GNOME Files: No file thumbnails

GNOME Files (nautilus) does not display thumbnails of files like images, videos, and other files that usually have thumbnails. This makes it hard to browse large directories of multimedia files.

## Steps to reproduce

1. Start GNOME Files.

2. Make sure that "GNOME Files → Preferences → Search & Preview → Thumbnails" is active ("Files on this computer" is the option selected in my case for files less than 10 MB).

3. Browse to a directory that contains images.

## Unexpected result

All images are represented by the same icon, so you can only differentiate them by file name (when the files are not generated by devices like cameras).

Screenshot: https://multimedialib.files.wordpress.com/2020/01/guix-gnome-files-3.32.3-no-image-previews-2020-01-13.png

## Expected result

You can see thumbnails of all images so you can browse them by their content, not only by their file name.

## System information

GNOME 3.32.2

GNOME Files 3.32.3-stable

$ LANG=C guix describe

Generation 8 Jan 12 2020 16:24:29 (current)

guix f9ea47a

repository URL: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git

branch: master

commit: f9ea47a978882541063dd0d77c138be881ce0688

---

I can reproduce.

Note that I've managed to get _some_ thumbnails when I first logged in.

Now the thumbnail generation seems to be completely gone.

Any clue what's happening, anyone? Has this ever worked before?

--

Pierre Neidhardt

---- On Thu, 02 Apr 2020 02:55:34 -0500 Pierre Neidhardt <mail@ambrevar.xyz> wrote ----

> I can reproduce.

>

> Note that I've managed to get _some_ thumbnails when I first logged in.

> Now the thumbnail generation seems to be completely gone.

>

> Any clue what's happening, anyone? Has this ever worked before?

I've been using GNOME in the Guix System since I installed it (almost a year ago), and this have never worked for me.

Also, opening the files with some applications will make the thumbnails work for these particular files. For example, opening images in the GIMP or browsing files with file managers like Thunar and Caja (if I recall correctly).

This issue persists in the following software:

GNOME 40.4

GNOME nautilus 41.0

$ guix describe

Generation 52 Dec 23 2021 11:56:54 (current)

guix 037c2b6

repository URL: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git

branch: master

commit: 037c2b6d3acdf7f5b68ecb3024ef90bce85922df

Hello

There was a patch in June 2020 that added bubblewrap as input to gnome-

dektop. It was reported that the patch was enabling thumbnails in

Nautilus. So, this issue should had been resolved.

But thumbnails are still not generated for me with Nautilus (GNOME

Files) version 41.1, gnome-desktop 40.4.

Roman

Just throwing my name in the hat of "people who have never had

thumbnails in GNOME". I installed the Guix System probably 4 months

ago.

--

Trev : 0FB7 D06B 4A2A F07E AD5B 1169 183B 6306 8AA1 D206

Strange behavior. To get thumbnail of each and every image file, I have to do the following:

1. Right-click on that image file, click on Open With Other Application and Open the image with GIMP (or maybe other program).

2. Then the same way chose Image Viewer back.

Ni! Same thing at 42.4. (Just adding my e-mail address in case any news get posted.) .~´

I'm running nautilus@42.2 and it shows thumbnails for at least JPEG and

PNG images.

This is on a rather recent Guix System installation:

```

$ LANG=en guix system describe

Generation 10 Jan 07 2024 16:46:14 (current)

[...]

channels:

guix:

repository URL: https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/guix.git

branch: master

commit: 9816a5371663396bc092eb359222635e5675b174

```

So can we close this issue?