Automatically generate thumbnails for all subfolders of a directory in Windows 7?

Question

Is there some way to get explorer to generate thumbnails without actually having to navigate and scroll through every folder?

All I could get was a command prompt script that would load an explorer window for all subfolders, however only images that were visible would have thumbnails created.

Solution 1

I made a free open source tool for that purpose: WinThumbsPreloader.

It requires Windows 7/8/10 and .Net Framework 4.5 (included in the installer).

Just right click on the folder to call the context menu and select WinThumbsPreloader > Preload thumbnails recursively in the menu.

Solution 2

Go to the top level folder and in the search box (top right), search for *.jpg or whatever your image file type is. Change the view to "thumbnails" and shrink it down as small as it'll go. You may need to page down a few times to get them all to generate.

That's the only method I'm aware of.

Comments

[Jerome]

Worked great. Deserves accepted answer.

[RemarkLima]

Wow, what a fantastic application! Where's the donate button!?

[Clonkex]

Wow, this is a fantastic program! Good job man!

[Scott - Слава Україні]

“the next time you open the File Manager it will generate new thumbnails from within each folder”  — for all subfolders?

[Glenn Slayden]

Totally outstanding; where has this been all my life? Saves a ton of time (of course), but additionally for me, a ton of work since I was about to write it myself...