Finder Keeps Having To Re-generate Icon Previews

Hi,
I love the new Icon Previews in Leopard, when showing files in Icon view. However, every time you log into Leopard Finder has to regenerate those previews from scratch, which, if you've got a folder full of 100 PDFs, can take a long time.
It would be nice if Finder REMEMBERED these Icon Previews for each files, and instead of regenerating from scratch, updated the existing ones if necessary.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Step 1
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter the name of the crashed application or process in the Filter text field. Select the messages from the time of the last crash, if any. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message (command-V).
When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.
Step 2
In the Console window, look under User Diagnostic Reports for crash reports related to the crashed process. The report name starts with the name of the process, and ends with ".crash". Select the most recent report and post the entire contents — again, the text, not a screenshot. In the interest of privacy, I suggest that, before posting, you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if it’s present (it may not be.) Please don’t post other kinds of diagnostic report — they're very long and not helpful.

Similar Messages

Finder keeps returning file associations back to Preview / Quicktime

If you right click on a file, go to Get Info, there is a section that allows you to change the application that opens that file from now on. If you click the Change All button beneath it, it will then open all files of that particular format (e.g. JPG, GIF, AVI etc) in your newly chosen application.
I change all my picture files to open with Xee, and all my videos to open with VLC. However, for some reason my Mac returns the file associations back to Preview and Quicktime if I leave the computer on overnight or reboot. I tried fixing permissions but this hasn't solved the problem.
Any ideas? I only recently reinstalled Leopard but don't remember having this issue before.

do you use filevault? if not try rebuilding your launch services database.
run the following terminal command
/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user
then redo "change all" in a get info window and see if it sticks.

No Icon Previews in Finder

Hi
Something has killed Icon previews in Finder. 'Show Icon Preview' is selected in 'Show View Options'.
I found elsewhere here that some of Rogue Amoeba's 'Audio Hijack Pro' plugins can cause this issue so I uninstalled the whole package after unsuccessfully trying to upgrade the plugins (which have now been fixed). Uninstalling the lot and rebooting did not help.
I've binned ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist & com.apple.finder.plist and rebooted. This did not help.
I've also binned com.apple.QuickLook.thumbnailcache from /private/var/folders/somename/someothername/-Caches-
This has not fixed the problem. After rebooting, the quicklook thumbnail cache is never recreated.
Before my loss of icon previews I had multiple instances of quicklookd crashes. This no longer happens since removing the Rogue Amoeba plugins but I have many
'[QL] Can't get server port for <QLServer com.apple.quicklook>: Unknown service name' logs in the console.
I've also noticed that 'Quicklook Helper' is never running (randomly viewed from activity monitor), is this what generates Icon Previews in SL?
Any help Appreciated
Cheers - Mark

Wish I could offer help, but mine just started doing this as well. Mine occurred after a system failure (thanks to Windoze and Parallels) and a complete restore from Time Capsule/Time Machine. So far the only other odd thing I've noticed is my Trade Gothic fonts got corrupted.
I don't have Audio Hijack Pro installed.

Image files no longer appear as "icon preview"

Previously I could view all my .png image files in the "icon preview" mode in Finder.
I must have accidently changed some setting where I can no longer view .png files in the "icon preview" mode. I just get the generic .png icon to appear in finder. I have the "show icon preview" item checked in view options, and most other image files appear as icons...just not the .png files.
Any thoughts? Thanks.

You could have turned "show icon preview" off and set that as a default.
In a folder with images, set to "icon" press command+j and make sure that "show icon preview" is ON.
If it's ON and still no luck, turn it off, close the folder, reopen and try again.
It seems that some images have previews in them (from Photoshop or similar) and will show previews even with the above option set to off. Others need the option to be ON.
Also, what do you see if you select one of the preview-less images and hit the s p a c e ?

Icon Preview Problem in Finder

Hi,
I've had my new MacBook for about a month now, and as my photo collection has grown I'm starting to notice that while using CoverFlow (which I have as the default view for most of my folders), there are always some icons that appear as a generic JPEG icon instead of having the image preview. This problem goes away (all icons have previews) once I open the same folder again or refresh it somehow (for example by selecting Calculate All Sizes in View Options). However, once I restart/log in again, it happens again. Most of the images are normal JPG's from the web, and which ones have missing previews is completely random. This applies to all of my folders, and I've seen the same thing on several other Macs as well (the family iMac and several others in Apple Stores). This only appears in CoverFlow view, though.
Here are a couple of screenshots to illustrate the problem:
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l4/Octavarius/Screenshot-IconsinFinder.jpg
http://i92.photobucket.com/albums/l4/Octavarius/Screenshot-IconsinFinder2.jpg
Does anyone else also experience this issue? Is it a common issue? The Show Icon Preview option is checked, by the way.
Any ideas?
Regards,
Jacob

Keep in mind that it's the icons below the Cover Flow section that are the problem. The blurry photos in the Cover Flow section on the first screenshot have very small resolution, that's why they're blurry, but if you look in the second pic, you'll see some others that are completely sharp. Just in case you misunderstood.
I do sometimes get blurry pictures in the Cover Flow section, just after they're downloaded, but once I log out and back in, they're fine and stay that way.
Once I click Get Info on an icon that's missing the preview it's immediately refreshed and the preview is there again, as it should be. It seems like Finder is sometimes skipping certain previews the first time you open a folder since log in.
What did you mean by custom icon? How do you set/delete one?
Message was edited by: Jacob Matheus

Disable / Turn off Thumbnail / Icon Preview in Finder?

Can't find any new/recent posts to solve this issue. I want to disable/turn-off the little icon preview in finder.
I have to access a lot of images on a server at work. Image files(jpeg, eps, tiff, psd, ai, ect) that are typically 50MB and higher. So you can only imagine the amount of lag I get and the time I waste every time I click on a folder in list view.
Is there any way to disable it? Just have it show a standard icon file type instead of it loading 100+ 8MB images in little tiny icons?
I've already tried the View -> Show View Options -> unchecked 'Show icon preview' and applied it as 'Use as default'
Its turn off for all folders but it is still loading the mini icon preview.
(I'm on a Mac Pro - Mountain Lion)

I've tried reinstalling Mavericks and I'm still having this issue. I'm considering wiping my drive and going back to Mountain lion. Qucktime player in Mavericks seems to suck. I'm having several other issues playing back older quictime files. Most play in Quicktime 7 but a lot have no quicklook previews. The sheer volume of prores files I shoot makes this extremely inconvenient for me. How can Apple not support their own Codec????

Icon Preview in Finder

Under the View Option menu in Finder, I want to keep my Show Icon Preview option turned off. After every restart I need to go back and turn this option off again. Why won't this option just stay off?

I bet you're talking about column view. If you are, open a window in column view, select Show View Options (Command-J), and uncheck the box for icon preview.
There are different view options depending on whether you're in icon view, column view, list view, etc. Icon Preview is great in icon view, but not so useful in the other views.

Icon Preview In Finder Not Working Properly

Ever since upgrading to Lion I've had the issue of icon preview not working properly in finder. This mostly occurs with movie files such as .wmv files. Some take a long time to show a preview and some don't even show a preview. In Snow Leopard this was never an issue.
This also seems to happen in stacks as well. I'll get a greyed out box with a dsah borded. Seems as though it's the large files that do this.
Anyone have any ideas?

I'm experiencing the same thing but with all kinds of files that have shown a preview in snow leopard: pictures, PDF-documents, music (with album art). It seems that previews are not created automatically whenever I change the name of a file or edit it in any other way, the preview shows up instantly. Rebooting works, too.
This is really annoying and a little online search shows, several people are having the same problem. As far as I know, there's no fix yet.

Show icon preview in finder problem

the other day when i was using the cover flow in finder to go through old photos finder stopped showing the icon previews for all my photos. toggling the option to show the icon preview doesn't seem to be doing, any idea what might've happened?

2point5 wrote:
If I can hazard a guess it's possibly a memory availability issue given that it has to generate a thumbnail of the images on the fly and may be struggling as you navigate through more and more images.
I've had this same problem for a long time. I thought it must be either a memory or free disk space availability issue because in my case it appears to be brought on by Photoshop CS3. After i use Photoshop for a little while, new icon previews stop being generated entirely, as if they've been switched off.
I now have 7 GB of RAM, with Photoshop capped at 72%. I've tried reducing that percentage and i've moved all Photoshop scratch files to other drives with no change.
I used to be short of disk space on my main drive and i thought it might be a virtual memory issue. But i currently have 32 GB available.
*I bring previews back by using Force Quit to relaunch the Finder.*
Then i have to move all the Finder windows back to the "Spaces" i had them in. 10 minutes later they're gone again.
!http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/5186/scottdartve1.png!

Finder icon previews slowing finder

I work with a lot of pdf files, and as finder shows pdf icons as a preview of the first page it can take a long time before the content of a folder stabilises itself, ie: updates all icons with a preview of its content.
Its particularly frustrating if you are renaming a file, as you have to wait for all the contents within the folder to finish updating otherwise it keeps skipping off the desired file.
Is there any way of getting the finder to just show the generic icon of a file, rather than the preview? It would speed up the system no end.

Thumbnails don't slow down the Finder. The problem is in the view style you are using. The bug where you loose your file rename session when the thumbnails draw is a known bug in List View that has been around for a couple OS releases, it has only been made more prominant with the addition of thumbnails in List View in Leopard.
The solution is either switch to Icon or Column View, or while in List View press Command-J and uncheck the "Show Icon Previews" checkbox. The click the "Use As Defaults" button.
Hope that helps.

Icon Preview on desktop keeps needing to be restarted

Hello,
I have a MacBook Pro of only 3 weeks. I have a lot of files showing on my desktop, and I wish to have the icon preview active, otherwise I just see generic file icons for each one.
So I go to view options and choose Show Icon Preview. Everything is fine. But now, EVERY single time I turn my Mac off and back on, the icon preview no longer works. The Show Icon Preview box is ticked - and I have to untick and tick it again to get the preview to work again. This was rare on my old Mac, whose data is now all on this new one, but now it is happening EVERY single time. Restarting Finder and fixing the view options only works once, and needs to be done over and over again when the Mac starts up.
Does anyone have a fix or explanation? This is becoming incredibly frustrating, considering how expensive this Mac was, and how new it is. I don't understand why it keeps doing this.
Thanks,
Andrew C

The logs are here:
About This Mac (under the Apple logo in the menu bar) > More Info > System Report > Logs (quite a way down, under Software)

No prores422 Quicktime icon preview in finder OSX Mavericks

I upgraded to Mavericks osx 10.9 and now I no longer get a thumbnail preview on my prores quicktime files in the finder o. I do get a preview with any other type of quicktime codecs the only affected files are prores files. I shoot a lot on the blackmagic cinema camera and it's not good for me just to see a Q on those thumbnails. I'm a Final Cut Pro X user so I have the proper codecs to view the files. I have tried the view options and it does not affect Prores files. I've also downloaded the latest codecs from apple. So I want to know I'm I the only person this is happening to? I'm thinking I may need to reinstall mavericks but before I do that I need to know if anyone else is experiencing this? I have attached a screen capture to illustrate what I'm talking about. Quicklook does still work on the prores files but I need that thumbnail.

I've tried reinstalling Mavericks and I'm still having this issue. I'm considering wiping my drive and going back to Mountain lion. Qucktime player in Mavericks seems to suck. I'm having several other issues playing back older quictime files. Most play in Quicktime 7 but a lot have no quicklook previews. The sheer volume of prores files I shoot makes this extremely inconvenient for me. How can Apple not support their own Codec????

Icon Preview is not shown for mp3 files in finder

Hi. Recently I noticed icons of mp3 files are no longer as used to be in finder. Previously I had a dark music note icon and when i hover my mouse there was a play button. Now I only see itunes icon in mp3 files. "Show Icon Preview" option is enabled, and i can preview image and pdf files in finder. But something happened to the mp3 files. It is very annoying. Please guide me to get back the good old icon preview for mp3 files.

Displaying icons as previews of files
In Finder windows and on the desktop, the icons for files can appear as thumbnail previews of the file contents. For example, instead of seeing a generic icon for a PDF file, you can see a miniature version of what’s in the PDF file. If you “hover” over the icon for a movie or sound file, you’ll see a Play button, which you can click to view the movie or hear the sound. (If you don’t see a Play button, enlarge the icon.)
NOTE:If you’re using Cover Flow view, you’re already previewing files and don’t need to change any settings.
To display icons as previews:
To work with icons in a Finder window, click the Finder icon in the Dock.To work with icons on the desktop (the background area of your screen), click the desktop.
If you’re working with icons in a Finder window, click one of the View buttons in the toolbar to select icon, list, or column view.
Choose View > Show View Options.
Select “Show icon preview.”
If you’re working in a Finder window, you can also set the following options, depending on which view you’re using:
In Icon view: Use the “Icon size” slider to adjust the size of the preview image.
In List view: Click one of the two “Icon size” buttons.
In Column view: To see a larger preview in the adjacent column, select “Show preview column.”
NOTE:The Finder may not be able to show a preview for some files.
Another way to get a quick preview is to select one or more images, and then click the Quick Look (eye) button in the Finder window toolbar, or press the Space bar.
Related Topics
Finder preferences
Previewing files with Quick Look

Finder List View and White Border around photo image files (icon preview)

Hey everyone, just curious if anyone knows how to remove the stripes from list view in the finder window? I tried a method that worked for Leopard but no luck with Snow. And for photos, the icon previews have real thick white borders around them, can these be removed (or at least inverted)? They are so distracting when looking through hundreds of images...
Thanks,
Jason

I just found an app that will get rid of the white borders and preserve the original date in the photo's EXIF data. It is CocoThumbX and can be downloaded from http://www.stalkingwolf.net/software/cocothumbx/.

Can I get rid of the white frame on Finder icon preview?

This is another one of those things that Leopard has done that makes me wonder what the heck they were thinking! (Don't even get me started on the Windoze95 sidebar!) Why the heck take a wonderful thing like the Finder icon previews in Tiger, and make them solid white squares, with a nasty white border? These are stupid, ugly, and a massive step backward in interface design. I am assuming this is all done for the sake of "cover flow?" With decent Finder Icon previews, who needs it?
But please, please, if you MUST 'fix' things for me, give me the ability to opt out! SO until Apple remembers what GOOD GUI design is, does anyone know how to get rid of the border & white background?
Thanks!

To each his or her own, but I find the frames & white backgrounds, if not particularly attractive, fairly useful for a quick visual reference of the images' proportions (like tall & skinny vs. nearly square). This is pretty hard to see if transparency is enabled & large parts of the image are transparent.
When I do want to see the transparency, I find Cover Flow (& Quickview) very useful, although Cover Flow doesn't always seem to show alpha channels while QuickView always does. Plus, both versions of the technology allow much larger previews than in conventional icon Finder windows & support scroll wheels, making it easy to review large numbers of image files quickly at high resolution literally at the flick of a finger.
FWIW, at first I thought this was just a gimmick with little practical value. Now that I have started using it, particularly in conjunction with smart searches, I think it is a great addition to the OS, one that is so intuitive & efficient that it makes the old icon view look like an antiquated relic from a time when computers were not powerful enough to manage more than tiny thumbnails.
I'm not trying to convince you about this as you seem adamant about not liking it, but I do think it is the logic progression for browsing through ever larger numbers of ever higher resolution images, & is only going to get better at this as it becomes more refined. Perhaps someday a future version will meet your needs.

Finder Keeps Having To Re-generate Icon Previews

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for