Win 8.1 File Explorer Android icon display

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Unsure where to put this. Since my question is related to Windows File Explorer I thought it would fit here.

When the files are on the Android device and I am looking at them in the File Explorer from Win8.1, the PNG files never display an icon photo while the JPG files SOMETIMES display a photo and sometimes not.

BUT if I copy any/all of these files to the Win8.1 machine and display them in File Explorer, the icons show the actual photo.

One clue I noticed is that the icon properties are different in File Explorer for the same files on Android device vs. the Win8.1 device.

On Win8.1 File Explorer, the properties display has two tabs – General and Details with the details showing photo info.

On Android 6.x in Windows File Explorer, the properties for any of these same files has three tabs – General, References and Details, where details does not give much detail, including anything photo related.

44757-Nexus5X-Missing-Android-thumbnails-in-Win-8.1-File-Explorer-2016-06-16

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I’m guessing it’s Windows / Android attempting to reduce data transfer, so thumbnails aren’t generated.

cheers, Paul

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I’m guessing it’s Windows / Android attempting to reduce data transfer, so thumbnails aren’t generated.

cheers, Paul

But if that were true, then shouldn’t there be some way to override the action? And why show JPG’s (usually) but not PNG photo’s?

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I did say it was a guess.

cheers, Paul

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My suggestion is that Windows is aware that this is a ‘foreign’ volume (i.e. not owned and managed by Windows). As such it probably accessing it through a file interface like CIFS or NFS. That likely causes a reduction in the functionality Windows offers, thus no thumbnails or previews.

It’s speculation, but informed speculation. Android is of course an operating system and as such has it’s own rules for file systems. Being based upon Linux, Android very likely uses one of the common Linux file systems. There are a lot of such Linux file systems but the universal rule is, there’s no overlap between Linux and Windows file systems. Windows is always NTFS or FAT, Linux is always (ext2, ext3, btfs, reiserfs, zfs, …). While they can talk to each other (mostly), the underlying file systems are always distinctly different.

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There have been a lot of people suffering from the same problem and a plethora “solutions”, for example:
http://forums.androidcentral.com/t-mobile-galaxy-s-iii/198321-issue-viewing-phone-s-pictures-my-pc.html

I have tried this is file transfer mode and in photo mode. One thing I have noticed is that when the Windows File Explorer window is open and I click on the DCIM photo folder, the icons for the photo files all show sequentially for a brief second as the folder is populated and then immediately get switched to the generic image.

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