Powertoys: Animated GIF thumbnails/icons in windows explorer.

Created on 31 Jul 2020 · 6Comments · Source: microsoft/PowerToys

With a toggleable option, GIFs that normally show up as an image preview in explorer would be animated.

A nice touch would be to specify the quality of the preview, the framerate, and an option to only animate it if it is selected in windows explorer.

This would not be in the preview area, this would be the actual icon or thumbnail of the icon that is animated.

Idea-New PowerToy Product-File Explorer

Source

Michael19723

All 6 comments

@chrdavis as you just did this for SVG, i'm betting it was rendered into an icon so doing this wouldn't be possible, correct?

crutkas on 31 Jul 2020

Unfortunately, Windows Explorer does not expose such functionality for thumbnails. We can only provide a static bitmap.

chrdavis on 31 Jul 2020

😕1

Don't use thumbnails, then? If it's possible to implement a document preview handler with code syntax highlighting and a bunch of custom tabs - which I've seen before - surely this is possible.

Unknow0059 on 31 Oct 2020

Well I guess if you want any sort of functionality then copy this text that I found here: https://www.w7forums.com/threads/animate-all-gif-files-in-windows-explorer.15806/

<html><head><title>Animator</title></head>
<body><script type="text/vbs">
set fso=CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
set fldr=fso.GetFolder(".")
for each file in fldr.files
if lcase(right(file.name,4))=".gif" then
document.write "<img src=""" & file.name & """>"
end if
next
</script></body></html>

Then name that file "animator.hta" and place it in your gif folder. Run it and you will get a viewer that displays all gifs in that folder. Does not look nice but it works

Michael19723 on 1 Nov 2020

A windows explorer preview handler for animated GIFs would be possible. The preview handler hosts a HWND that could be the WebView control with the GIF loaded.

chrdavis on 4 Nov 2020

👀2 🚀1

A windows explorer preview handler for animated GIFs would be possible. The preview handler hosts a HWND that could be the WebView control with the GIF loaded.

Would this implementation cause lag in windows explorer or high cpu usage to the desktop window manager and/or create lots of cache files (multiple png files)?

Michael19723 on 6 Nov 2020

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