One of the most disappointing changes in Windows 11 is removing Explorer folder icons that display previews of their contents. Microsoft probably ditched this useful option in favor of a new design style. Anyway, the enthusiast developed his own Windows Thumbnail Generator utility with open source, which fix this problem.
The program written in C # uses ImageMagick (Magick.NET library) to generate shortcuts with thumbnails of files located in the folder. At the moment, the utility is limited only to multimedia formats (JPG, PNG, MP4, MOV, and others) since other file types (documents, tables, etc.) are displayed vertically – it does not fit the current implementation.
Windows Thumbnail Generator works very simply: the user only needs to open the utility, select the desired folder, specify the order (normal or reverse) and click on “Start.” The program will automatically generate a thumbnail folder shortcut and replace the original icon with a new one. The developer noted that he initially created this utility for himself but decided to share it with everyone – he is counting only on constructive criticism.