Solved: Windows 11 Not Showing Video Thumbnails
If you recently noticed that Windows 11 stopped showing video thumbnails — especially for .mp4, .mkv, or .hevc/x265 files — you’re not alone. Many users experience blank icons instead of preview thumbnails after a Windows update or codec change.
Fortunately, the fix can be surprisingly simple.
In most cases, Windows 11 fails to generate thumbnails because its built-in video decoder (used by File Explorer) hasn’t initialized the correct codec yet.
You can trigger it manually by opening the video file once in Microsoft’s Photos app.
Steps:
- Right-click on any video file that’s not showing a thumbnail.
- Choose Open with → Photos.
- Let it play for a few seconds, then close it.
- Go back to File Explorer — the thumbnail should now appear instantly!
After this, Windows will usually start generating thumbnails for all other videos of the same type automatically.
When you open a video in the Photos app, Windows 11:
- Activates the HEVC/H.265 codec (used for modern video formats).
- Registers the correct thumbnail handler in the system.
- Refreshes the thumbnail cache for supported formats.
Once this initialization happens, File Explorer can use the codec to generate previews for all similar files.
THIS, fixed the issue for me. Thumbnails were working fine this morning. Then all of a sudden, thumbnails for videos didn’t work; but for pictures it was still fine.
Checked settings and perform deleting thumbnail db files and thumbnail temp files and nothing.
Found this page and as I was reading through the steps, I was wondering how this was going to resolve my issue. Troubleshooting 101: what has changed or was changed since the last time it worked? I installed Handbrake a few minutes ago to convert H246 to H256.
And your steps above fixed it. Thank you!! (^_^)