The normal PDF thumbnailer (evince-thumbnailer) does not work well on my system. Some issues are: not being able to create a thumbnail for PDFs (because of forms?), not being able to create a thumbnail and causing a CPU 100% spike.
- ImageMagick (
convert -thumbnail) to create a thumbnail from a PDF. Install with:sudo apt install imagemagick
# 1. Copy the `imagemagick-pdf-thumbnailer` script to `/usr/bin/`.
sudo cp imagemagick-pdf-thumbnailer /usr/bin/
# 2. Make it executable.
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/imagemagick-pdf-thumbnailer
# 3. Copy the `imagemagick-pdf.thumbnailer` to `/usr/share/thumbnailers/`.
sudo cp imagemagick-pdf.thumbnailer /usr/share/thumbnailers/It is very likely you already have a PDF thumbnailer in /usr/share/thumbnailers/, e.g. evince.thumbnailer. Edit its file and remove application/pdf; from its list of handled mime types.
You may have to restart Nautilus first.
Then delete ~/.cache/thumbnails/fail/ so that all failed attempts to create a thumbnail are retried the next time the file is visible in the file viewer (probably Nautilus).
Delete the files:
/usr/share/thumbnailers/imagemagick-pdf.thumbnailer/usr/bin/imagemagick-pdf-thumbnailer
Restore the evince thumbnailer by doing the opposite from the step above – add back application/pdf to the mime type list.
Probably restart Nautilus.
- https://specifications.freedesktop.org/thumbnail-spec/thumbnail-spec-latest.html
- https://tecnocode.co.uk/2013/10/21/writing-a-gnome-thumbnailer/
MIT License. See LICENSE file for details.