Guide: How to Boost Thumbnail Loading in Windows 10 PC
Didn’t we sit down to show friends all your recent vacation photos? However, the enthusiasm fades as it takes a very long time for the thumbnails to load on your Windows PC. That can turn out to be a pretty annoying affair, especially when you need to quickly find a few important photos. That problem is more common in systems with many media files in folders. In a normal scenario, Windows 10 keeps a cache of the thumbnail files for your files and folders. So when you open a folder, the content is ready for you to view. Over time, this cache starts to increase slowly as new files are added to the system. And that’s one of the reasons Windows File Explorer is taking its own sweet time to display the thumbnails. Or, in the worst case, your system is showing the wrong file previews. Fortunately, the changes are not permanent and with the right solution, this problem can be quickly fixed. In this post, we explore four different ways to speed up up the thumbnail loading time in Windows 10. If you are lucky, you only need to do one of the solutions to fix the problem, while others may require you to try all three.
1. Via Group Policy
Step 1: Open Group Policy by typing Edit Group Policy (or gpedit.msc) in the Start menu. As you may already know, Windows Group Policy has a range of advanced local settings that you can adjust, provided you know your way around.
Step 2: Once inside, navigate to User Configuration> Windows Components> File Explorer.
Step 3: Now look for the option ‘Disable thumbnail caching …’. Chances are that this option has a status of Not Configured or is disabled.
All you need to do is select Enabled and click Apply button
After applying the above, restart your computer for the above changes to take effect.
2. Via the Control Panel settings
Next, we need to make sure your system is set to show all file and folder thumbnails. To do this, follow the steps below. Step 1: Open the Control Panel of your system and go to System and Security> System and click Advanced System Settings.
Step 2: Select the Advanced tab and select Settings under Performance.
Here you just need to make sure that the option ‘Show thumbnails instead of icons’ is enabled. If not, tick the box and press OK.
3. Check the registry values
Last but not least, you may want to edit the registry values. Obviously, your system has a ton of maintenance tools that run automatically. And as you may have guessed, one of his jobs is cleaning up the File Explorer cache regularly. Just like your browser and your phone, tidy up the cache makes new space, which is good from a storage point of view. But at the same time, the file explorer also has to reload the cache, which ends up take time. So, if you’re really frustrated with the slow load time, you might want to tweak the values a bit so that the Disk Cleanup task isn’t triggered for the thumbnail cache. Usually the task chooses Disk Cleanup (under the name SilentCleanup) up the autorun task with values 1. If you change it to 0, the task will of course skip these keys. To do this, open the Registry Editor by typing Regedit in the start menu. Note: The Windows Registry contains all the settings and configurations used by your Windows system. That is why it is vital that you have a good backupup of the registry values before attempting to make any changes. In addition, any changes in the values must be carried out with great care. Then navigate to the following path, HKLMSOFTWARE MicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerVolumeCaches Here you will see two values, Standard and Autorun. All you need to do is set the Autorun DWORD value to 0. Do this also for the following path, HKLMSOFTWAREWOW6432NodeMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerVolumeCachesThumbnail Cache When done, restart the PC for the changes to take effect.
4. Change the size of the thumbnail cache
You can also increase the cache size if you are in the habit of keeping all your photos and images in one folder. And as you may have guessed, the way is through the registry values. Open the registry and navigate to the path below, HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWARE MicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplore When done, right-click on an empty space and select New. Then select New> String Value and add the term Max Cached Icons.
Now add the value 4096 and press OK buttonThis tweak creates a 4MB cache file.
If you want a slightly larger cache file, you can also update this update to 8192. By default, the icon cache size in Windows is about 500 KB.
Explore directories like a pro
Waiting for the file explorer to load the image and file previews can be an annoying affair. The frustration increases all the more, especially when you have to work quickly. So which of these solutions worked for you? Let us know in the comments below. The next up Do you have a Windows 10 tablet? Get the most out of it by using the tips and tricks Below.
How to Boost Thumbnail Loading in Windows 10 PC: benefits
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