Thumbnail preview Not showing in Windows 8/10 Explorer? / Windows 8

I installed Windows 8 on my home desktop a few weeks ago and haven’t really had any problems so far.

However, one odd thing I’ve noticed is that whenever I view a folder containing images or videos, I only see the default icon for that file type instead of the thumbnail previews of the files. . This also happens on installations of Windows 10.

So if I navigate to my Photos library in Windows 8/10, I get a picture icon for each photo:

And if I watched a folder full of videos in Windows 8/10, I would get the same thing, just with the default video icon:

This has become really annoying and I realize it has been doing this since I installed Windows 8/10 on my PC. I’m not sure why it defaulted to this view instead of the thumbnail preview like in Windows 7, but if you want the thumbnails back in Windows Explorer, here’s how.

First, open Windows Explorer, click View, then click Option and Change directory and search options.

Next, click View tab and uncheck the box say Always show icons, never thumbnails.

Once you exit that checked option, you will now get thumbnails for all your images, videos, and even documents.

There is another place where you can adjust the settings to show icons or thumbnails in Windows Explorer. Right click on Computer on the desktop and select Nature. Then click Advanced system setup on the left.

This will open System properties dialog box. Here you need to click Advanced tab and then click Setting Below Efficiency.

Finally, make sure Show thumbnails instead of icons checked.

With these two settings, you should now see thumbnail previews for images, videos, documents, and other file types in Explorer on Windows 8/10. If you still only see the icons, post a comment here and I will try to help. Enjoy!