Clear the thumbnail cache

 

Clear the thumbnail cache

2. For each displayed picture, Ubuntu automatically creates a thumbnail, for viewing in the file manager. It stores those thumbnails in a hidden directory in your user account (names of hidden directories and hidden files start with a dot, like .cache or .bash_history. The dot makes them hidden).

Over time, the number of thumbnails can increase dramatically. Moreover, the thumbnail cache will eventually contain many superfluous thumbnails of pictures that don't exist anymore. By default, only thumbnails older than six months will be deleted.

The quickest way to get rid of all the thumbnails is to use the terminal for deleting the folder in which they reside. No worries: the system will re-create that folder and its subfolders automatically, the next time that thumbnails will be generated. Proceed like this:

Launch a terminal window.
(You can launch a terminal window like this: *Click*)

Type (use copy/paste to avoid errors):

rm -rfv ~/.cache/thumbnails

Press Enter.

Note: this will probably affect the thumbnails on your desktop as well; in that case it should suffice to simply log out and in again (or reboot your computer), which will create them anew.