
To disable thumbnail previews via Control Panel, uncheck the ‘ Show thumbnails instead of icons’ under the ‘ Custom:’ heading.


To enable, follow the same aforementioned process until step ‘ 3’, and then uncheck the ‘ Always show icons, never thumbnails’ option. Now check the ‘ Always show icons, never thumbnails’ option appearing under ‘ Advanced Settings’.The above action will open the ‘ Folder Options’ dialog box, here hit the ‘ View’ tab.In the ‘ File Menu’ options, click on ‘ Change folder and Search options’.Go the ‘ File Explorer’ and click on the ‘ File’.1] Enable or disable thumbnail previews via File Explorer Options These processes are described in more detail below. Here are different processes to enable and disable the thumbnail display feature: On the other hand, if you can view a small snapshot of the content of the file the feature is enabled. If your images or other files are displaying a generic Windows icon like mountain and lake scene for images or media player icon for video files, probably the Thumbnail Previews feature is disabled. In such a case, disabling the feature is a good idea.

The creation of thumbnails for quick navigation/previewing of files slows down the other file operations, affects system performance, and causes UI clutter. But as I said it brings its own set of troubles.

The content of the File Explorer can be set to extra-large icons, large icons, medium icons, and details/tiles view, it is great for those who like to be organized. Thumbnail previews can be a very useful feature as they let you view Windows files without opening them. Thumbnail previews make the navigation process notably fast, but it comes with its own set of troubles that may encourage you to disable this feature on your Windows 10 system.īuilding on this, understand how to enable and disable thumbnails previews in Windows 11/10. This is because these thumbnails give us a quick walk through the contents of the file explorer, and we do not need to open every single file that may have confusing file names. Most of us are accustomed to browsing through our collection by looking at the thumbnail previews. In Windows 10, the File Explorer shows us tiny previews for videos and images that are stored on our system’s hard disk.
