Arch Linux

andros705

Member

Registered: 2016-05-12

Posts: 24

How to make album covers appear on mp3 files in Thunar

I have some mp3 files, they all have album covers encoded in them.
When I open the folder where I have them stored I can see only the 'music icons', how can I make Thunar to display actual song cover arts instead of this 'music icon'.

holytrousers

Member

From: 3rd Rock from the Sun

Registered: 2007-10-19

Posts: 75

Re: How to make album covers appear on mp3 files in Thunar

hey andros705; for thumbnails to show up in thunar, you need tumbler to be installed. do you have it installed ?

andros705

Member

Registered: 2016-05-12

Posts: 24

Re: How to make album covers appear on mp3 files in Thunar

Yes I do have Tumbler installed, I also installed ffmpegthumbnailer but I still can't see thumbnails instead I see this 'music icon'.
If I open any song with a music player then thumbnails display properly I even checked the thumbnails with puddletag is they are inside my song files.

Annoyingduck

Member

Registered: 2016-08-02

Posts: 179

Re: How to make album covers appear on mp3 files in Thunar

I feel like every year I search to see if this function has finally come to Thunar...and sadly, no it hasn't.  However there are workarounds. File managers like Nautilus, Caja, and Nemo can show MP3 embedded artwork ONLY if the Totem package (or Mint's Xplayer - which is basically Totem without the gnome nonsense, it's available in the AUR) is installed.  Those file managers will then generate a thumbnail of the embedded artwork in the mp3/music file if and only if Totem or Xplayer are installed - Thunar will not at all. There are ways to get Thunar to show other media thumbnails (ex. videos), but not music files.  So what you do is really easy.  Install either Nautilus, Nemo, or Caja (I recommend Caja-GTK3, but not Nemo because it pulls the entire Cinnamon desktop with it), install Totem or Xplayer (I recommend Xplayer). Run the new file manager and be sure to enable thumbnail previews in your new file manager.  Navigate to the media file and once the thumbnails are generated, open the same file in Thunar and the thumbnails will be there.  So basically your using another file manager to generate the thumbnails for Thunar to see.

Another quick note, if you install Caja, you'll need to make a custom menu entry for it or search for "run caja" in the Whisker Menu, or run it from the terminal because the install doesn't create a menu entry in XFCE.

Hope that helps, and I'm sure when the XFCE devs ad this feature down the road, it'll likely be well documented.

andros705

Member

Registered: 2016-05-12

Posts: 24

Re: How to make album covers appear on mp3 files in Thunar

Those file managers will then generate a thumbnail of the embedded artwork in the mp3/music file if and only if Totem or Xplayer are installed

Thanks that worked!
But do you know where these generated thumbnails are placed?

justasug

Member

Registered: 2014-08-03

Posts: 172

Re: How to make album covers appear on mp3 files in Thunar

But do you know where these generated thumbnails are placed?

Check your ~/.thumbnails or ~/.cache/thumbnails directories. If it's not there, maybe try using inotifywait or inotifywatch and then open a directory to make it generate thumbnails.

toz

Member

Registered: 2011-10-28

Posts: 497

Re: How to make album covers appear on mp3 files in Thunar

You can get tumbler to generate audio thumbnails natively on Xfce by manually building it (ABS) with the following two proposed patches:

- https://bugzilla.xfce.org/attachment.cgi?id=6360
- https://bugzilla.xfce.org/attachment.cgi?id=6348