Great use of small materials! Make good use of Windows 10 file thumbnails

When we transfer the picture to the computer, Windows will display a small picture preview by default, so we can see the basic appearance of the picture without opening the picture. In order to prevent the system from being overburdened, Windows only generates thumbnails when opening a specific folder, and the thumbnails are deleted when the system is shut down. However, we sometimes hope that the system retains the thumbnails of these pictures so that a large number of pictures can be loaded quickly; other times, in order to save some disk space, we hope that the system will not generate thumbnails at all. So, how do you control file thumbnails as you want?

1. Refuse to generate file thumbnails

If you don't want the system to automatically generate file thumbnails, you can use the following two methods.

First, it can be implemented in the resource manager. In File Explorer, press the shortcut keys Alt+V, Y, O in turn, or click "View→Options" or press Win+S and directly search for "Folder Options", which will open "Folder Options" Set up the window.

Click the "View" tab, find the "Always show icons, never show thumbnails" option in the "Files and Folders" group under the "Advanced Settings" list, select this item and click "Apply" and confirm.

In addition, you can also use the registry editor to turn off the thumbnail generation. Press Win+R and run the REGEDIT command to start the registry editor. Navigate to "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced" in turn, and find the DisableThumbnailCache item in the right pane (create it if there is none); double-click to modify the value data of the DisableThumbnailCache item to 1. Exit the registry editor and restart the file resource management.

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2. Selectively clean up the file thumbnail library

We can also clean up file thumbnails in certain folders or the entire system as needed. thumbs.db is the thumbnail library file in the system. Due to the protection of the system, we usually cannot see these files. To clean up these files, first make these files visible. Under the "View" tab of the "Folder Options" window, from the "Advanced Settings" list, deselect "Hide protected operating system files"; under "Hidden files and folders", select "Show hidden Files, folders and drives"; deselect "Hide extensions for known file types".

Next, search for the thumbs.db file in a specific folder (selective cleanup) or the entire drive (clean up all), select these files and delete them.

Tips:

If you cannot delete it, try to restart the system before deleting it. You can also use third-party tools such as Thumbnail Database Cleaner, or the "Thumbnail Cache" option of the optimization tool CCleaner to delete them.

3. Prevent automatic deletion of thumbnails

If you want to preview a large number of pictures repeatedly, keeping the thumbnails can increase the preview speed. At this time, the following methods can be used to prevent the system from automatically deleting thumbnails.

Rebuild the thumbnail first. First set the hidden file or folder to be visible. Navigate to the "C:\Users\<current user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer" folder (pay attention to modify <current user> to be your login user name), select all files and delete them. Then restart the computer, the system will rebuild the file thumbnail. This method can also repair damaged thumbnails.

Next, disable the automatic maintenance service. The automatic maintenance service of the system will automatically delete the relevant thumbnails, so it is necessary to disable the relevant service. Press Win+S to search taskschd.msc and press Enter to start the task scheduler. From the left panel of the Task Scheduler window, navigate to "Task Scheduler Library→Microsoft→Windows→TaskScheduler", disable the following scheduled task options, select the relevant items and delete them.

In addition, you need to prohibit the Disk Cleanup tool from deleting thumbnails. Press Win+S to search for "Disk Cleanup", select the disk to be cleaned and confirm. In the Disk Cleanup window, select the "thumbnail" in the list of files to be deleted, and cancel the selection of this item.

hint:

If you use a third-party optimization tool, such as CCleaner, find the option to clear thumbnails and deselect it. Various types of video files can also display file thumbnails. For the method, please refer to "Using Thumbnail Video to Make the Video More Warm".