Thumbnails
The storage layout below describes Geeqie's private thumbnail cache. The shared thumbnail cache format is described in Thumbnail Standards .
When Geeqie detects that a tracked source file has changed or been replaced, it discards its cached thumbnails and reloads metadata, including orientation. Detection includes file identity and subsecond modification and status-change timestamps where the platform supports them. Cached thumbnails are retained when a source becomes unavailable, allowing missing collection members to keep their previews.
Shared thumbnails written by Geeqie also record the source file size. A cached thumbnail with a different recorded size is rejected even when its modification time matches. Older thumbnails without a size field remain supported. These checks cannot detect every replacement made while a file is not being tracked, particularly when cache-validation values are unchanged. Use in the files pane context menu to regenerate previews for selected files.
Format
Thumbnails are stored in PNG image format. The thumbnail name is the name of the source image with “.png” appended.
The modification time (mtime) of the thumbnail is set to match the source file. Thumbnails are regenerated when the timestamps of the thumbnail and source file do not match.
Location
Thumbnails are stored in a location specified in Thumbnail Preferences .
The directory structure of the thumbnail cache duplicates that of the location of the source files.
Size
Geeqie allows the following sizes for thumbnails:
24x24, 32x32, 48x48, 64x64, 96x72, 96x96, 129x96, 128x128, 160x120, 160x160, 192x144, 192x192, 256x192, 256x256, custom
Custom size has a maximum of 512x512.
The thumbnail is scaled to fit within the preferred size maintaining the aspect ratio. Thumbnails are not cached for images that are equal to or smaller than the preferred thumbnail size.
When a cached thumbnail's width and height do not match the preferred size, the thumbnail is regenerated.