Retrieve thumbnail for a given file

Question

Is there a command to get the (possibly cached) thumbnail for a given file? As in, the same way the file manager does it? Answers can be for gnome, lxde, kde, it doesn't matter.

Props for a command line tool but an API would be fine too.

The specs for the ~/.thumbnails cache are:

http://specifications.freedesktop.org/thumbnail-spec/thumbnail-spec-latest.html#THUMBSAVE

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 26 '15 at 05:11

I don't know if there's a thumbnail browsing command, but given the spec, it should simple to write a script that does the job.

For example, save the following file as find-thumbnail.sh, and make it executable (chmod +x find-thumbnail.sh):

#! /bin/bash

shopt -s nullglob

for i
do
    # If the path isn't absolute, make it absolute using the current directory
    if [[ $i != /* ]]
    then
        i="$PWD/$i"
    fi
    MD5=$(printf "%s" "file://$i" | md5sum)
    echo "$i": $HOME/.cache/thumbnails/*/${MD5%% *}.png
done

Then you can call it like so:

/path/to/find-thumbnail.sh path/to/pic1 /abs/path/to/pic2 ...

Running from home directory:

$ find Pictures -type f -exec ./find-thumbnail.sh {} +
...
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/03/DSC01784.JPG:
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/03/DSC01794.JPG:
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/03/DSC01774.JPG: /home/muru/.cache/thumbnails/normal/9d1b8617ec112724e8d4024ac901fc85.png
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/03/DSC01751.JPG: /home/muru/.cache/thumbnails/normal/b25714b794e868f0f6ac380a0e91fa2f.png
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/03/DSC01769.JPG: /home/muru/.cache/thumbnails/normal/6c4d62ae9f905f8e4d5053d29f55c182.png
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/03/DSC01753.JPG: /home/muru/.cache/thumbnails/normal/6a86f8da81c587d79796704cf8e6ef46.png
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/03/DSC01819.JPG:
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/03/DSC01776.JPG: /home/muru/.cache/thumbnails/normal/32ddbc8ce801294552ae9ef80eb482d4.png
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/03/DSC01827.JPG:
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/03/DSC01778.JPG: /home/muru/.cache/thumbnails/normal/98d95271946a22076f7bc4b4e4c3850e.png
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/03/DSC01813.JPG:
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/03/DSC01787.JPG:
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/03/DSC01801.JPG:
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/03/DSC01807.JPG:
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/03/DSC01788.JPG:
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/03/DSC01816.JPG:
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/02/DSC01737.JPG: /home/muru/.cache/thumbnails/normal/dc6e011ab1215201e2c29121b8285559.png
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/02/DSC01736.JPG: /home/muru/.cache/thumbnails/normal/ea0429331a9088a8d3502e8c544cd678.png
/home/muru/Pictures/2015/10/DSC_0176.JPG: /home/muru/.cache/thumbnails/normal/3efeacfc11c2754584238f1d963b9297.png

Retrieve thumbnail for a given file

1 Answers1