Formats
The short answer: if your Mac can already open the file, so can InstantRAW. That is not a claim about how much work I put in. It is literally the mechanism.
How the list is decided
Most viewers ship a table of supported cameras, which is why they need an update every time a manufacturer announces something. InstantRAW asks macOS, at launch, which image types the system can decode, and offers exactly those. Apple maintains that list; I do not.
So when a macOS update adds support for a new body, InstantRAW picks it up the next time you open it, without a new version or any waiting on me.
The definitive test, in ten seconds
Select one of your files in Finder and press space. If Quick Look renders the photograph, InstantRAW will open it, because both are asking the same part of macOS. If Quick Look shows a grey document icon instead, nothing on your Mac can read that file yet.
RAW formats in practice
Everything below is decoded by a current macOS on Apple Silicon. Which specific bodies within a family are covered is Apple’s call, and recent releases are usually added within a macOS point update.
Sony.arw.sr2.srf
Canon.cr3.cr2.crw
Nikon.nef.nrw
Fujifilm.raf
OM System / Olympus.orf
Panasonic Lumix.rw2.raw
Leica.dng.rwl
Pentax / Ricoh.pef.dng
Hasselblad.3fr.fff
Phase One.iiq
Apple ProRAW.dng
Adobe.dng
Sony files get one extra thing
Every format above opens at the same speed, because the instant first frame comes from the picture your camera already saved inside the file. The full render behind it is macOS’s work in every case but one: Sony ARW has a decoder written for it here, which produces a 33 megapixel frame in about a quarter of the time and matches the camera’s own colour rather than reinterpreting it.
Nothing is missing if you shoot anything else. It is the same viewer, with the same instant first frame, and the render that lands behind it is as quick as your Mac can make it. Sony is simply where the extra work has gone so far.
And the ordinary ones
Because half a card is usually not RAW at all. These open just as fast, and a JPEG sitting next to its RAW is folded together with it rather than listed twice.
What it will not open
Video, which is not what this is for. Layered working files from an editor. And any camera so new that macOS has not learned it yet, in which case Preview, Quick Look and Photos cannot open it either, and the fix arrives from Apple rather than from me.
Still not sure
Then do not take my word for it. The trial is the entire product for seven days, with nothing to cancel and no card to enter. Point it at a card of your own files and you will know in a minute. Download it, or send me the extension and I will tell you straight.