Created attachment 181985 [details] custom folder icon, custom folder icon preview, generic folder icon preview Currently there is a global option to enable/disable folder previews in dolphin under: settings > configure dolphin > previews > [checkbox] folders However there may be certain use cases where the user only wants specific folders to be included/excluded from that setting (for privacy or for aesthetics reasons) For example if the user has folders on their desktop with custom icons, the folder preview would effectively nullify the point of having a custom icon because it would completely cover it, whereas if it is a generic folder icon the folder preview would be useful to the user by showing the contents of the folder. Please see the attached image for reference. The custom folder icon with the preview enabled (in the middle) looks really bad, whereas the generic folder icon (at the bottom) looks fine displaying it's folder contents. Operating System: Manjaro Linux KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.5 KDE Frameworks Version: 6.14.0 Qt Version: 6.9.0 Kernel Version: 6.12.28-1-MANJARO (64-bit) Graphics Platform: Wayland
Exposing an extra setting, definitely not. But I think if you have a custom icon, it makes sense to implicitly disable any other previews.
(In reply to David Edmundson from comment #1) > Exposing an extra setting, definitely not. > But I think if you have a custom icon, it makes sense to implicitly disable > any other previews. I completely agree, in my personal use case that would be a perfect solution for me and i'd be very happy about it. 😇 But i'm sure there are going to be situations where people assign a different folder colour with the upcoming new feature in KDE (shown here in Nate Graham's article: https://blogs.kde.org/2025/05/10/this-week-in-plasma-inhibit-sleep-while-transferring-files/very-purple-new-folder.png) but then the folder preview doesn't show up as expected for them if this change is implemented. It becomes a bit tricky here to decide what constitutes a custom icon or a generic one. Is there a way to satisfy both situations somehow? what do you suggest?
If this makes sense to do, it makes sense to do universally, which means it should be done in the thumbnailer itself. Moving there. We probably don't want to disable it for all custom icons, just ones that aren't "folder-like". This isn't 100% knowable due to icon themes existing, but we can probably make a best guess that if the icon name starts with "folder-" in it, it's folder-like and therefore makes sense to keep the previews turned on. This should catch 99.9% of cases.
I checked the folder names for the icon theme i'm using in: "/home/test/.local/share/icons/Qogir/128/places/" and while some folder icons have names like: "folder_downloads.svg" or "folder-video.svg" others have file names like "network_local.svg" or "user-bookmarks.svg" or "favorites.svg" which don't have the word folder in them. The problem here is that there's no standard for icon naming and an entire icon theme could be broken (with respect to folder previews being wildly inconsistent) because of this change. I recommend if there's a way to enable such a setting based on per folder exclusion perhaps? Tucked away somewhere like "Dolphin > View > Adjust view display style > View Options (I think here's a good place to add "disable folder preview") or even under "Additional options" in the same menu? (The option can be greyed out if folder previews are globally turned off) I think this would be a clean solution and it wouldn't clutter up important menus anywhere. Please consider my suggestion. It would neatly solve the issue for all use cases without disadvantaging anyone.
Is there a way to do this manually at least for the time being? by editing a config file somewhere so that the folder preview doesn't show for a particular folder? I would really appreciate any advice/instructions about this. It's just ruining my custom folder icons. 😢
I have a bunch of folders with a non-folder custom icon and I don't want to lose thumbnails there.
(In reply to Kai Uwe Broulik from comment #6) > I have a bunch of folders with a non-folder custom icon and I don't want to lose thumbnails there. So what you're saying is that you still want to have folder previews enabled even if you have a custom icon that doesn't look like a folder, is that correct? This is why I suggested not to make global changes to folder previews based on custom icons since it can negatively affect some users and it won't be clear to those users why folder preview is working for some folders but not for others. I still advocate for keeping the global setting as it is now (either on or off) but with the option to exclude specified folders from that setting through a menu option somewhere. My previous suggestion was to have this option under "View > Adjust View Display Style" so as not to clutter up any important menus. Does anyone have any other suggestions for this? what do you think? But I don't know if this will also work for the Desktop as well (which is my primary usecase for this request) since the Desktop we see is a kind of widget of some sort and it has it's own settings?
Created attachment 182106 [details] Adjust display style window Maybe this menu is a good place to add "Disable folder preview"? It can be greyed out if the global setting is already set to disabled
(In reply to Kai Uwe Broulik from comment #6) Likewise, I wouldn't want to lose thumbnail support on custom folder icons. Those icons are usually useful as a fallback for when thumbnails aren't viable, on older machines, so when I manually enable thumbnails, it's deliberate.
> Likewise, I wouldn't want to lose thumbnail support on custom folder icons. > Those icons are usually useful as a fallback for when thumbnails aren't > viable, on older machines, so when I manually enable thumbnails, it's > deliberate. This is why I recommended having an option to disable it on a per folder basis (which was my original request - please see the title history) instead of making any global changes that might be undesirable to some people's use cases. Just to clarify I think the current global settings are fine as they are. (folder previews being on or off) All i'm requesting is to have an exemption option from that setting on a per folder basis. This way no one will be inconvenienced.
Hello, I politely request reverting the title of this NOR wishlist back to: [Feature request] Ability to enable/disable folder previews on a per folder basis in addition to the global setting Since the new title "Disable folder previews when using an icon that doesn't look like a folder" does not reflect my original request and I feel that developers will ignore considering this since the new title implies breaking people's workflows i.e. the system is making a customization decision on the user's behalf that the user no longer has control over and it is not clear how the system will take such a decision anyway so it may seem like random or inconsistent behaviour to the user. My initial title request differs since it implies giving the user the option to decide for themselves instead.
Sure.
Thank you so much! 😊 (Note: I didn't edit the title myself because I'm assuming that only KDE devs are allowed to do so after something's been posted)
You're allowed to, it's mostly a question of etiquette. In this case I would have been perfectly happy with you changing the title yourself.
I see, thank you for clarifying this. 👍🏻
Hey, any chance of getting this implemented? I was really happy when I initially found out that you can use .png files as icons, what an awesome discovery it was! But I haven't been using custom icons due to this issue. You know how a folder has a .directory file to specify the icon? It looks this this inside: [Desktop Entry] Icon=/path/to/icon.png can we not optionally add another variable that can be typed manually to keep the folder preview disabled? for example: Folderpreview=disabled Something like this? normally this line shouldn't show unless the user type's it in manually. I would be happy with such a change because at least I can fix the problem i'm facing. Please at least let me have some sort of workaround to solve this.