Viewing
An image opens fitted to the window: the whole picture, as large as the window allows, never larger than its own size unless you zoom.
Zoom
| Key | Does |
|---|---|
| + | Zoom in, to the next step, about the centre of the window |
| - | Zoom out, to the previous step |
| 0 | Zoom to fit the window |
| 1 | Actual size: one image pixel per screen pixel |
| Double-click | Toggle between fit and actual size |
The mouse wheel zooms about the pointer, so the spot under it stays put. Above 200 % the pixels are drawn as crisp squares rather than smoothed, so you can see what the file really holds.
The floating controls that appear when the pointer moves over the image have zoom buttons too, and a menu of zoom steps.
Pan
A zoomed image can be moved about:
- Drag it with the mouse.
- Shift+← and Shift+→ move left and right, and ↑ and ↓ up and down. (Plain ← and → step through the folder.)
- On a Mac trackpad, two fingers pan.
Mouse wheel or trackpad
On macOS Mirada can tell a trackpad from a wheel:
- Pinch to zoom.
- Two fingers move about a zoomed-in image.
- A sideways swipe shows the next or previous image when there is nothing to pan.
A mouse wheel always zooms, and Ctrl or ⌘ with any scroll zooms. Windows and Linux touchpads do not say how many fingers are on them, so there a two-finger scroll zooms, as a wheel does; a Windows touchpad’s pinch arrives as Ctrl+scroll and zooms too.
Keep the zoom when stepping
Normally each image opens fitted. Keep Zoom When Stepping (Z) keeps the zoom and the position instead, so you can compare the same detail across a burst of shots: zoom into the eyes in the first frame, then arrow through the rest. Press Z again to go back to fitting. The choice is remembered.
Rotate
R turns the view a quarter clockwise and Shift+R a quarter counterclockwise (Ctrl+R and Ctrl+Shift+R work too, and ⌘R and ⌘L on a Mac). The file is not changed: this is how you look at it. To save a turned copy, use the editor.
Photos are already turned upright from the orientation the camera wrote into them, mirrored ones included, so a phone’s portrait shot does not lie on its side.
Full screen
F or F11 fills the screen with the image, on black; on a Mac, the green window button and ⌃⌘F do too. Esc leaves. The pointer hides after the same rest as the floating controls.
Slideshow
F5 shows the folder’s images one after another, full screen, at the speed set in Settings (5 seconds by default, from 1 to 60). Esc stops it.
Escape
Esc stops the slideshow or leaves full screen. On Linux, with nothing to leave, it closes the window, as GNOME’s viewer does: look, then go. On macOS and Windows it never closes the window.
Transparency and animation
Transparent parts of an image are drawn over a checkerboard, so they show as transparent rather than as the window’s colour. Animated GIF, WebP, AVIF, HEIC sequences and JPEG XL play: the first frame shows at once, and the animation starts when the rest of the frames have decoded.