Are there any File managers that read thumb.db or create a similar DB such that generating thumbnails can be done from a single file rather than having to generate it new with each preview? I use pcmanfm, but the docs Arch wiki says:
“Like some other file managers (e.g. Nautilus) PCManFM will load previews of all images in a folder. To not abuse the HDD, keep the number of images in a folder to a hundred.”
I use Arch, Windows and Fedora, so something open source and OS agnostic would be nice. Or one option for the Linux distros at home would be suffice. I have a custom (read hodgepodge) server/NAS with all our images and I would think it better to generate the thumbnails once, rather than every time we open the root folders.
On Arch: Thunar has an optional dependency for thumbnail generation - tumbler.
AFAIK The previews are generated once and are stored in ~/.cache/thumbnails/
There is also an option to only show thumbnails for local-files (generating thumbnails over a slow connection can be annoying)
Can’t speak for other file managers
Edit:
Scratch that, It seems that all major managers use thumbnailers that store the generated thumbnails in ~/.cache/thumbnails/.
(one preview file for one image, generated once, then reused)
So if you are having issues with PCmanFM then there is a good chance that other managers will show similar behavior. (but maybe some will load previews gradually)
Also: It may be possible that you are experiencing a cache size limitations. Check the total size of your .cache/thumbnails directory.
If it’s something round like 512MB then the issue is most likely that you are simply running into a spiral of thumbnail deletion/recreation.
Slightly on-topic and toxic: I use nnn and for pictures, I just open a folder with sxiv (btw).
IIRC, PCManFM (along with other FMs) also shows thumbnails for files like .ods and such. As for generating thumbnails on the server, I’m not sure if that’s a thing (outside custom software, like NextCloud maybe or other special sauce photo viewer server software). I don’t know of any FMs that generate thumbnails on the server (and if it did, it would be annoying AF, because of duplicate files, that only happened to me on Android).
Thanks for the notes. I’ll look into this. Maybe there are some other limitations when using NFS, but from initial searching I didn’t find anything out about the thumbnails cache. Thanks!
Whoops, I seems to have messed up my reply like an idiot. I actually do something similar with lf, but I’ve used pcmanfm for smb shares at work and a good overview of several photos. Do you have any SMB integration with your nnn usage?
I have tested Nautilus, Thunar and PCManFM with photos exported over NFS. It seems only Nautilus saves thumbnails in ~/.cache/thumbnails. I also noticed that Thunar was significantly faster than both when rendering thumbnails, but Nautilus actually saved a cache, so of course all subsequent rendering was better. This is just some information from me viewing it, and I thought it important to add here.
I couldn’t find the settings in PCManFM and Thunar to save Thumbnails, but they may exist. I guess if I want that feature I have to go with Nautilus.
Edit: I forgot to mention that Thunar by default wouldn’t show thumbnails for large directories whereas PCManFM and Nautilus would. I didn’t investigate.