When a folder contains one or more images in it, the contents of the folder are shown as the thumbnail image for that folder.
Windows allows you to enable or disable thumbnail previews in File Explorer using the Always show icons, never thumbnails setting in the Folder Options dialog. When you turn off thumbnail previews, icons are shown instead of thumbnails — for both files and folders. The Folder Options dialog doesn’t have an option to disable thumbnail preview selectively for folders or for files only.
If you need to disable folder content thumbnail previews, and still have the thumbnail previews enabled for files — e.g., PDF, image files, etc., this article has the solution.
Disable Folder Thumbnails without Disabling Thumbnail Preview for Files
To turn off folder content thumbnail preview without enabling the Always show icons… setting in Folder Options, the trick is to set a global folder logo (thumbnail) in the folder view template registry key.
The important thing here is that the global folder thumbnail template registry entry must point to a non-existent image file, for this to work. And then, you’ll need to reset the thumbnails cache so that the thumbnails for existing folders are refreshed.
Follow these steps to disable folder content thumbnail previews:
- Copy the following lines to Notepad and save it as a .reg file — e.g.,
disable_folder_thumbs.reg
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 ;Disable folder thumbnails without disabling thumbnail view for files ;Created by Ramesh Srinivasan on 10-June-2019 for Winhelponline.com ;Note: This fix does NOT reset your saved folder view settings. [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\AllFolders\Shell] "Logo"="d:\\somefile.jpg"
- Double-click
disable_folder_thumbs.reg
to apply the settings to the registry. - Click Yes when prompted to apply the .reg file. This is how the setting will now look like in the Registry Editor:
- The next step is to clear the thumbnail cache so that thumbnail previews for the existing folders are refreshed. Follow one of the methods described in the article How to Clear and Rebuild the Thumbnail Cache in Windows
That’s it! You’ve now disabled folder thumbnails without disabling the thumbnail previews for files.
Editor’s note: Despite the presence of the global folder thumbnail template in the registry, you can still override and customize the folder icon or thumbnail via folder properties, on a per-folder basis.
Undo information
To reverse the above changes (to enable folder thumbnails back), use this .reg file:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 ;UNDO REG file [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Bags\AllFolders\Shell] "Logo"=-
Save the above .reg file as enable_folder_thumbs.reg
and run it.
(The registry method discussed in this article works on all versions of Windows 10 and Windows 11 22H2.)
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BRAVO Maestro !!!
Thanks man !
I LOVE YOU, ITS BEEN 6 YEARS SINCE IM LOOKING FOR THIS TRICK
SO MUCH LOVE <3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3<3
It was great, but at least in the latest version of Windows 10, you have to manually create this key in the path above, since the reg file didn’t work for me, and of course, there is no / left in the image that should be two /
Thank You !!!
Thanks man !!!
But how can I enable folder thumbnails if I want to revert back ?
@Sanket: Undo info has been added to the article.
Thank you so much, dude!
I can confirm this nice trick works perfectly. I just tried it on Windows 8.1.
Thank you!!!
Thank you sir. I appreciate your commitment towards helping others.
it says I cant inpost the code in the txt file as disable_folder_thumbs.reg because the file is not a registry script
@Michelle: Make sure you didn’t skip the 1st line — “Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00”. If that line is not copied, “not a registry script” error occurs. [Fix] Cannot import file: The specified file is not a registry script
It only disabled the thumbnails of blank folders not folders that contain files. Any solution? Thanks.
@Noir: See if clearing the folder views and reapplying the registry edit helps.
To reset the folder view settings, check out https://www.winhelponline.com/blog/reset-folder-views-bags-windows/
Thanks for the amazign tips ! But it’s now not working with Windows 11, Can you please discover another method?
Thanks again
Folder thumbnail/logo support is enabled in Windows 11 Insider Build already. Should be implemented in the next RTM version.
The registry edit works well in Windows 11 22H2.
this used to work on windows 10 but when i updated to windows 11 something weird happened: when i enlarge the icon size the icons revert back to the default yellow icon. the custom icons only appear when the icon view is at a specific size. any ideas how to fix this?
@jane: Are you referring to folder icon or folder thumbnails?
How can I do this with Windows 11? One of your previous comments says the functionality is already supported, but I’m new to the OS so I don’t know where to find the right setting.
@Jacob: You’ll need to have v22H2 installed for it to work on Windows 11.
Thanks for this! it works but I have a shell icons string (HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer) to have a folder icon of my own and when I put what you have done while it works it shows the original windows folder not the one I have on ,
Im on W11, is there a way to solve that ?