Photismos Viewer is a single, self-contained HTML file — an offline image and video review tool. You open it in a browser, point it at a folder of media on your own computer, and it renders a polished gallery with a full-screen lightbox, zoom, categories, titles, descriptions, and more. Nothing is uploaded anywhere; every file stays on your machine.It reads directly from your folders, and it can also write back to them — adding media, renaming files, storing titles and descriptions as small text files, and setting cover images. When you're happy with a collection, it can export a standalone static website you can host or share.Requires a Chromium browser (Chrome, Edge, Brave, etc.) — not Firefox or Safari.Essentially, it turns your local folders of images and videos into an interactive experience similar to a live website, with image thumbnails representing folders, a navbar at the top that mirrors your folder structure, and responsive galleries with a lightbox.I developed this tool with the help of Claude AI as a better alternative to using Windows file explorer and default photo viewing apps. It looks nicer, provides easier navigation and larger thumbnails, and handles short video clips much better.It also has the ability to group variants of related image/video items into group slideshows, with one showing as the default and others showing when you use the hover navigation controls. I find this feature one of the most useful, as I often make multiple videos from one source image; this allows me to include variants without cluttering the gallery thumbnails with each version.The zip download contains two html files: the Photismos Viewer, and a comprehensive User Guide. Please make sure to read through it.See the About This Version section of the model page for a full changelog listing updated features and bugfixes. Always download the latest version available.

Photismos Viewer | Offline image/video lightbox gallery tool for local files

ChangelogPhotismos Viewer — v3.8.1 Changes from 3.8: 1. Category pages now show their own stats instead of leaving a stale count from the last gallery visited. The line reads e.g. "8 folders" or "8 folders · 24 subfolders" (the second figure appears only when those folders contain sub-folders), mirroring the gallery's "42 items · 6 groups". The stat is also cleared on entry so a gallery's count never lingers. Note: the "Uncategorized" card isn't counted — it's loose media, not a folder. Photismos Viewer — v3.8 Changes from 3.7: 1. New "Selected pages" export scope, alongside Entire site / Current page only. Shows a hierarchical, indented checklist of every page with a checkbox each, plus two master checkboxes ("All category pages" and "All gallery pages") for one-click batch selection. Intended use: style settings are global, so exporting in batches lets you apply different styling to categories vs galleries (or to sections) by running several exports into the SAME output folder. Notes: the checklist is built by a lightweight scanner that never opens files, so it stays fast on large libraries; it rebuilds each time the dialog opens in case pages changed. 2. Fixed: with "Export media files" ticked, every export copied the entire Covers folder regardless of scope — so exporting a single gallery page still began with "Copying cover images…" and copied covers that page never uses. (The code comment said "if doing full site", but the scope check was never actually implemented.) Exports now copy only the covers the exported pages reference, so a gallery-only export copies none and skips the step entirely. Photismos Viewer — v3.7 Changes from 3.6.1: 1. New hero image feature. Four hero description styles (Settings → Description Style): Hero Center, Hero Bottom, Hero Card, Hero Below. Each page uses a reserved "hero" image from its own folder, added via the page-edit (pencil) panel. Works on category and gallery pages, and is baked into exported sites. - hero.jpg/png/webp is reserved: it's excluded from the gallery grid and from gallery media copying, so it never shows up as a thumbnail. - Pages without a hero image fall back to a themed accent band. - Hero Center/Bottom force light text over a scrim; Card and Below use theme text colours, so all four stay readable in light themes. 2. The 3.5 text-only "Hero" description style is renamed "Impact" to free the name for the image-based hero styles. Its key is unchanged, so existing saved settings keep working and it looks exactly as before. 3. Fixed a pre-existing bug in the Description Style preview swatches: the per-style CSS used a descendant selector (.ds-x .desc-style-preview) but both classes sit on the same element, so the preview backgrounds never rendered. Now compound selectors (.ds-x.desc-style-preview). Photismos Viewer — v3.6.1 Changes from 3.6: 1. Custom font list is now sorted alphabetically (natural order) and stays in the same order every time. It previously followed raw directory iteration order, which isn't sorted or stable between reads. 2. Fonts whose filename isn't a valid unquoted CSS family name (e.g. "Font 2", "3Dumb") no longer silently vanish from the list — the family name is now quoted as a fallback. The option preview is quoted too. 3. Fonts that genuinely fail to load are now reported under the picker (and logged to the console) instead of being swallowed by an empty catch. 4. Two font files sharing a name (e.g. Foo.ttf + Foo.otf) no longer produce duplicate entries. Photismos Viewer — v3.6 Changes from 3.5: 1. New "Header Style" section in the Export dialog (alongside Header / Branding): Standard, Centered, Inline, Hero, or Minimal. Export-only — the viewer's own header keeps its control buttons untouched. The choice persists between sessions. Notes: Inline puts the brand and navbar on one row (the navbar follows the Navbar Alignment setting within the remaining space); Hero is large, centered, accent-washed and intentionally non-sticky so it doesn't take over the viewport while scrolling. Photismos Viewer — v3.5 Changes from 3.4: 1. Fixed a bug where dragging a text box's resize handle (in the page description/footer editor and the item info editor) closed the dialog on release. Backdrop dismissal now triggers on press, not a drag that ends on the backdrop. 2. Added a Right alignment option for the navbar (Settings → Navbar Alignment), baked into exports too. 3. Added four more prominent page description styles — Spotlight, Hero, Feature, and Ribbon — alongside the existing Frosted, Banner, Minimal, and Split. All work in the viewer and in exported sites. Photismos Viewer — v3.4 Changes from 3.3: 1. The Back button is now hidden on initial load and on the top-level page (where there is nowhere to go back to); it appears once you're inside a category or sub-folder. 2. Selecting a folder/category, and clicking a navbar link, now always land at the top of the destination page instead of keeping the previous scroll position. 3. New "Responsive Effects" section in Settings: choose the hover effect for folder covers and media thumbnails — Rise &amp; Shadow (default), Zoom, Darken, Glow, or None. The choice is baked into exported sites too. Photismos Viewer — v3.3 Changes from 3.2.1: 1. Four new colorful mid-tone themes in Settings: Teal, Plum, Forest, Clay (muted, easy on the eyes, sitting between the dark and light themes). 2. New "Folder Cover Size" control in Settings (Small / Medium / Large / X-Large) — larger sizes give horizontal/landscape covers more room. The choice persists and is baked into exported sites. Photismos Viewer — v3.2.1 Changes from 3.2: 1. Removed a faint horizontal line that showed across folder cover images (viewer and exported sites). It was a Mach band — a perceptual bright line the eye sees where the cover's darkening gradient abruptly stopped fading. The gradient now eases out smoothly (multi-stop) with no sharp slope change, so the band no longer appears. Photismos Viewer — v3.2 Changes from 3.1.2: 1. Light themes (Crème / Paper): fixed header buttons that were invisible (light text / no outline on a light background) — Back, page-edit (edit description/footer), Settings, + New Folder, + Add Media now show a clear outline and dark text. 2. Light themes: fixed pop-up dialogs and panels that had dark backgrounds with dark text (Edit folder, Edit image, Delete folder, Delete image, Export, + New Subfolder, Edit description/footer, and the Settings panel) — they now use a light surface with readable text, inputs, and close buttons. Exported sites also render the folder/image info popups in the chosen light theme (they were previously always dark). 3. Parent-Folder mode now auto-loads a saved custom font on a fresh session, so it no longer reverts to the last built-in font until you re-open Settings. (Legacy mode still needs a manual re-apply — it requires picking the fonts folder.)

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