How to Change Folder Thumbnail in Windows 11

Windows 11 folders display thumbnail images to quickly preview their contents. This helps distinguish between folders easily. While Windows 11 automatically selects these thumbnails, you can change them if you prefer not to use the default ones.

Folder thumbnails and folder icons serve different purposes. Thumbnails visually represent the contents of a folder, while icons differentiate between different types of folders. This guide will explain how to change, reset, and disable folder thumbnails in Windows 11. Let’s begin.

Change the Folder Thumbnail in Windows

By default, Windows automatically selects a folder thumbnail or picture based on its content. It may update the folder thumbnail as you add or remove items. However, if you want to choose a specific, unchanging thumbnail image for your folder, you can set it manually.

There are a few ways to do this. Let’s discuss them one by one.

Step 1: Right-click the Start icon and select File Explorer from the Power User menu.

Step 2: Locate the folder you want to change the thumbnail for. Right-click on it and select Properties.

Step 3: In the Properties window, go to the Customize tab and choose File.

Step 4: Locate and select the picture you want to use as a thumbnail and click Open.

Step 5: Hit Apply, then OK.

Windows supports popular file types such as JPG, JPEG, PNG, TIF, and GIF for folder thumbnails. After completing the steps, the folder thumbnail change should reflect immediately. If it doesn’t, press F5 to refresh the folder. File Explorer shows folder thumbnails when the view type is set to medium, large, or extra large icons.

Change the Folder Thumbnail by Adding an Image to the Folder

Step 1: Press the Windows + E keyboard shortcut to launch File Explorer and locate the image you want to use as a folder thumbnail.

Step 2: Right-click on the image and click the copy icon from the resulting menu.

Step 3: Go to the folder you want to change the image for. Then, open it.

Step 4: Right-click anywhere in the empty space and paste.

Step 5: Click the View menu, go to Show, and enable the File name extensions option.

Step 6: Select your image file and press F2 to rename it. Type folder.gif and press Enter.

Step 7: Confirm by selecting Yes.

Windows will use the folder.gif file as the thumbnail image for the folder.

Reset Folder Thumbnail in Windows

Windows lets you reset the folder thumbnail if you change your mind later. Here are the steps:

Step 1: Press Windows + E to launch File Explorer and navigate to the folder.

Step 2: Right-click the folder and select Properties.

Step 3: Customize tab, click Restore Default button.

Step 4: Click Apply and then OK.

If you have set the folder thumbnail by adding an image file, delete the folder.gif file to reset the folder thumbnail.

Disable Folder Thumbnails in Windows

Windows simplifies changing folder thumbnails, but doing so for each folder separately can be time-consuming. If you don’t need folder thumbnails, you can disable them. Here’s how:

Step 1: Click the magnifying icon on the taskbar or press Windows + S to search for “file explorer options” and select the first result.

Step 2: Switch to the View tab and check the ‘Always show icons, never thumbnails’ option.

Step 3: Click Apply and then OK.

Disabling thumbnail previews for files will remove the need to display small images of the files. To reverse this action, simply repeat the steps mentioned earlier and uncheck the box for ‘Always show icons, never thumbnails’.

Give Your Folders a New Look

Changing folder thumbnails on Windows should make it easy to differentiate between them. Additionally, resetting or disabling folder thumbnails isn’t too difficult if you change your mind later. Are thumbnails taking forever to load in File Explorer? You may need to increase the thumbnail cache size or adjust performance options to speed up loading in Windows.