Comments on: How to increase Windows Explorer default thumbnail size for pictures

By: techyogi

techyogi — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 06:36:39 +0000

Thanks a lot buddy you really saved me by giving this tip. Gonna try it right now.

By: Sandy

Sandy — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 13:30:18 +0000

Perhaps a silly question, but do comments here also apply to icon size for:

Windows Explorer icons under the View | List command ?

I find the Windows Explorer icons under the View | List command (which I like to use) too teeny for my liking.

By: Larry

Larry — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 22:24:40 +0000

I think comment #4 by Ken Smith rules: “third party clutter”

By: Crypt

Crypt — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:54:52 +0000

Hmmm this sounds interesting, but if you want to browse your photo collection with bigger thumbnails, simply install Picasa! It’s free and you get a much better way to view your photos than Explorer.

By: Larry

Larry — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:32:02 +0000

Comment #4 by Ken Smith is correct, but the DWORD Value ThumbnailSize may not exist on your system, so you will have to create it. The Windows XP default value is 96 decimal. I have mine set to 144 decimal.

Also, I could not get the change to work until I deleted the Thumbs.db file from my folder. This file is a cache of thumbnails, and is pretty much useless IMHO.

I would advise going to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

and modifying DisableThumbnailCache to the value 1

This will prevent the creation of any new Thumbs.db files.

You might also want to do a global delete of all Thumbs.db files, which will free up significant disc space.

By: Arvind

Arvind — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 11:24:14 +0000

I tried TweakUI and changed thumbnail size to 256 but it still shows small thumbnails. It looks that the UI takes the 256 size and shows 2 images per row but images still 96x. Any Ideas?

By: First Party Crap

First Party Crap — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:42:12 +0000

See, http://teamtutorials.com/windows-tutorials/changing-thumbnail-size-in-windows-xp for a complete set of instructions for editing the registry directly for this purpose, including creating the entry for “ThumbnailSize”.

By: Ryan Rey A Valdehueza

Ryan Rey A Valdehueza — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 04:20:43 +0000

I located[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
but I can not locate “ThumbnailSize”.

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 21:22:40 +0000

Thanks for this tip! I actually HAD TweakUI already and had forgotten I had it. BTW, I use Snaplogger (free version) in an attempt to keep track of how I waste time. While it’s fine to view the Snaplogger screen shots with a graphics viewer, I wanted to view them within Explorer. I was limited, though, by the small thumbnail dimensions. By increasing the thumbnail size as you suggested, and using another freeware app (QTTabBar), I can view the screen shots (now large enough to decipher) from Snaplogger simply by mousing over the file name in Win Explorer. So, thanks for reminding about this helpful “third-party crap”! (IMHO. . .Editing the registry directly is great for folks who are expert enough to know what they’re doing and how to fix what they’ve done wrong. For others, whose knowledge is not quite as broad, it can be a disaster that turns their computer – at least temporarily – into a doorstop.)

By: ken smith

ken smith — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 20:36:59 +0000

his is not a “fix” but is a workaround using a third party program. I personally think tweakUI is GUI newbie crap. if you want to change the size of thumbnails in explorer just make an adjustment to the registry. Regedit is your friend.

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer]
“ThumbnailSize”

the range is from 96 to 256

there are hundreds of alterations that you can make via the registry. TweakUI is just a GUI frontend that allows you to alter 10 or so things in the registry.

learn how to alter the registry yourself and you can completely alter windows without needing third party crap like TweakUI and the many other third party clutter that bogs your system down.

just my .02

By: kevin

kevin — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:51:58 +0000

thanks for the quick fix!

By: Jenz Iggo

Jenz Iggo — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 02:53:40 +0000

Thanks dude, this has worked on my machine. And it doenst hang like Irfanview Thumbs did!

By: jessy

jessy — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 13:35:10 +0000

hi I am trying to increase the size of images on my website, any ideas please, all suggestions are welcome