31

Thunar is my main file manager. Normally it automatically creates thumbnail images of all images in the directory being viewed. After experimenting with other Linux distros then installing Arch Linux once and for all, Thunar is not showing thumbs. Image files all get the same generic image icon.

Googling turned up some information:

  • Something called gvfs needs to be installed. I have it. Still no go. (Apparently this isn't actually needed anyway.)
  • Someone had this problem and fixed it by running some mime-related command (I didn't save any notes) I did this same command but no go.
  • Checking the obvious: in Thunar's Edit/Preferences, yes, the [x] Show thumbnails is turned on.

When I view one image in GIMP or EOG, the generic icon in Thunar is replaced by a thumbnail. But only for that one file I opened.

iegik
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DarenW
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7 Answers7

48

A package called tumbler is needed for thunar to automatically generate thumbnails.

DarenW
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6

Even if you installed thumblerd you may not see thumbnails for remote storage, including MTP (new Android devices). Check your file manager's settings, e.g. for Thunar one have to set "Show thumbnails: always" (not "Only local files").

radioxoma
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2

I had to run thunar -qin the terminal to make it use ffmpegthumbnailer, from the man page:

-q, --quit Terminate any Thunar instance running in the background (spawned using the --daemon option). This command should be used whenever Thunar is upgraded to a new version to ensure that no old instance is reused.

ZN13
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2

I had to "chown -R *username* ~/.thumbnails" obviously replacing username with your user name. This immediately fixed my problem.

Root was the owner of .thumbnails. I found this by opening GIMP and it gave an error that it could not gain access to .thumbnails, but, if GIMP isn’t giving you this error this may not be the solution for you.

Nifle
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Justin
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1

Removing configuration in Ubuntu helped me show thumbnails in thunar again:
mv ~/.config/Thunar ~/.config/Thunar.bak

Raystafarian
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iegik
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0

I had to re-install tumbler (xubuntu 14.04). ( ~/.thumbnails was empty after I restored the system from a rsync-backup that had omitted thumbnail-data)

rrg
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0

You can check the optional dependencies for that. In Arch linux:

$  pacman -Si thunar
Repository      : extra
Name            : thunar
Version         : 4.16.10-1
Description     : Modern file manager for Xfce
Architecture    : x86_64
URL             : https://docs.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/start
Licenses        : GPL2  LGPL2.1
Groups          : xfce4
Provides        : None
Depends On      : desktop-file-utils  libexif  hicolor-icon-theme  libnotify  libgudev  exo  libxfce4util  libxfce4ui
                  libpng
Optional Deps   : gvfs: trash support, mounting with udisk and remote filesystems
                  tumbler: thumbnail previews
                  thunar-volman: removable device management
                  thunar-archive-plugin: archive creation and extraction
                  thunar-media-tags-plugin: view/edit ID3/OGG tags
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Download Size   : 1236.02 KiB
Installed Size  : 6479.05 KiB
Packager        : Evangelos Foutras <foutrelis@archlinux.org>
Build Date      : Sat 18 Sep 2021 12:36:36 AM +0430
Validated By    : MD5 Sum  SHA-256 Sum  Signature

As you can see you need other packages for trash support, removable device and archive management and view/edit ID3/OGG tags.

mzeinali
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