Krita Thumbnails in Ubuntu 24.04 (how to)

[YRH]

There are a few topics like this, but let’s say this is a tested and up-to-date version for Ubuntu 24.04 users How to get KRA file thumbnails in file explorer (Nautilus) in Ubuntu?

Option 1: Small, fast thumbnails

1. Create the file ~/.local/share/thumbnailers/krita.thumbnailer (in .local of your home dir).
2. Add the following contents and save it:

[Thumbnailer Entry]
TryExec=/bin/bash
Exec=/bin/bash -c "unzip -p %i preview.png > %o"
MimeType=application/x-krita;

3. Check if the thumbnails already show (you can refresh with F5).

If they do not, try the following steps:

• kill all nautilus windows with the command nautilus -q
• remove the directory with all files ~/.cache/thumbnails/fail
• you can delete the whole ~/.cache/thumbnails if you want to regenerate ALL thumbnails (not just kra)

Option 2: Large, high quality thumbnails

This may be useful if you have a high resolution screen, but will be significantly slower and take more disk space for the thumbnails cache.

1. Install imagemagick to get the convert command:
   sudo apt install imagemagick
   NOTE: This will add a lot of tools, maybe there’s a more lightweight package to do the job.
2. Follow the same steps as before, but use the following content for the thumbnailer file:

[Thumbnailer Entry]
TryExec=/bin/bash
Exec=/bin/bash -c "unzip -p %i mergedimage.png | convert - -thumbnail %s %o"
MimeType=application/x-krita;

I hope this helps, let me know if there’s a better and/or easier method. Cheers

[Michelist]

If that is okay for you, I would like to put it into tutorials? And about your question, for Nautilus I do not know another way.

Michelist

[YRH]

Be my guest!

Do we have a tutorials category? I was looking a bit but eventually settled on this section. I thought the resources category was more for Krita program itself and this one was more about the OS, but whatever makes it easier to discover is good.

[Michelist]

Thank you!
And of course has the forum a Tutorials category. So, I’ll move it there.

Michelist

[lenovoaxioo]

I used ubuntu 24.04, and the old .deb package from this still works.

I haven never checked, but do we have krita thumbnailer package on official ubuntu (and other distro) repo?

[YRH]

Oh, good to know it’s still working. I did come across the package, but was a bit scared off by the fact that it’s no longer maintained. It is not included in Ubuntu packages at least.

Taking a closer look at the repo, I saw that it started as the same basic idea of hooking up shell commands to the thumbnailer file I’m kind of in favor of this method as it reuses very hardened tools like unzip or imagemagick, so you get the benefits of maintenance automatically.

But of course it’s still a shame that a thumbnailer solution isn’t present in standard package repos for popular distros. It would be best to rectify that, but I don’t know how that process works. Probably something worth researching.