How to force nautilus to display video thumbnails
· ~1 minute read
Out of the box, nautilus file browser will display thumbnails for photos in a directory, but not videos. To fix this behaviour simply run the following commands on your linux machine:
On Fedora:
sudo dnf install ffmpegthumbnailer
sudo mv /usr/share/thumbnailers/totem.thumbnailer /tmp/
sudo ln -s /usr/share/thumbnailers/ffmpegthumbnailer.thumbnailer /usr/share/thumbnailers/totem.thumbnailer
rm -rf ~/.cache/thumbnails
Then close and reopen nautilus and you should be good to go.
On Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install ffmpegthumbnailer
sudo mv /usr/share/thumbnailers/totem.thumbnailer /tmp/
sudo ln -s /usr/share/thumbnailers/ffmpegthumbnailer.thumbnailer /usr/share/thumbnailers/totem.thumbnailer
rm -rf ~/.cache/thumbnails
If you want to revert this change later simply reinstall totem or run the following command:
sudo rm /usr/share/thumbnailers/totem.thumbnailer /tmp/
sudo mv /tmp/totem.thumbnailer /usr/share/thumbnailers/