File Explorer shows app icons instead of thumbnails for images and videos The extra large icons mode is the largest view mode you can set for thumbnails in Windows 11 File Explorer.

Other view modes will only display the icon of the app used to open the file type. Thumbnails of files are only viewable in “Extra Large icons”, “Large icons” and “Medium icons” mode. To change the view mode of a folder in File Explorer, browse to the folder, click on View on the menu bar, and then select a view mode you want to change to. This means that if you change view mode in folder A, it won’t affect the view mode in folder B. The view mode is saved separately in each folder/directory. How to preview photos and videos thumbnails in File ExplorerĪnother method to preview media files in file explorer is by simply enabling thumbnail viewing and change the view mode to larger icons such as “ Large icons” or “ Extra large icons” mode. Now try to select/highlight any file in any folder, a preview of the selected item will be shown in the preview pane, provided if the file type is supported. When you select a file in the current folder, a preview will be shown in the preview pane.

Next, hover your mouse over the Show option.Ī new pane will appear on the right side in the File Explorer window.To preview files, photos, videos and other supported file type directly in the folder without opening them, you need to first enable the preview pane in Windows 11 File Explorer. How to preview files and medias in folder on Windows 11 It does not play the video in the preview pane. Note that video preview this way will only show a still image randomly taken from around the start of a video. Unlike thumbnail preview which has a fixed size depending on which view mode is selected, the preview pane is a resizable column which allows users to preview media in a much larger size.īelow are a few screenshots that show how it looks like to preview images, videos and text file via preview pane in File Explorer on Windows 11. This short tutorial will show you how to enable the preview pane in File Explorer on Windows 11. The preview pane is able to show a preview of currently selected photo, video, text file, PDF file, word document, and other supported file type. In Windows 11, you can enable the preview pane which will appear as a column on the right in File Explorer.

How to preview on windows 10