Windows 11: Thumbnail previews do not show on folders

Anonymous
2021-11-28T18:05:14+00:00

My folders are appearing as blank folder icons, where in Win 10 they showed thumbnail previews of the contents.

I've searched online for answers, and most appear to apply to earlier versions, and tell me to uncheck the 'icon only, no thumbnail' choice in View|Options, but that is already unchecked, so that is not the answer.

Does anyone have an actual working answer? Thanks if you do!

.....ph

Windows for home | Windows 11 | Files, folders, and storage

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Sumit 44,316 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
2022-02-17T07:04:33+00:00

The Windows 11 2022 update brings Thumbnail previews to folders.

Windows 11 2022 update now available - Microsoft Community

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  1. Sumit 44,316 Reputation points Volunteer Moderator
    2022-02-28T05:08:45+00:00

    CarolHorton's fix worked for me. I also updated to build 22533.

    Thumbnail previews are added in Windows Insider Preview 22557+. They are not available in 22533 unless you did a typo.

    Announcing Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 22557 | Windows Insider Blog

    [File Explorer]

    • File Explorer will now show previews of items within folders.

    https://blogs.windows.com/wp-content/uploads/prod/sites/44/2022/02/file-explorer-folder-previews.png

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  2. Anonymous
    2022-02-28T06:29:23+00:00

    Sumit is quite correct. There are no folder content previews as yet in Windows 11. This has been confirmed by Microsoft in this thread in the Feedback Hub app. When they are introduced in a forthcoming build they will not be full previews as in previous versions of Windows, so are still next to useless.

    This is a DIFFERENT issue, to being able to view thumbnail icons. CarolHorton is correct in stating that you can turn on and off thumbnail icons in the View option in Explorer.

    Folder contents previews, and thumbnail icons, are two separate issues.

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  3. Anonymous
    2022-02-28T12:38:14+00:00

    Ah ok that might be the disconnect, 22533 is a Windows Insider Preview Build, not the Live production build being sold with new PCs or after an upgrade. And just another point of note saying "This is a very simple fix" implies that the feature has existed all along but people didn't know how to turn it on, which is not the case. This feature doesn't exist after an upgrade or on newly purchased pcs running windows 11.

    If they've added the feature to a preview build that's a step in the right direction hopefully it hits production sooner than later. but it should never have been removed in the first place.

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  4. Anonymous
    2022-02-28T14:30:02+00:00

    Absolutely agree. Nor should one have to hunt through a bunch of settings to turn it back on. In my mind a good user interface is intuitive with a minimum number of actions to accomplish what needs to be done.

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