Many Windows 10 users have the option to show thumbnails in folders that contain some type of image or video. These thumbnails are a good alternative to the icon and quite useful for previewing the contents of any folder. However, sometimes these thumbnails do not display correctly in File Explorer or load too slowly, which can be quite annoying. So today, we are going to know what we can do to solve it.
There are several reasons why thumbnails are not displayed. They may be due to problems with Windows File Explorer or with the thumbnail cache loading. To fix it and make it show up again correctly, some of these tips might help.
Restore folder where thumbnails are not displayed
If the thumbnails are not displayed in a certain folder, we can choose to restore it to try to solve the problem. To do this, we must select the folder where the thumbnails are not displayed and right-click to select the “Properties” . Here we will go to the “Customize” tab and click on “Restore default” . Next, click on Apply and finally on OK, to save the changes and check if the thumbnails are already displayed correctly.
Windows Explorer Settings
If the thumbnails are not displayed correctly in Windows Explorer it may be due to a configuration problem, the option to show icons instead of thumbnails is enabled. To enable the viewing of thumbnails, we must write in the Start menu bar “File Explorer Options” and click on the application. Next, we go to the “View” tab to check if the option “Always show icons, never thumbnails is activated” . If so, we must uncheck it, click Apply and then OK. This way, from now on, the thumbnails will always be shown instead of the icons.
Restore File Explorer
We can also fix the problem of thumbnails in Windows File Explorer by restoring the default settings. To do this, we write “File Explorer Options” and open the application. Now we must press the “Restore defaults” button , which we will find in the “General” and “View” tab. Once done, the app will return to its default settings which should solve the problem.
Review advanced system settings
Another reason why we do not see the thumbnails previews correctly on our computer may be because they are not enabled within the advanced settings of the system, so we must check it and if it is necessary to activate them.
We will write “Advanced system configuration” inside the start menu and we will access the tool. Then we click on the “Advanced Options” tab and here we select “Settings” . On the next screen we must make sure that the options “Save thumbnails previews from the taskbar” and “Show thumbnails instead of icons” are checked, and if they are not, check them. Finally, click on Apply and OK to save the changes. With these two options enabled, the thumbnails should display smoothly.
Clear the thumbnail cache
By default, instead of using generic icons, Windows uses thumbnails to display the contents of a folder. These small images are stored in a file called the thumbnail cache. This way you don’t have to continually load images every time we open a folder. Sometimes it may be necessary to re-create the thumbnail cache files to resolve the problem.
To do this we must go to the start menu and open the Disk Cleanup. To do this, simply write “cleanmgr” and select the tool. Next, we select drive C and click OK. Now, in the list of files that we want to delete, we will go down to the end of everything and leave the “Thumbnails” option checked , being able to remove the rest of the options if we wish. Finally, click on OK and the thumbnails will be removed and automatically re-created when necessary.
