Windows File Explorer displays PSD thumbnails in some folders, but not in others

Forum|Forum|2 days ago
January 31, 2026
2 replies
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A weird thing that logically shouldn’t happen is happening. I’ve been told that Windows natively has no ability to display Photoshop thumbnails when viewing PSD files in the file browser. Most of my PSD's accordingly when viewed display as the blue Photoshop PS icon, however randomly in my sync’d OneDrive folder some (not all) PSD’s display thumbnail previews of the actual PSD's contents. They display the same as a jpg thumbnail preview.

I never installed anything special to make that happen. I don’t have an third party PSD thumbnail viewing programs/apps installed. So something else must be going on here. Is it something to do with the fact it’s a OneDrive folder? But if that’s the case why doesn’t it display thumbnails for all the PSD’s? The file type is exactly the same between PSD’s that do display thumbnails and PSD’s that don’t.

Wondering if anyone has any clue what’s going on here.

davescm

Community Expert

To create thumbnails, some codecs rely on the PSD/PSB file being saved with maximise compatibility checked. You can set that in Preferences > File Handling and it adds an extra layer to the file with a merged version of the image layers that can be read by the codec.That may explain why some images show a thumbnail and others do not.

Dave.

G

GottaScrollFastAuthor

Known Participant

I read that elsewhere and tested it out to see if it made a difference, but nope. The PSD’s that weren’t displaying thumbnails remained unchanged after re-saving them with “maximize compatibility” checked.

Sameer K

Community Manager

Hey, @GottaScrollFast. Welcome to the Photoshop Community. I’ll help you figure this out.

An update to OneDrive around October-November 2025 enabled thumbnail previews on Windows devices. Open any OneDrive folder > go to 3 Dot menu > options > View > Enable ‘Always show icons, never thumbnails.’ This will restore the icons to the PS icon.

For the PSDs that don’t appear with a thumbnail, are they available offline, or only available on OneDrive? You can right-click on those PSDs and choose ‘Always keep on this device’.

Let me know how it goes. Thanks!

Sameer K
(Type '@' and type my name to mention me when you reply)

G

GottaScrollFastAuthor

Known Participant

The offline(cloud only) vs loaded status doesn’t seem to be what’s determining whether PSD’s get a thumbnail or not. There are loaded PSD’s without thumbnails, loaded PSD’s with them, and same for offline files. Most of my files are actually offline at the moment but the majority are all displaying thumbnail previews. Changing the status from offline to loaded-on-device doesn’t seem to change anything.

I don’t actually want to disable the thumbnail view, (if I could make all the PSD’s display as thumbnail previews I would) I’m just curious as to why this pleasant circumstance exists in the first place.

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