Any way to generate tumbnails for files > 2Gb in Thunar?

General system Newbie
1

See title, basically.
Seems like Thunar, unlike most other file managers for Linux, don’t have a “file size” setting for thumbnails, only “No, Local or All”. But it does have a limit set for < 2Gb in file size that was actually implemented in 4.14 for no… apparent reason.

Apparently you can go around it by making a local copy of your tumbler.cf file and edit it by hand, but it seems like such a very weird decision.

I wasn’t aware of this limitation because this is my first stay on Thunar as main fm for years, I have always used Nemo (or pcman-fm) in Xfce before. I find both are superior in functionality.

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2

Have you spoken to the XFCE guys on their forum? They’re a friendly bunch :smile:

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I have found some stuff that might help you - specifically the location of the ‘settings’ file: Here is a comment on sizes from there:

# MaxFileSize: Maximum size of the source file the plugin will still
#              try to generate a plugin for. The size is in bytes,
#              0 disabled the check.

The file to ‘investigate/change’ is /etc/xdg/tumbler/tumbler.rc

Hope this does it for you…

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Thank you, I mentioned that above.
You can even copy it if you make a local copy under .config/tumbler/tumbler.rc so you don’t have to edit the file with root privileges’. But…
…I do find it amazing that the arbitrary limitation is not available as an actual setting in the preferences menu though, as it is on virtually every single other GUI file manager for Linux.

5

Hmm, fair point. I don’t see the point in such a limitation. I know that some File Managers struggle with large files, Finder in Mac OS-X being an example, but I was unaware of Thunar being one of those. I’ve always used Krusader for big transfers. I know it’s KDE based but it doesn’t pull in a whole load of dependencies and I like it. There are alternatives of course if you like twin-pane applications.

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Just thought a little ‘expansion’ on the mention might work for those reading this later on.

I like Thunar myself, and haven’t found it lacking - especially as it is so easy to expand it’s capabilities. Of course - maybe I just haven’t needed something that it CAN’T do :grin: I have used Nautilus and Nemo, and haven’t missed them so far…

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I really only have two issues with thunar, the big one being the inconsequensial yet utterly infuriatingly annoying design decision to move icons around to account for file name instead of truncing the file name and have a set grid for icons which just annoys me. I hate seeing different folders having different spaces between icons

And second this particular issue; it seems having this decision of limit of file size is such a 2005 issue; I think it even says in a design document for Thunar that “file sizes over 2Gb are really rare” or something, which definitely seems like a pre-1080p video era statement…

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(This is not a solution to my “problem”, but it is a solution to Thunar’s problem; I really wanted it done in GUI, so not marking this or @freebird54 's mention as a Solution, as such).

I copied

/etc/xdg/tumbler/tumbler.rc

into

~/.config/tumbler/tumbler.rc

…and just edited that version of tumbler.rc so that any mention of MaxFileSize was 0, which is the same as disabling the check, as such:

MaxFileSize=0

There are something like 6 different categories of thumbnailers in that list; I just edited them all. No reason not to on a modern machine.

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Yeah, an old config which probably was overlooked. Thanks for spotting it. It would certainly affect large movie files. I’ve bookmarked this thread in case I run into this issue :smile:

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Thank You…you just solved my problem.
LM 20.1 wasn’t making thumbnails for files over 2gb but after I implemented your solution all thumbnails now show up perfect.

I went through about 30min of reading to solve this beforehand
until I found your post.
So cool to click open a folder and see every single thumbnail pop
up where there previously was none before. Like magic.
Thanks Again

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