Anime Gallery manual

What Anime Gallery is

Anime Gallery is a free Windows app for browsing a very large catalogue of AI-made anime pictures and videos gathered from public sites. It shows the catalogue as pages of thumbnails you can search and filter, lets you keep what you like — favourites, star ratings, your own tags and albums — and downloads pictures and videos to your own folders.

Install and first start

Anime Gallery runs on 64-bit Windows 10 and Windows 11. It needs an internet connection, because the pictures and videos stay on their sites and are loaded as you browse.

Install the app

1. On this site's Anime Gallery page, press Free Download. You get a compressed archive.
2. Open the archive with WinRAR (free to try from its official site). When it asks for a password, type 123.
3. Double-click the setup program inside the archive and follow the installer. If Windows is missing two free Microsoft components the app needs — the .NET Desktop Runtime and the WebView2 Runtime — the installer downloads them for you.
4. When setup finishes the app starts by itself. Later, start it from its shortcut on the desktop or in the Start menu.

The first start: download the catalogue

A small splash screen appears while the app starts. The very first time, there is no catalogue on your computer yet, so instead of the galleries the app opens its Database page. Pick Small Database to try the app quickly, or Full Database for everything, and press Download. When it finishes, the galleries load by themselves.

Right after that, the app builds a search index in the background, so that searching millions of titles becomes near-instant. You can browse while it works; the footer of each gallery shows Search index: building …% and then Search index: ready. With the full catalogue this takes a few minutes and about 1.5 GB of disk space.

The first time you download a video, the app also fetches the two free download tools it uses, yt-dlp and ffmpeg. You will see Installing yt-dlp… in that download's row; nothing else is needed from you.

What the app puts on your computer

Your settings and favourites go into an AnimeGallery folder inside your user profile's roaming application-data folder; thumbnails, the search index, your albums, ratings and library go into an AnimeGallery folder in the local application-data folder; downloaded pictures go to Pictures › AnimeGallery and videos to Videos › AnimeGallery. The catalogue itself is kept in the folder the app is installed in. Settings › Where your data lives opens the first two folders for you.

Removing the app

Uninstall it from Windows Settings › Apps. That removes the program but keeps your settings, favourites, albums, library and downloaded files, so a reinstall picks up where you left off. To remove everything, first make a backup if you want one (Back up and restore). Then, before uninstalling, open Settings › Where your data lives and open the two AnimeGallery data folders from there; close the app, delete both folders and uninstall. Finally, delete Pictures › AnimeGallery and Videos › AnimeGallery if you no longer want the downloaded files, and the folder the app was installed in if it is still there: it can hold the downloaded catalogue, which is large.

The window at a glance

Every page of the app lives in one window: a slim title bar at the top, a rail of icons down the side, and the current page filling the rest. Small notifications appear in the top corner and fade away by themselves.

Title bar

The title bar shows the app's logo and name and the usual three buttons: Minimize, Maximize (or Restore Down when the window is maximised) and Close. Double-click an empty part of the bar to maximise or restore. Press F11 for full screen, which hides the title bar and the taskbar; press F11 or Esc to come back. Closing the window quits the app — it does not keep running in the background. The app remembers its size and position for next time.

Navigation rail

The column of icons switches pages. Hover an icon to see its name. From the top: Images, Videos, Library, Albums, Downloads, Duplicates and Database; at the bottom: Send Feedback, About, Settings and a sun-and-moon button, Toggle Dark/Light Theme, that swaps the colour scheme at once. The page you are on is highlighted. While anything is downloading, a number on the Downloads icon counts the unfinished downloads.

From the keyboard: Ctrl+1 opens Images, Ctrl+2 opens Videos and Ctrl+, opens Settings.

Notifications

Short notices confirm what just happened — ✓ Copied image URL, a picture added to an album, a finished download — in the top corner of the window. They disappear after a few seconds; click one to dismiss it sooner. Some carry a button that takes you straight on: Resume for downloads left unfinished last time, Open folder, Show downloads, Show in library or Play.

Images

The Images page is where the app opens. It shows the catalogue's pictures a page at a time, newest first. The toolbar at the top searches and filters, the bar at the bottom sorts and turns pages, and each card can be previewed, opened full screen, rated, tagged, added to an album or downloaded. Open it from the first icon of the rail, or with Ctrl+1.

Search by title

Type in the search box and press Enter or Search; the results start again at page 1. The box searches picture titles. Every word you type must appear, and a word also finds longer words that start with it: fox finds “fox” and “foxglove”. Put words in quotes to find them side by side in that order: "red fox". Upper and lower case do not matter.

This fast word search needs the search index, which the app builds after the first start. Until the footer says Search index: ready, the box does a slower search for the exact text you typed anywhere in the title, and quotes are not understood yet.

The All drop-down beside the box limits the page to one source — the website the pictures were collected from. Clear resets the search and every filter in one go, keeping your sort order and page size.

Quick filters

The second group of the toolbar narrows the page with one click each. They combine with each other and with the search.

• Favorites Only — only the pictures you marked with the star.
• History — only pictures you have opened in the full-screen viewer (the most recent 2,000). Opening a picture in the Preview panel does not count.
• 1 per Title — many pictures share a title; this keeps only the newest of each.
• Any rating — choose ★★★ and up, ★★★★ and up or ★★★★★ only to see pictures by your own star ratings.
• Any tag — lists the tags you added yourself, most used first, with how many pictures carry each; pick one to see those pictures.
• Hide Dupes — hides near-identical copies found by the last scan on the Duplicates page, keeping one of each. It does nothing until you have scanned, and scan results are forgotten when the app closes.
• Scan page — opens the Duplicates page and immediately checks the pictures of the page you are on.

The Filters row

Whenever something narrows the page, a Filters row lists it as chips — Search: …, Favorites only, Source: …, Album: …, a rating, a tag or each advanced condition. Click the ✕ on a chip to remove just that filter. The footer's Records count tells you how many pictures are left.

Sorting and turning pages

The bar at the bottom of the page controls what you see and how much of it:

• Random shows a random selection from whatever your filters match. It becomes Reshuffle for a new draw; changing the sort, the search or a filter leaves random mode.
• Sort: Newest first, Oldest first, Title A–Z or Title Z–A. “Newest” means most recently added to the catalogue.
• Size: S, M or L changes how big the thumbnails are, on every gallery page.
• Per page: 25, 50 (the default), 100, 200 or 500 cards. Bigger pages mean fewer page turns but a slower first display.
• First, Prev, Next and Last turn pages. To jump, type a page number in the box and press Enter. Page Up, Page Down, Home and End do the same from the keyboard, and F5 reloads the page.

Working with the cards

• Click a card to show it in the Preview panel on the side.
• Double-click (or press Enter) to open it in the full-screen image viewer.
• The star in the card's corner appears when you point at it; click it to add or remove a favourite. Your star rating, if you gave one, shows under the title.
• Right-click for the card menu. Ctrl+click or Shift+click starts selection mode.
• Drag a card out of the window onto a folder or another program to drop the picture there as a file. If a thumbnail fails to load, the card says Couldn't load and offers Retry.

From the keyboard, the arrow keys move a highlight ring between cards, Space previews the highlighted card and F makes it a favourite. Esc steps back one level at a time: it closes the Preview, then the Tags panel, then the filter panel, then clears the search, then leaves selection mode.

When nothing matches, the page says No results and offers Clear filters and Browse (the Tag Browser).

The Preview panel

A single click on a card opens the Preview panel beside the grid, so you can look, rate and tag without leaving the page.

• Your rating — click a star to rate from one to five; click the same star again to clear the rating.
• Your tags — words of your own, such as “keep” or “reference”. Type one and press Add or Enter; click ✕ on a tag to remove it. Tags are saved in lower case, up to 40 characters; a comma does not split them, so add tags one at a time. They feed the Any tag filter.
• More like this replaces your filters with this picture's rarest tags, models and category, to find similar pictures.
• Prev and Next step through the cards of the current page, Viewer opens the full-screen viewer and Fav toggles the favourite. Close the panel with its ✕ or Esc.

The Tags panel

Show Tags in a card's menu opens the Tags panel: the picture's title, its tags taken from the prompt (the text used to make it), and its Category and Models. Clicking a tag adds it as a condition to the advanced filter — press Apply there to run it. Copy Prompt copies the whole prompt to the clipboard. With the panel open, clicking another card shows that card's tags.

The Advanced Tag Filter

Advanced Filter in the toolbar opens a panel for precise filters built from groups of conditions. The button then reads Hide Filter; hiding the panel keeps the filter.

1. Press + Group to add a group. Choose its Field: Prompt, Title, Category or Models.
2. Type a word into the condition, or type in the tag search box at the top and click one of the suggestions (up to 15 appear) to add it to the last group. + Add Tag adds another condition to a group.
3. Decide how conditions combine. Match: OR (any condition in the group) or AND (all of them). Between groups: AND (every group must match) or OR (any group). The = button on a condition switches it to ≠, “does not contain”.
4. Press Apply (or Enter in the tag box). Nothing changes until you do. Clear removes every group; ✕ on a group or a condition removes just that one.

Category and Models conditions match anywhere in the text: “hair” matches “long hair”. Title and Prompt conditions match whole words and word beginnings, like the search box.

The Tag Browser

Browse in the filter panel opens the Tag Browser, a separate window listing every tag in the catalogue — about twenty thousand. Type in Filter tags… to narrow the list, and switch the order between Popularity and A–Z. Most used shows the thirty commonest tags, bigger for more use; each tag in the list shows how many pictures carry it. Click a tag to add it to the last group of the advanced filter, then press Apply in the main window. The list shows 200 tags a page, with its own pager.

Counts and the popularity order appear once the app has finished counting tag use in the background; this can be switched off under Settings › Search index.

Selecting several pictures

Selection mode lets you act on many pictures at once. Press Select below the search box (or Ctrl+click a card, or choose Select in its menu). A tick box appears on every card and a bar replaces the toolbar.

Click picks one card only; Ctrl+click adds or removes a card; Shift+click picks a run of cards; dragging across empty space draws a box around cards. Select All and Deselect All (or Ctrl+A) work on the current page — turning the page clears the selection.

• Add to Album files the ticked pictures into an album, or ＋ New album… to name a new one (Create & Add).
• Export writes a list of the ticked pictures to a file you name: a CSV spreadsheet that opens in Excel, or a structured data file for other programs (the second file type in the Save dialog). Each row holds the title, picture and page addresses, prompt, category, models, source, and your favourite mark, rating, tags and albums.
• Download Selected opens the Download options window and queues the pictures on the Downloads page.
• Cancel Selection or Esc leaves selection mode.

The picture card menu

Right-click any picture card for this menu. In selection mode, Add to Album acts on every ticked picture, not just the one you clicked.

The image viewer

The viewer shows one picture at a time, full size, in its own maximised window. Open it by double-clicking a card, with Enter on a highlighted card, with Open Image in the card menu or with Viewer in the Preview panel. The window title is the picture's title; the top bar shows the zoom level and a counter such as 16 / 50+ — the “+” means more pages of results are waiting, and the viewer loads them as you go.

Moving and zooming

◀ and ▶ (or ← and →) go to the previous and next picture; at the end of the page the next page of results loads by itself. Home and End jump to the first and last picture loaded. The mouse wheel also changes picture, unless you have zoomed in or hold Ctrl — then it zooms around the pointer. Drag to move a zoomed picture, and double-click to switch between the whole picture and its real pixels.

The buttons at the bottom left: Fit shows the whole picture (0); Fit width fills the width; 1:1 shows one picture pixel per screen pixel; ↺ and ↻ rotate left and right (Shift+R and R); Keep zoom holds the zoom and rotation when you move to the next picture; Info opens the details panel (I). + and - zoom in and out.

Slideshow

Play starts a slideshow (it becomes Pause; Space does the same). Shuffle plays the pictures in random order without repeats. Type the number of seconds per picture in Interval — anything from half a second to ten minutes; the default is 3. The slideshow carries on into the next pages of results.

At the bottom right, Favorite adds or removes the picture from your favourites. Save (Ctrl+S) asks where to save the picture with Windows' Save dialog, suggesting its title as the file name; the file is then downloaded on the Downloads page, the viewer shows ✓ Queued, and a notification with Open folder appears when it is done.

The details panel

Info (or I) opens a panel beside the picture with its Title, Prompt (select it to copy part of it), Models, Source, Category and Image — its size in pixels and file type. Rows with nothing to show are hidden. Below them you can rate the picture, add or remove your own tags, press More like this (closes the viewer and filters the gallery to similar pictures) or Open source page in your browser.

Press Esc or the window's Close to return to the gallery. While a text box in the panel has the cursor, keys type into it; only Esc still works.

Videos

The Videos page works like the Images page, for the catalogue's videos: search titles, filter, sort and turn pages the same way. Open it from the second icon of the rail or with Ctrl+2. It has fewer tools: no source list, no rating or tag filters, no duplicates and no selection mode. In its advanced filter the fourth field is Actor instead of Models.

Each card shows the poster, the title, and the category and actor. An In library badge means you have already downloaded that video; the star marks a favourite. Double-click a card (or press Enter) to play it in the video player. Drag a card out of the window to drop its poster picture as a file.

The video card menu

Right-click a video card for these items:

Menu item	What it does
Toggle Favorite	Adds the video to your favourites, or removes it.
Show Tags	Opens the Tags panel with the video's tags, category and actor, and a Copy Prompt button.
Copy Prompt	Meant to copy the video's prompt. If nothing is copied, use Copy Prompt in the Tags panel instead.
Download	Downloads the video at the quality set in Settings. With Quick download on it is queued straight away; otherwise the Download video window opens first. A video already in your library is not downloaded again — the notification offers Play instead.
Play from library	Shown only for downloaded videos: plays your copy in the Library player.

The video player

Double-clicking a video opens the player, maximised. It streams the video from the internet, so it needs a connection; if the video file cannot be found, the player shows the site's own page instead. The side panel holds:

• Prev, a counter and Next — step through the videos of the current gallery page (← and → too).
• Quality — shown when the video exists in more than one quality. Switching keeps your place in the video.
• Download — downloads this video with the built-in downloader, at the quality on screen.
• Play in library — shown when you already have the video: plays your own copy instead.
• The title, Category, Tags, Actors and Description, then Toggle Fullscreen, which hides the panel (F11 does the same). Esc leaves full screen, or closes the player.

Library

The Library is your own collection of downloaded videos. Every video the app's downloader finishes lands here automatically — whether you started it from a card, the video player or the Downloads page — with its poster, length, quality and where it came from. The heading counts your videos and the space they use, and how many files are missing.

Scan for missing files checks that every file is still on disk and marks moved or deleted ones File missing (it also runs by itself the first time you open the Library after starting the app). Open folder opens the download folder. Search looks in titles, channel names and file names. Sort offers Newest first, Oldest first, Title, Longest first, Largest first and Last played. Missing only shows only the missing ones, and Select starts selection mode, as on the Images page.

Collections

Collections are named groups of library videos. ＋ New collection asks for a name (Create); any videos you have ticked go straight into it. Click a collection to show only its videos — Rename and Delete then appear beside it. Deleting a collection never deletes videos: they stay in your library. All shows everything again.

Cards show the quality and length, Resume when you stopped part-way through, and File missing when the file is gone. Double-click a card, click its ▶, or press Enter to play it.

The library card menu

Right-click a library card. In selection mode, the collection and removal items act on every ticked video.

Remove or delete: the confirmation

Both removals ask first. Remove from library answers Yes or No; the files stay on disk. Delete files asks Delete the files? with Delete or Keep them — Enter and Esc both choose the safe Keep them. Deleted files go to the Recycle Bin, except on a network or removable drive, where Windows may delete them outright.

The Library player

The Library player plays files from your disk, so it needs no internet, and you can keep using the main window while it is open. It resumes where you stopped and remembers your place as you go. The top bar has Prev, a counter and Next for the videos of the current page, the title, then Open externally (Windows' default player), Folder, Fullscreen and ✕. The bottom line shows the channel and site, length, size and download date. ← and → change video, F11 toggles full screen and Esc leaves full screen or closes the player; once you click into the video, Space and the arrow keys control playback.

If a file has moved, the player says This file is no longer where your library says it is. — use Re-download from the card menu, or Scan for missing files after putting it back.

Albums

Albums are your own named groups of pictures, in the order you choose. They are kept on your computer apart from the catalogue, so downloading a new catalogue never touches them. An album remembers pictures, not files: it lists catalogue pictures, and you download them whenever you like.

Make and fill an album

1. Press ＋ New Album, type a name and press Create (or Enter). A name you already used simply selects that album.
2. Go to Images and add pictures: right-click a card › Add to Album, or tick several in selection mode and use Add to Album on the bar. A notification confirms how many were added (and how many were already there).
3. Back on Albums, press Contents on the album's card to see and reorder it.

Each card shows the album's first picture and how many items it holds; click the picture to open the album in the Images gallery. Rename edits the name in place (confirm with ✓ or Enter). Delete asks Delete this album and its contents? — that removes the album and its list only; no picture file is touched. There is no undo.

The Album contents panel lists the pictures in order. Drag a row, or use ▲ and ▼, to change the order; ✕ takes a picture off this album only. At the bottom, Open in Gallery shows the album on the Images page (in the gallery's own sort order — your custom order shows only here), and Download Album opens the Download options window for the whole album.

The Download options window (pictures)

Before pictures are downloaded — from an album, or with Download Selected — this window says how many will be queued and asks how:

• Save to — the folder; Browse… picks another. It starts as your Download folder from Settings (normally Pictures › AnimeGallery).
• Save the prompt beside each picture as a .txt — writes a small text file with the picture's prompt next to it, under the same name. On by default.
• Group into a subfolder — puts an album's pictures into a folder named after the album, and other pictures into folders named after their titles. On by default.
• Download again even if the file is already there — off by default, so pictures you already have are skipped and marked Already there.

Files will land in shows the resulting folder. Add to queue starts; the window closes and the pictures download on the Downloads page while you keep browsing. Your choices are remembered for next time.

Downloads

The Downloads page shows both download queues: Videos (the tab that opens first) and Images. The line under the heading sums up both — how many are in progress, finished and failed. Downloads carry on while you use the rest of the app, and the number on the rail's Downloads icon counts what is still unfinished.

Download a video from a web address

1. Copy the address of a video page in your browser.
2. On the Videos tab press Paste — or just press Ctrl+V anywhere on the tab. The app takes the address from the clipboard and starts.
3. Unless Quick download is on, the Download video window opens: check the quality and folder and press Download. To choose options even with Quick download on, press Options instead.
4. Follow the row's progress. When it finishes, a notification offers Show in library.

Any address that starts with http:// or https:// is accepted; whether it downloads depends on the site. Playlists are not supported — open a single video. A video already in your library is not downloaded twice: the app offers Play instead.

Under the address box, a status line tells you about the download tool: Version …, up to date., Installing yt-dlp…, or Version … is available. with an Update yt-dlp button when there is something to do.

Reading a download row

Each row shows the poster and title, the site and quality, a progress bar and a status: Waiting, Reading the page…, Downloading (with size, speed and time left), Finishing (merging video and audio, writing the details, saving the poster), Downloaded, Paused, Cancelled or Failed with the reason in red.

Row buttons: Pause keeps what has arrived and Resume carries on from there; Retry starts a failed or cancelled download again; Cancel stops it and deletes the partial file; Play plays a finished video; In library jumps to it in the Library; the folder button opens its folder; the bin takes the row off the list — it never deletes a finished file.

The toolbar acts on the whole tab: Pause all (then Resume all), Cancel all, Clear finished (removes finished, failed and cancelled rows from the list) and Open folder.

The Images tab

Pictures from Save Image, Download Selected and Download Album download here, three at a time by default. Each row shows the file name, the subfolder, progress and a status: Waiting, Downloading, Done, Already there (the file existed and was skipped), Failed or Cancelled. A failed row offers Retry; finished rows have the folder and remove buttons. When a batch finishes, a notification offers Open folder.

The Download video window

This window appears before a video download unless Quick download is on. It lists the video (for a pasted address it reads the page first and shows the poster, channel, length and site) and offers:

• Quality — Best, 2160p (4K) down to 360p, or sound only as Audio (m4a) or Audio (mp3). It is a ceiling: the app takes the best version at or below your choice. Audio only switches to sound in one click.
• Container — MP4 (plays inside the app), MKV (needs another player) or Whatever the site serves.
• Subtitles — None, Save beside the video or Embed in the video.
• Save to with Browse…, and A folder for each site, which adds a subfolder named after the website.
• Collection — file the finished video straight into a Library collection, or New….

• Advanced — a Speed limit such as 500K or 2M, and Extra arguments for experts, which override everything above.

The file will land in previews the folder and file name. Don't ask again turns on Quick download: later downloads start at once with the defaults from Settings › Video downloads. Press Download to queue it, or Cancel.

If you already have the video, a banner says You have already downloaded this video. with Play and Download again.

Duplicates

The same picture often appears in the catalogue more than once, sometimes slightly resized or re-saved. The Duplicates page finds such near-copies by comparing a small fingerprint of each thumbnail. The catalogue is far too big to check in full, so a scan looks at a chosen set of pictures. Nothing is ever deleted: a scan only groups the copies and marks one of each to keep, which the Images page can then use to hide the rest.

Run a scan

1. Under Scan, choose what to check: Cached thumbnails (every thumbnail already on your disk — costs no downloads), Current gallery page, Album (then pick the album) or Recently viewed (what you opened in the viewer).
2. Set How alike: how many of the fingerprint's 64 bits two pictures may differ by and still count as copies. 0 means identical thumbnails only; the default is 8 and the maximum 16. Raise it to catch more, lower it if unrelated pictures get grouped.
3. Press Scan. Missing thumbnails are downloaded as needed; Cancel stops the scan and keeps what was done. Fingerprints are remembered, so scanning the same pictures again is almost instant; Clear hashes forgets them all.

Reading the results

The summary says how many groups and extra copies were found among how many pictures. Each group card says how many pictures it holds, how far apart they are, and which one is kept; the kept picture has a coloured border and a KEEP badge. By default the newest copy is kept.

Keep newest and Keep oldest change which copy is kept — they only move the mark. Open opens the kept picture in your browser. ＋ Album adds the whole group to the album chosen under Scan › Album (choose one there first).

To use the result, turn on Hide Dupes on the Images page: every copy except the kept one disappears from the gallery. Results live only until the app closes — scan again after a restart. Scan page on the Images page is a shortcut that scans the page you are looking at. The How alike value is also in Settings › Duplicates.

Database

The catalogue — the list of every picture and video the galleries show — is one large file that the app downloads from the internet. The Database page is where you get it. It opens by itself at the first start; later, open it from the rail when you want a fresh catalogue.

Two catalogues are offered, with their download size next to each: Small Database, quick to fetch, for trying the app; and Full Database, the whole collection. Select one and press Download. The page shows how much has arrived, then unpacks and checks the new catalogue; only when it is sound does it replace the old one, so a failed download leaves your current catalogue untouched. The galleries reload by themselves when it is done — no restart needed.

Under the catalogue, Search index shows the index's state — building with a percentage, ready, out of date or not built. Rebuild search index throws it away and builds it again from scratch; use it if searching behaves oddly or a build was interrupted. It needs free disk space of roughly twice the index's size.

Send Feedback

Report a problem, suggest an idea or rate the app without leaving it. Open the page from the speech-bubble icon at the bottom of the rail, or with Send Feedback on the About page. Sending needs an internet connection.

1. Under What is this about? pick Message, Suggestion, Rate the app or Bug report. Rate the app adds a row of five stars to choose from.
2. Optionally give Your name and a Reply email if you would like an answer.
3. Write a Subject (at least 3 characters, up to 255) and the Details (at least 10, up to 5,000); the counters show how much you have used.
4. Tick Include technical diagnostics if the report is about a problem. Show exactly what will be sent lists it: the app and Windows versions, language and theme, whether a catalogue is installed and how big it is, and how many favourites you have — as a count only.
5. Press Send feedback. It stays greyed out until the form is complete. On success you get a receipt number you can keep; if sending fails, your text is kept so you can try again.

Your message goes to the app's support inbox together with the app version, Windows version, language and a random installation ID used only to limit abuse (the server stores just a scrambled form of it). No gallery contents, file names, folder paths or catalogue are ever sent. Reset installation ID starts a new ID for the next report.

About

The About page (the i icon at the bottom of the rail) shows the app's name, edition and a short description, and four links: App Page opens the Anime Gallery page of this website, More Free Apps opens the site's home page, Email starts a message to info@pixeoai.com in your mail program, and Send Feedback opens the feedback page.

Settings

Open Settings from the gear at the bottom of the rail, or with Ctrl+,. There is no Save button: every change takes effect the moment you make it. The page is a column of cards, described below in the order they appear; scroll to reach them all.

Switches in Settings are labelled On or Enabled and are highlighted when active.

Appearance

Behaviour

Thumbnail cache

Thumbnails downloaded while you browse are kept on disk, so pages you come back to appear without downloading again.

Downloads

How pictures are downloaded. The Download options window shows these same choices before each batch, and what you pick there is saved back here.

Video downloads

The defaults for every video download, and for Quick download. Advanced reveals more options below the card; the second screenshot shows them.

Tools

Video downloads rely on two free tools that the app installs and updates for you: yt-dlp, which does the downloading, and ffmpeg, which merges video and sound, converts and writes posters (without it, videos still download, at lower quality). They live in a tools folder inside the app's local data folder.

Search index

Duplicates

Privacy

Everything here is off until you turn it on. How the lock and the panic shortcut feel in use is described in Privacy and the PIN lock.

Where your data lives

The last card shows where the app keeps things and backs up what matters. The paths in the screenshot are demonstration folders; on your computer they are inside your user profile, as the table says.

Settings that ask first

Four settings could lose something, so they ask in a sheet over the page: Clear cache, Reset all settings to defaults, Remove PIN and Clear history now. Yes, continue goes ahead; Cancel leaves everything as it was.

Privacy and the PIN lock

Anime Gallery can keep what you browse to yourself: a PIN that hides the galleries, automatic locking, a panic shortcut, blurred thumbnails and a clean-up when the app closes. All of it is set up under Settings › Privacy and is off until you turn it on. The PIN hides the app from someone at your keyboard; it does not encrypt files on disk.

Set up the PIN lock

1. Open Settings and scroll to Privacy.
2. Type a PIN of 4 to 12 digits in New PIN, the same again in Confirm PIN, and press Set PIN.
3. Optionally turn on Lock when minimized and choose a time under Lock when idle.
4. Press Lock now (or Ctrl+L) to try it.

When the app is locked, a Locked screen covers the whole window and any open player closes. Type the PIN and press Unlock (or Enter). The first five wrong tries cost nothing; after that, each wrong try makes you wait before the next one — 5 seconds, then 10, 20 and so on, up to five minutes. The lock appears at every start, on Ctrl+L, with Lock in the tray menu, and when the idle or minimise lock is on.

The panic shortcut

With Panic shortcut on, pressing its keys — Ctrl+Shift+H unless you changed them — anywhere in Windows instantly mutes the app's players and hides every one of its windows. Nothing is closed. Pressing the keys again does not bring it back: use the tray icon, which appears while the app is hidden — double-click it or choose Open. If a PIN is set, the lock screen comes first, and the sound returns only after you unlock. If another program already uses those keys, the app tells you and switches the option off; press Test to check keys before relying on them.

The tray icon

The Anime Gallery icon sits in the notification area at the end of the taskbar (it may be under the ^ “Show hidden icons” arrow). It appears while the panic shortcut has hidden the app, or all the time if Always show the tray icon is on. Right-click it for Open, Lock (only when a PIN is set) and Exit, which closes the app completely. Double-clicking the icon is the same as Open.

More ways to stay private

• Blur thumbnails until hovered blurs the galleries except the card under your mouse.
• Clear traces when the app closes erases the thumbnail cache, pictures held in memory and your viewing history each time you quit.
• Clear history now empties the viewing history behind the History filter.

Keyboard shortcuts

Press F1 — or ? when you are not typing — to see this list inside the app; Esc, the ✕ or a click outside closes it. Key names stay in English in the Arabic app too. Shortcuts marked for the gallery do not work while the cursor is in a text box.

Back up and restore

Your favourites, albums, ratings, tags, viewing history and Library records exist only on your computer. One backup file keeps them safe — for a new computer, a reinstall, or simply peace of mind.

Make a backup

1. Open Settings › Where your data lives.
2. Press Export user data…, choose where to save and keep the suggested name (such as AnimeGallery-userdata-2026-09-23.zip).
3. Copy the file somewhere safe — a USB stick or cloud storage. Last export now shows today's date.

The backup holds your settings (without the PIN), favourites, albums, ratings, own tags, viewing history, Library records and the picture download list. It does not hold the catalogue, thumbnails, the search index, logs, the download tools, or the downloaded pictures and videos themselves — copy those folders separately if you want them.

Restore a backup

1. Open Settings › Where your data lives and press Import user data….
2. Pick the backup file. A summary lists what it contains — favourites, albums, ratings and tags, history, library videos, and whether settings are included.
3. Choose Merge to add the backup to what you have: nothing is deleted, and where both have the same item the newer or higher value wins; your current settings are kept. Or choose Replace to make this computer match the backup exactly, settings included (your PIN stays if the backup has none). Cancel does nothing.
4. Restart the app when it tells you to, to see everything.

Moving to a new computer

Export on the old computer, install Anime Gallery on the new one and download a catalogue, then import with Replace. Copy your Pictures › AnimeGallery and Videos › AnimeGallery folders across too; if the Library then shows files as missing, press Scan for missing files.

Keeping it up to date

Three things can be updated: the app itself, the catalogue and the download tools.

Troubleshooting

Most problems have a quick fix. Find what you see in the first column.

When the app reports a problem

After an unexpected error, a Problem Report window explains what happened — the app either carries on or has to close — and a report is saved on your computer. You can describe what you were doing (optional) and Review details to see exactly what would be sent; nothing is sent unless you choose to. Send report sends it, Send on next start keeps it for later, Not now declines, Copy details copies it and Open error log shows the app's error log. A report left unsent is offered again at the next start. Names and folder paths are removed from reports before sending.

Questions and answers