How to get image thumbnail icons in the OS X Finder
March 13th, 2007 - How to, Mac OS X, Tips & Tricks
Here’s a good question from one of our readers. A recent switcher to the Mac, Carol Kavanaugh writes: “I got a Mac a few months ago and love it so far, but when I browse a folder full of pictures in Windows a thumbnail image of each picture shows up as its icon, on my Mac I get just a generic icon, is there any way to have Mac OS automatically make thumbnails of my images?” There sure is Carol, in Mac OS X it’s called ‘icon preview’ and here’s how to enable it:
Enabling image thumbnails in the Finder
- From the Finder, hit command-J (or navigate from the View menu to Show View Options)
- Inside the View Options panel, check the ’show icon preview’ box
- Close View Options and now you’ll have thumbnails for each image!
By default, Mac OS X shows just a simple icon. This is what you will see with ‘icon preview’ enabled, a thumbnail of the image: ![]()
Note: If the folder has a ton of images in it, opening that folder initially may take a second or two longer than usual as a thumbnail is generated for each image. Most people find the useful nature of thumbnails enough to have the slight lag not bother them.
Posted by: Editor

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