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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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Comments:

Comments: 15

Comment from dave
Time: March 13, 2007, 10:36 am

NICE! That’s super!

Comment from archimedes
Time: March 13, 2007, 7:37 pm

If anyone isn’t using this already, they need to because it is awesome

Comment from jeff
Time: March 14, 2007, 1:05 pm

You may also be interested in CocoThumbX which will bring you pdf and video thumbnails http://www.stalkingwolf.net/software/cocothumbx/

Comment from Naked Dave
Time: March 14, 2007, 5:12 pm

i was wondering how you do that for the longest time!

Comment from TheRealDeal
Time: March 14, 2007, 7:29 pm

Thank you sir. You just made my night!

Comment from nicholas
Time: November 26, 2007, 12:53 pm

Now is there a way to do with with mpg or wmv icons?

Comment from Ann
Time: April 20, 2008, 8:29 am

Somebody please can tell me how come that I don’t have in View Options “show icon preview” box??? do I do something wrong?
I have 10.4.11 and have no any way to enable image thumbnails. :(
Help!

Comment from Roger Bahari
Time: May 12, 2008, 9:20 am

Hi Ann, press apple 1 to make sure you’re viewing the files as icons, if you’re viewing as a list or column, it won’t give you the option

Comment from Doug Barber
Time: June 18, 2009, 8:45 pm

What about being able to see thumbnails on top of folder icons in Finder that preview the images inside that folder like in XP?

Comment from cak
Time: August 25, 2009, 2:44 pm

Nope, still doesn’t work, and I am using 10.5, and all my jpgs are still not thumbnails. And your description is rubbish.

Comment from nick
Time: August 30, 2009, 9:08 am

I have the opposite but similar problem. I can see the image thumbnail in the finder mode. When I edit a photo in preview (cropping and or colour correction) then “save” or “save as” sometimes but often the image disappears and doesn’t return.

Why does this happen and how do I fix it?

BTW I’m fully aware of the the “view – options” menu and that’s not the problem. I even double checked just now. I’m using an ibook G4 Version 10.4.11 in case that matters.

Pingback from jfml – illustration, animation, politik etc. – OSX Finder Thumbnails
Time: September 24, 2009, 9:19 am

[...] Ein Ding, was mich so unendlich nervt bei Mac OSX ist, daß standardmäßig im Gegensatz zu Windoof von Bildern in der Symbolansicht keine Thumbnails generiert werden. Warum das so ist, möchte ich gern mal wissen. Das kranke ist, daß man eigentlich kein Thumbnail-Programm wie CocoThumbX braucht, um welche zu erstellen*, sondern die Vorschaubilder aktiviert werden können, indem man alle Bilder markiert, Apfel-J drückt und das entsprechende Häkchen anhakt. Danke, OSX-Daily. [...]

Pingback from OsX: Listen-Ansicht bei Dock-Stacks einstellen — kazam
Time: October 2, 2009, 10:14 am

[...] How to get image thumbnail icons in the OS X Finder [...]

Comment from jen
Time: November 28, 2009, 1:54 pm

I can’t get this to work with TIFF files. since JPEG is not a lossless file type I never use them. All of my images are saved as TIFF or RAW and I just get a little picture of clouds when show icon preview is clicked. Does anyone know how to make this work for files other than JPEG?

Comment from ryan
Time: December 23, 2009, 3:55 pm

thank you. this has been bugging me for months.

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March 13th, 2007