WinCatalog 2026.1

Released April 15, 2026. The first release of the 2026 generation.

New features

• AI Bridge: AI-generated image descriptions. A local AI model running on your own computer analyses the thumbnails already stored in your catalog and writes captions, keywords, category labels and shot types. Works with LM Studio and Ollama, covers JPEG, PNG, TIFF, BMP and RAW images as well as video files with thumbnails. Everything runs on your machine, with no subscription. See Getting Started with AI Bridge.
• eComic scanning. CBZ, CBR and CB7 archives are scanned and their ComicInfo metadata (title, series, author and more) is added to the catalog.
• Font preview thumbnails. TTF and OTF files get a rendered preview showing the font name and a phrase you can configure. The default is “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog 0123456789”.
• Disk image scanning. ISO, VHD, VMDK, VDI and WIM images are scanned directly, without mounting them first.
• 3D model previews. Thumbnails are generated for STL and 3MF files.
• Configurable EXE icon extraction. Icons stored inside executable files can be extracted during a scan.

Improvements

• The Multimedia tab of the item properties was renamed to Metadata and now shows comic book metadata and AI-generated descriptions. See the item properties.
• Folder and file comments are read from readme files by a new parser.
• The post-scan error and warning dialog was redesigned: sorting, copying to the clipboard, saving to a file and resizing. See Scan Errors and Warnings.
• Scanning profiles can be marked as default with a star toggle, and renaming a profile updates the whole interface at once. See Sets of the Scanning Options.
• Better maintenance of the external search index, plus performance and stability fixes.

WinCatalog 2026.1.1

Released on April 24, 2026.

Scan error reporting

• Well-known system folders are skipped entirely, which removes spurious partial scan warnings.
• Scanning and syncing now use the same folder-listing error logic, so a race condition is reported as a warning instead of failing the whole folder.
• A Show errors after scan checkbox was added to the error dialog itself. See Scan Errors and Warnings.
• New -ScanErrors [Show|Skip|Default] command-line flag for batch scripts. See the full list of commands.

AI Bridge

• The response parser extracts the description reliably even when a local model returns slightly malformed output.
• Images are capped at 448×448 pixels before being sent to the model. This suits the Gemma 4 family, keeps the visual detail and speeds up generation.
• The AI Queue column state is kept between sessions.

Fixes

• Window focus returns to WinCatalog after an external dialog closes.
• Single-click renaming works reliably.
• Syncing an individual file no longer reports a false Error 267.