206
49
I can open them in browser just OK, but how can I have thumbnails in the Windows Explorer?
Edit: I installed Renesis Player as suggested by this answer, but it does not work for me, probably because I have 64-bit system.
206
49
I can open them in browser just OK, but how can I have thumbnails in the Windows Explorer?
Edit: I installed Renesis Player as suggested by this answer, but it does not work for me, probably because I have 64-bit system.
263
Use this awesome SVG thumbnail shell extension which works fine in Windows 7 & Windows 8 & Windows 10 (both 64-bit and 32-bit):
Extension module for Windows Explorer to render SVG thumbnails, so that you can have an overview of your SVG files.
It is open source and free - what more can you ask for?
If you still have problems to view the thumbnails after installing this shell extension please refer to these instructions how to reset your icon cache in Windows 7/8.
On Windows 10 after installing try changing your SVG file association (the "Open With"). By changing it something somehow gets refreshed and it starts working.
Half of the icons are displayed, half not. Win 10 x64 after rebuilding cache twice. – Mrchief – 2016-01-26T16:12:52.150
On windows 10 the 64 bit installer dssee_setup_x64_v011_signed.exe runs, but then it looks like it immediately runs the uninstaller, so the install fails. – Glenn Lawrence – 2016-03-07T17:35:48.597
8I eventually managed to get it to work by removing thumbnails in Disk Cleanup, scripts didn't work for me. – eggbert – 2016-11-18T17:21:39.850
2CCleaner helped me clearing the icon/thumbnail cache. – Hugo H – 2017-01-31T12:25:25.900
1Note you have to restart after the install. I've tried killing and restarting explorer.exe but it didn't work. – Rav – 2017-03-12T14:12:10.220
Dos prompt: ie4uinit.exe -ClearIconCache, taskkill /IM explorer.exe /F, explorer.exe – Simon Hughes – 2017-06-14T15:43:33.060
12As people have stated in the CodePlex dicussions area - after installing you should change your file association (the "Open With"). By changing it something somehow gets refreshed and it starts working. Nothing else needs to be done other than that. Works fine for me on Win10 64bit – DAG – 2017-08-10T18:41:15.413
1@SimonHughes: ie4unit.exe doesn't work on Windows 10. To be complete you need: del /f "%LOCALAPPDATA%\IconCache.db"
and del /f "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\IconCache_*.db"
. If you also want to kill the Thumbnails Cache then add in del /f "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\ThumbCache_*.db"
and stir. – AlwaysLearning – 2017-12-14T01:47:14.537
9
CodePlex is shutting down, but you can still find the installer binaries here: https://code.google.com/archive/p/svg-explorer-extension/downloads
– matt lohkamp – 2018-02-10T01:36:23.157@mattlohkamp This is great but nothing is signed... :( – jsgoupil – 2018-02-12T01:58:55.913
killing explorer.exe
worked for me. you must kill all instances, and it's best to open a cmd
window to type explorer.exe
if it doesn't start up again. – Simon – 2018-06-03T04:55:58.407
@DAG Thank you very much. Your comment is not getting the attention it deserves. I do suggest you to edit this answer. – matpop – 2018-06-03T08:57:27.160
It's also possible to clear thumbnails cache with CCleaner. =] – giovannipds – 2018-10-17T21:45:56.313
i downloaded and installed for Windows 10, 64, turned computer off, restarted - still no icons, then downloaded ccleaner and ran clean which is meant to clean thumbnail cache - still no icons. I also tried changing default program to open svg files from 'Google Chrome' to 'Sublime Text' (and back again) and that did nothing either. – user1063287 – 2019-06-27T04:14:02.120
update: i then followed the instructions from link in original post (http://www.thewindowsclub.com/rebuild-the-icon-cache-windows) and manually deleted the IconCache
file, restarted and still no icons - then i realised i had windows explorer in View > Details
mode hehe :) It works now in any of the icon
views.
1Worked awesome on Win10x64 for me, and didn't even have to refresh my icon cache. Windows seemed to do it automatically as soon as the installer finished running. Nice! – eidylon – 2019-07-08T16:13:55.497
1Even with my Windows 7 64-bits system and the signed application, it still displays the Inkscape icon. Any idea on how to fix this? – Mikaël Mayer – 2013-10-12T09:40:11.547
Sorry, works fine here (same config). You will need to contact the makers for support. – Carsten Schmitz – 2013-10-18T12:43:38.550
Finally I made it work. I needed to wait a little bit more. – Mikaël Mayer – 2013-10-18T13:01:11.353
6
Yes, there are some issues related to refresh. You will need to delete your icon cache (http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/49819-icon-cache-rebuild.html) and say your prayers.
– Mike Nakis – 2013-10-30T13:37:49.687Even works on Windows 8.1 64bit. Nice thingie :) – Adrian Marinica – 2014-01-22T09:18:09.890
15
In regards to the answer given by geo, in the event someone needs to rebuild the IconCache.db
and wants to give a go at not needing to reboot try the following batch.
@ECHO OFF
TASKKILL /IM explorer* /F
DEL "%localappdata%\IconCache.db" /A
explorer.exe
1Thanks for this! I should have mentioned in my response that the steps I gave were the "official" steps given by Microsoft. I too have found that killing 'explorer' and simply restarting it works, but I wanted to give the official instructions. – geo – 2015-03-11T01:37:21.693
1Or if you don't want to create a .bat
file and have your system reboot, open a command prompt (as admin) and run this: TASKKILL /IM explorer* /F & DEL "%LOCALAPPDATA%\IconCache.db" /A & explorer.exe
– Greg K – 2018-07-27T14:34:11.227
Win 10 x64: I ran Greg K's script from comment and had to run Disk Cleanup clearing the Icon Thumbnails. And that worked. – cederlof – 2019-04-30T06:47:13.973
6
Adobe Illustrator isn't the only way to do this, nor is it the best way to do this.
See the post by @Deckard above...
Follow the link he provided to the SVG Explorer Extension. Download and install Dotz Software SVG Explorer Extension, aka DSSEE.
Once installed, open Task Manager and kill all instances of explorer.exe. From the Task Manager menu, choose File->Run new task menu. In the dialog box, simply type explorer and hit OK.
NOTE: Please do the above step only if you're comfortable with killing and restarting processes through the Task Manager. If not, then simply reboot your system so that the new explorer extension can load.
From then on, all SVG images will show up as thumbnails in Windows Explorer.
This extension has worked perfectly for me on both Win7_x64 and Win8_x64! In fact, I was recently pleasantly surprised to learn that it displays thumbnails for compressed SVGZ images as seamlessly as it does the non-compressed versions.
NOTE (2014/07/17):
Per the comment by John Rasch, if you can't see the SVG thumbnails after following the steps above, you can clear your icon cache using the following batch file:
@ECHO OFF
TASKKILL /IM explorer* /F
DEL "%LOCALAPPDATA%\IconCache.db" /A
shutdown /r /f /t 5 /d 02:04
Copy this to RebuildIconCache.bat and run it as Administrator. It will kill all Windows Explorer processes, which is required before you can delete the icon cache, then delete the icon cache, and, finally, reboot your system.
EDIT (2015/12/08):
As noted by @user1698811 below, the last line, "shutdown /r /f /t 5 /d 02:04", can simply be replaced with "explorer.exe", getting rid of the need to reboot.
EDIT (2015/03/10):
I know this question was asked about Windows 7, but I thought it would be useful to add instructions for Windows 8 and above...
Windows 8 introduced a new icon and thumbnail cache system. Instead of a single file containing the entire icon cache, Windows 8 uses multiple cache files, based on the size and type of icon. These files are stored in "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer". As an example, that directory on my system includes the following files:
iconcache_16.db thumbcache_16.db
iconcache_32.db thumbcache_32.db
iconcache_48.db thumbcache_48.db
iconcache_96.db thumbcache_96.db
iconcache_256.db thumbcache_256.db
iconcache_1024.db thumbcache_1024.db
iconcache_exif.db thumbcache_exif.db
iconcache_idx.db thumbcache_idx.db
iconcache_sr.db thumbcache_sr.db
iconcache_wide.db thumbcache_wide.db
As a result, in order to clear the icon cache in Windows 8 or above, you would need to delete all of the 'iconcache_*.db' files in the above directory.
Note that, in addition to the above files, Windows 8 still retains the "%LOCALAPPDATA%\IconCache.db" file. I honestly don't know if this file is used or not, but, to be thorough, it would be best to continue to delete that file as well.
Therefore, for Windows 8 and above, we have the RebuildIconCache8.bat file as follows:
@ECHO OFF
TASKKILL /IM explorer* /F
DEL "%LOCALAPPDATA%\IconCache.db" /A
DEL "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\iconcache_*.db" /A
shutdown /r /f /t 5 /d 02:04
or as @user1698811 suggested:
@ECHO OFF
TASKKILL /IM explorer* /F
DEL "%LOCALAPPDATA%\IconCache.db" /A
DEL "%LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer\iconcache_*.db" /A
explorer.exe
which resets the icon cache without having to reboot.
2For anyone else who still cannot see the icons after these steps (including rebooting), I also had to go to Disk Cleanup and select Thumbnails to delete the existing cached thumbnails. – John Rasch – 2014-07-16T15:46:37.567
It's a real downer that the original site does not offer install instructions as good as yours – BillyTom – 2015-12-04T08:15:20.290
1My icon cache files were in use. So deleting them didn't work. – Ian Grainger – 2017-02-17T15:14:17.807
CarstenSchmitz's solution is much easier. You just need to install an application and restart in his case. – Sergey Larin – 2017-08-23T20:10:15.063
1You can run this from a command prompt (as admin) without rebooting with this one liner: TASKKILL /IM explorer* /F & DEL "%LOCALAPPDATA%\IconCache.db" /A & explorer.exe
– Greg K – 2018-07-27T14:33:31.010
3
This works on Windows 8.1 Pro 64-bit.
1Many thanks - just doing step 1 worked perfectly for me. – Felix Eve – 2014-09-10T23:36:24.420
link of #2 doesn't exist anymore. – android developer – 2016-12-21T07:44:35.167
2
Codeplex no longer has the download for the binary there anymore. Use the github built version.
https://github.com/maphew/svg-explorer-extension
https://github.com/maphew/svg-explorer-extension/releases
After downloading and clicking through the installer, then open an admin command prompt and run:
TASKKILL /IM explorer* /F
DEL "%localappdata%\IconCache.db" /A
explorer.exe
Hope that helps.
0
You could try the RENESIS Player Browser Plugins.
Regards
This does not work on 64-bit Windows versions. – Carsten Schmitz – 2015-04-07T09:37:05.200
-3
If you are using Windows 7 64bit, you have only one way to see thumbnails:
Open (install) Adobe Illustrator trial, then press File > Open and change to a thumbnail view of your SVG files, and it will show all your SVGs.
2This is how to see a preview of thumbnails of the SVG within Illustrator and not in an explorer.exe window, as the question asked. – Mahmoud Al-Qudsi – 2016-12-26T20:58:42.830
Thanks. But are there other software which has this feature? Perhaps open-sourse Inkscape? – zbstof – 2011-11-08T18:41:36.647
No, sorry. Inkscape cannot do this. I have been on the lookout for such a software myself for quite some time. – Carsten Schmitz – 2011-11-12T17:23:55.040
7
There is an official Windows Feedback suggestion you can vote on for this feature: https://aka.ms/Eoucpm
– mikemaccana – 2017-06-20T09:06:37.5003
That feedback link didn't open for me. This is the same issue except it's one I could access https://aka.ms/R2boai
– Daniel Tonon – 2017-11-28T04:47:21.253