No thumbnails in Gnome Files Fedora 41

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,
1

I have this packages installed for the thumbnails generations as well as the gnome image viewer and videos app in non-flatpak packages,

sudo dnf install ffmpeg ffmpegthumbnailer gstreamer1-plugins-ugly-free totem-video-thumbnailer
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Package "ffmpeg-free-7.1.1-1.fc41.x86_64" is already installed.
Package "ffmpegthumbnailer-2.2.3-1.fc41.x86_64" is already installed.
Package "gstreamer1-plugins-ugly-free-1.24.11-1.fc41.x86_64" is already installed.
Package "totem-video-thumbnailer-1:43.1-1.fc41.x86_64" is already installed.

also follwe the steps to clean up the thumbnail files but still no thumbnails.

2

It is ffmpeg-free, not ffmpeg, which means thumbnails for H.264 and H.265 encoded videos may not be generated. Instead, switch to ffmpeg with

sudo dnf swap ffmpeg-free ffmpeg --allowerasing
3

thanks alot, this fixed the videos but the pictures are still don’t have thumbnails

4

GNOME thumbnailer cannot generate thumbnails for certain formats, such as HEIC and AVIF pictures. (Check here: Heic photos thumbnails possible? and Avif Thumbnailer for Gnome desktop).

So what kind of pictures are those? Could you check file extensions and share some here?

5

Doesn’t generate any image format thumbs, most of the file formates are PNG, Jpg, Webp

image
image988×1117 110 KB

image
image988×1117 84.6 KB

here is the screen shot folder all created by the gnome screen shot tool.

6

Does cleaning up existing thumbnails rm ~/.cache/thumbnails work?

7

no it doesn’t regenerated them, i restarted the natituls after removing

shaber@fedora:~$ rm -r ~/.cache/thumbnails
shaber@fedora:~$ nautilus -q
** Message: 21:58:19.686: Connecting to org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files
shaber@fedora:~$
8

Is there any error message if you run the following command?

ffmpegthumbnailer -i ~/Pictures/Screenshots/"Screenshot From 2025-03-07 00-17-08.png" -o Test
9

Getting this, not sure it’s error though

shaber@fedora:~$ ffmpegthumbnailer -i ~/Pictures/Screenshots/"Screenshot From 2025-03-07 00-17-08.png" -o Test
Seeking in video failed Operation not permitted, will use first frame.
[thumb_buffer @ 0x55a0aba70800] Changing video frame properties on the fly is not supported by all filters.
[thumb_buffer @ 0x55a0aba70800] filter context - w: 741 h: 293 fmt: 26 csp: unknown range: unknown, incoming frame - w: 741 h: 293 fmt: 26 csp: gbr range: pc pts_time: 0
shaber@fedora:~$
10

Sorry, I’m not sure how to solve this. I cannot reproduce the same issue on Fedora VM, and it seems ffmpegthumbnailer is functioning correctly on your system.

11

Do you have gdk-pixbuf2 installed?
In my system, the thumbnails for image files are generated by gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer.thumbnailer, cat /usr/share/thumbnailers/gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer.thumbnailer:

[Thumbnailer Entry]
TryExec=/usr/bin/gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer
Exec=/usr/bin/gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer -s %s %u %o
MimeType=image/png;image/jpeg;image/gif;image/tiff;

This is provided by gdk-pixbuf2 package.

12 
shaber@fedora:~$ sudo dnf install gdk-pixbuf2
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Package "gdk-pixbuf2-2.42.12-6.fc41.x86_64" is already installed.

Nothing to do.

it’s installed

but there is no file the the dir you pointed

shaber@fedora:~$ cat /usr/share/thumbnailers/gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer.thumbnailer
cat: /usr/share/thumbnailers/gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer.thumbnailer: No such file or directory
13

Something wrong happened to your system. Did you delete them accidentally or move them somewhere?

the link above shows gdk-pixbuf2 is supposed to provide gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer.thumbnailer in /usr/share/thumbnailers. Maybe you can try reinstalling the package.

Also you can check the output of rpm -ql gdk-pixbuf2 | grep thumbnailer: It should look like:

/usr/bin/gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer
/usr/share/thumbnailers
/usr/share/thumbnailers/gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer.thumbnailer

If no thumbnailers are shown in the output, maybe it means you installed the package from a different repo?

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14 
shaber@fedora:~$ rpm -ql gdk-pixbuf2 | grep thumbnailer
/usr/bin/gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer
/usr/share/thumbnailers
/usr/share/thumbnailers/gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer.thumbnailer

after reinstall , not sure how it got deleted, never heard of this package before today

shaber@fedora:~$ cat /usr/share/thumbnailers/gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer.thumbnailer
[Thumbnailer Entry]
TryExec=/usr/bin/gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer
Exec=/usr/bin/gdk-pixbuf-thumbnailer -s %s %u %o
MimeType=image/png;image/jpeg;image/gif;image/tiff;

now pic generates thumbs.

thanks a lot

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