How to view HTML files thumbnail preview in nautilus

Question

How can I view HTML files thumbnail preview in nautilus just like the previews for image and video files?

Answer 1

In 2020, gnome-web-photo is unmaintained both by upstream, debian and Ubuntu maintainers, and is no longer in the repos.

This is how I got HTML thumbnails working in Ubuntu 19.10 and Nemo file manager:

sudo apt-get install wkhtmltopdf

cat << EOF | sudo tee /usr/bin/wkhtmltoimage-thumbnailer
#!/bin/sh
IN=$1
OUT=$2
TMP=$(mktemp).png
timeout 5s /usr/bin/wkhtmltoimage --disable-javascript --crop-h 800 "$IN" "$TMP"
mv $TMP "$OUT"
EOF

sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/wkhtmltoimage-thumbnailer

cat << EOF | sudo tee /usr/share/thumbnailers/wkhtmltoimage.thumbnailer
[Thumbnailer Entry]
TryExec=/usr/bin/wkhtmltoimage-thumbnailer
Exec=/usr/bin/wkhtmltoimage-thumbnailer %i %o
MimeType=text/html;
EOF

rm ~/.cache/thumbnails/fail/gnome-thumbnail-factory/*

killall nemo

Apart from wkhtmltoimage, cutycapt is another working HTML-to-image renderer currently in repos.

Answer 2

From What rendering engine does Nautilus use to show HTML previews/thumbnails?, Refresh thumbnails in nautilus and How I repaired my html thumbnails questions, I finally figured it out.

1. Install gnome-web-photo if you don't have it.
   sudo apt-get install gnome-web-photo
2. Clear thumbnail cache
   rm -r ~/.thumbnails
killall nautilus

Enjoy html thumbnails in nautilus.