How to Refresh Thumbnails of Folder Shortcuts (.lnk)

When you create a desktop shortcut to a folder, the folder shortcut thumbnail icon reflects what was in the folder it points to at creation. Later, when you add or remove files to the target folder, the folder thumbnails get updated dynamically, but the folder shortcut thumbnails remain the same. Even pressing F5 does not refresh the folder shortcut thumbs.

As you may have known, you can refresh the folder shortcut thumbnails by clearing and rebuilding the thumbnail cache. But here’s a simpler script solution to refresh the folder shortcut thumbnails without rebuilding the thumbnails cache.

Let’s discuss the script below.

Refresh Thumbnails of Folder Shortcuts

1. Download the RefreshShortcuts script via GitHub.
2. Unzip and extract it to a folder — e.g., D:\Scripts
3. Run the script. It refreshes the thumbnails of folder shortcuts located on your desktop.
   

   You can also run the script as a scheduled task or Startup item.

   Additional Tip

   You can also pass one or more folder paths as arguments. For example:

   wscript.exe "D:\Scripts\RefreshShortcuts.vbs" "D:\Documents"

   The above command-line will refresh all .lnk files in your D:\Documents folder.

   wscript.exe "D:\Scripts\RefreshShortcuts.vbs" "D:\Documents" "D:\Statements"

   The above command-line will refresh the thumbnails of all folder shortcut (.lnk) files located in your “D:\Documents” and “D:\Statements” folders.

   Note: If you don’t pass any arguments and simply double-click the script or run RefreshShortcuts.vbs, it refreshes the folder shortcut thumbnails on the desktop.

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Script code

If you can’t see the script’s contents above, visit the following GitHub link to view and download the script.

Refresh thumbnails of folder shortcuts (.lnk):
https://gist.github.com/winhelponline/f441778cfefb0e4a74768a3291b79f3e