windows-thumbnail-preloader

windows-thumbnail-preloader is a Rust-based command-line application (with an interactive progress dialog) that can be used to facilitate with preloading thumbnails as they appear in Windows Explorer.

Overview

Generally, when using Windows Explorer, thumbnails for applicable files are generated on a purely on-demand basis; that is, to say, when a thumbnail for a file is requested to be displayed either within the file list view or other means. While this makes sense, it can lead to a less-than-desirable user experience when one is scrolling through a folder of many files whereby thumbnails have not been generated prior. Often, it may take a good few moments for thumbnail generation of the current list of files in view to complete; only amplified by the fact this needs to happen repeatedly for each file.

Instead, this application will iterate through all files within a directory and 'force' Windows Explorer to generate a thumbnail on demand by way of 'requesting' one for each file. An interactive progress dialog will appear for directories that take a longer than a few seconds, as a mechanism for displaying the current progress and providing an easy way to cancel the operation.

Understandably, Windows Thumbnail Preloader will only work on Windows.

Usage

Preload the thumbnails for items in the current directory:

windows-thumbnail-preloader --dir .

Preload the thumbnails for items in the specified directory:

windows-thumbnail-preloader --dir "E:\Photos"

Installation

For most end-users, the easiest way to install the application is by downloading a pre-built binary. Otherwise, the application can be built from source and installed locally using Cargo.

Roadmap

• Ability to skip thumbnails that have already been generated
• Ability to specify a custom thumbnail size
• Ability to hide the progress dialog
• Option to recursively scan for files
• Mechanism for installing as a shell extension to Windows Explorer
• Possibility for localisation of progress dialog strings