Images on desktop not showing thumbnail preview. Suggestions?

I was having the same issue. All I did was go to VIEW in the finder toolbar, then VIEW OPTIONS and deselect and then reselect SHOW ICON PREVIEW. Apparently it reset everything, because all my thumbnail previews showed back. Hope it works for you too.

Hello Jeff,

It sounds like you are saving imgaes to your desktop but the thumbnails arent being generated automatically. Restarting seems to fix the issue for files since the last restart, but the issue persists with new messages. I had a few thoughts for things for you to try. First perform a Safe Boot and then retest it and see if that helps:

OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1564

To start up into Safe Mode (to Safe Boot), follow these steps.

1. Be sure your Mac is shut down.
2. Press the power button.
3. Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key.
   The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
4. Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple logo and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).

After the logo appears, you should see a progress bar during startup. This indicates that your computer is performing a directory check as part of Safe Mode.

To leave Safe Mode, restart your computer without holding any keys during startup.

If the issue persists, next I would try verifying the disk and repairing any errors found, if any.
Disk Utility 12.x: Repair a disk

http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5836

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.

Cheers,

Sterling

Just relaunch finder Alt+Cmd+Esc to get the force quit window up , select finder and hit relaunch. It works a lot quicker than a safe reboot

This is the fastest way. thumbs up!

This is still not working for me. I still have the thumbnails. I have rebooted and relaunched and nothing works. It just happened all of a sudden.

Have tried all the suggested solutions, but thumbnails on my desktop continue to show as "jpeg," "pdf," etc, instead of as a thumbnail. The thumbnails in Downloads are blank. When I "get info" on a desktop item Finder goes into a loop. Thanks for any advice.

I tried following your steps and it did work. Thanks for that 🙂
But, I realized that after doing operating it in safe mode my mac has slowed down. Is there anyway to get it back to its faster performance?

Thanks

I bought a new MacBook Pro Retina (9/19/'15) and everything was fine in the Time Machine mirgation, except the thumbnail previews not showing the Software logos -- specifically my Final Draft Files. I did the Safe Reboot and it totally solved my problem! I was reluctant to perform this safe reboot since I had never done it before, but, hey, it totally worked. Thank you.

sterling r, thank you. The Safe Boot brought back my thumbnail logos for Final Draft after a Time Machine migration on a brand new MacBook Pro that I recently purchased. Even Final Draft didn't know how to solve it. I can't thank you enough. Even though I could still work and write, it was bugging the **** out of me. Where are the thumbnail previews with the big green celloid S that is Final Draft's logo? Just a blank piece of white! Maddening. Thank you sterling r. Keep up the good work!

Thanks! That did the trick...I rebooted both in safe mode and then in normal mode and the images just wouldn't appear. Your trick of closing Finder and then relaunching was simple and easy and worked in 2 seconds! 😀

branalvere wrote:

Just relaunch finder Alt+Cmd+Esc to get the force quit window up , select finder and hit relaunch. It works a lot quicker than a safe reboot

This just worked for me.

My pleasure!

Thank you. This is brilliant.