How to get image thumbnail icons in the OS X Finder
March 13th, 2007 - Mac OS X, Tips & Tricks, How to
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.
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Comments:
Comments: 8
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


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