewer\custom.qss

Privacy

booru-viewer makes no connections except to the booru sites you configure. There is no telemetry, analytics, update checking, or phoning home. All data stays local on your machine.

Every outgoing request is logged in the debug panel (View > Log) so you can verify this yourself — you will only see requests to the booru API endpoints and CDNs you chose to connect to.

License

MIT