You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

Mac OS X icon preview or thumbnail problem

Since a year now I've been working with two new iMacs (Capitan, HighSierra) I noticed that had some problems loading the miniature previews of images files and thought that I just was doing something wrong, but now that I have just bought a new iMac (HighSierra) when I opened fresh new the first thing I tried was transferring my old images to the new one and continues without previewing the thumbnails, to be exact it's not happening with all images the same, there's some technical aspects related to it.

I tried these problematic image files with an old 2008 old Macbook (Leopard) and loads the preview images fast with no problem. It always worked good previewing loads of images and this shouldn't happen at all with better and newer Macs. This is a real problem when working with hundreds and hundreds of heavy images and affects seriously the normality of the workflow. I tried the basic solutions with no success (safe mode, options of visualization, erasing .plist, formatting, etc) Can it be solved?

iMac, macOS High Sierra (10.13.4)

Posted on May 15, 2018 1:21 PM

Reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 15, 2018 1:48 PM

First verify from Finder>View>Show View Option>Show icon Preview

User uploaded file


If that is check, toggle it off and on.


If no success


  1. Open to the Preferences folder of your home directory, or from Finder>Go>Go to Folder, copy & paste:
    ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
  2. Delete the com.apple.finder.plist
  3. From the Finder icon on the Dock, hold the control option key and click the Finder icon>select Relaunch.

Similar questions

5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 15, 2018 1:48 PM in response to IsaakR

First verify from Finder>View>Show View Option>Show icon Preview

User uploaded file


If that is check, toggle it off and on.


If no success


  1. Open to the Preferences folder of your home directory, or from Finder>Go>Go to Folder, copy & paste:
    ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist
  2. Delete the com.apple.finder.plist
  3. From the Finder icon on the Dock, hold the control option key and click the Finder icon>select Relaunch.

May 15, 2018 2:10 PM in response to leroydouglas

Thank you very much for your answers but I already tried that as I read other users that happened the same and was suggested these solutions, with no success in my case.

The only clue that I read so far is that maybe has something to do with image files that had being created with Adobe Photoshop and the options preferences by default within the application that saves the files with a previewing icon format that make conflict with Finder but that doesn't explain why it's only happening with new Macs

This is the aspect how it looks and information of one of the files:User uploaded file

Mac OS X icon preview or thumbnail problem

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.