wait hang on, computer-knowers follow me here. has anyone found a way to force Windows 10 to generate image thumbnails in a specific folder? besides just opening them one by one? i've given up on the idea of it just... keeping up, like previous versions of windows did, but god if i could just force it to for whatever folder i'm working with it'd save me a lot of time and annoyance doing certain types of work
(UPDATE: HMMM. will try this and let you know how it goes... okay update to update this did not work. i guess it was last updated in 2018 so y'know)
further notes on this so far intractable problem below the readmore, i've been chewing on this one on my own for years lol:
-sometimes opening the file makes it generate the thumbnail but sometimes it just won't do it no matter what
-it seems unrelated to filetypes, filesizes, whether or not there's transparency, where the file came from, what drive it's on, etc.
-it also seems unrelated to whether the files are only stored locally/synced with a cloud service
-recently-saved files are more LIKELY to get a proper thumbnail but that doesn't mean they always do; when i download a bunch of new merch photos from my phone via dropbox, for example, a lot of times half of them will get thumbs and the other half won't
-nothing i do to the thumbnail cache seems to change anything. bigger thumbnail cache? nothin'. empty it? nothin'.
-checking "optimize this folder for pictures" in folder properties seems to help but not like, consistently
-the most baffling and notable exception: my vlc screenshot folder consistently generates thumbs. it's slow to catch up but like, it'll do it. if you scroll through, it (ploddingly) loads thumbnail images exactly the way you'd expect (and thank god because otherwise i'd never be able to keep it organized). in no other folder is this true!
so far i have not been able to solve this problem with any amount of googling despite MANY attempts. it seems to Just Be. Happening,

