Thumbs

B

BigMac55

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I have 20 avi files in a directory. When I move them into a new directory I can see the thumbnails being created for each file. If I move the files back to the original folder the thumbs show up instantly. I thought the thumbs were stored in a .DS_Store file... but when I delete that file the thumbs are still there.

Where do the thumbs get stored?

Thanks
 
The thumbnail images are created on-the-fly. They aren't stored anywhere in the filesystem.

You can turn the thumbnail generation feature off from the Finder's preferences.

Or, you could just keep your porn stash on an external drive so the wife won't stumble across a folder full of icons of boobs. ;) Kidding, of course.
 
Well, they must be stored somewhere. Otherwise how could they show up instantly when I move the files back to the original folder? Could they be stored in RAM? Then I should have to re-create them on the fly if I reboot my computer.

Also, where exactly is the Finder pref you mention? I can't find it. No pun intended! :)

Or did you just respond to make a porn/boob joke? Nothin' wrong with that! :)
 
Ah, it's not in the Preferences, but in the View options:

http://osxdaily.com/2007/03/13/how-to-get-image-thumbnail-icons-in-the-os-x-finder/

Basically, you're looking to disable "Icon preview."

The icon previews themselves may very well be cached to the disk, however, I highly doubt that they're stored in a multitude of tiny JPG files in some obscure location of the filesystem... more than likely, they're in a "non-human" readable format. I think disabling the icon previews will do what you need.
 
Thumbnail icons for images (created by Graphic Converter, for example) are stored in resource forks, which are files that travel with the original files, but are normally invisible.
 
If they travel with the original files then why do they have to regenerate when I move the files to a new directory?

Also, these files have no resource fork according to the following terminal output:
mymac:folder1 user$ ls -l file1.avi
-rw-r--r-- 1 user staff 182314938 Sep 24 2009 file1.avi
mymac:folder1 user$ ls -l file1.avi/rsrc
-rw-r--r-- 1 user staff 0 Sep 24 2009 file1.avi/rsrc​

The mystery continues...
 
These files don't have any xattrs (external attributes) either. Which would be indicated by '@' in the ls output.

I'm surprised nobody has figured this out yet.
 
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