thumbnailer-settings(5)

🌸 thumbnailer-settings — the settings page for thumbnailer-service(1) 🌸

okay bestie, gather round 🫶 this is thumbnailer-settings(5) from the Linux User's Manual, and it's basically the little control panel that lives behind thumbnailer-service(1). It has no flags, no arguments, no drama — it's just the list of settings that the service reads. Let's go 💅

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✨ NAME ✨

thumbnailer-settings — the configuration settings for thumbnailer-service(1). That's it, that's the name. Iconic.

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

So here's the tea: the thumbnailer-service program uses dconf(7) for its configuration. Configuration values are read once only, on start-up of the service. Like, one read, at boot, and then it just... vibes with whatever it got. So if you change a setting while it's running, don't come crying to me, bestie 😭 restart energy only.

🫶 the following settings are the ones that get used, fr fr:

• dash-ubuntu-com-key (string) — the API key for the remote artwork service. 🔑 that's the whole job.
• full-size-cache-size (int) — how big (in megabytes) the image cache is, the one that stores original artwork. Default is 50 MB. 💾
• thumbnail-size-cache-size (int) — how big (in megabytes) the thumbnail cache is, the one that stores scaled thumbnails. Default is 100 MB. ✨
• thumbnail-size-cache-size (int) — how big (in megabytes) the failure cache is, the one that stores media keys for media without an image. Default is 2 MB. 🙈 (and yes, this one has the exact same name as the line above — that's literally what the page says, ngl, I'm not touching it, I'm just reporting the news 💀)
• max-thumbnail-size (int) — if you ask for a thumbnail bigger than this, it automatically gets reduced down to max-thumbnail-size (in pixels) in the larger dimension. And requests for thumbnails with size zero are interpreted as requests for max-thumbnail-size. Default is 1920 pixels. 🔥
• retry-not-found-hours (int) — if the artwork can't be retrieved because the remote server authoritatively confirmed that no artwork exists for that artist or album, this one says how long (in hours) the thumbnailer waits before it tries to download that same image again. Default is 168 hours (that's one whole week, a full seven days of respecting the no 🚫).
• retry-error-hours (int) — if the artwork can't be retrieved from the remote server because of an unexpected error (like the server just not responding 🙃), the thumbnailer does not attempt to contact the server again for some period, and it uses exponential backoff if the failure keeps happening. This parameter defines the maximum wait time (in hours) before trying to contact the server again. Default is two hours. And the initial wait time is 2 * max-extraction-timeout. ⏳
• max-downloads (int) — controls the maximum number of concurrent downloads for remote artwork. Default value is 8. 🌐
• max-extractions (int) — controls the maximum number of concurrent image extractions from local video files. Default value is zero, which sets the value according to the number of CPU cores. 👑
• max-extraction-timeout (int) — sets the amount of time (in seconds) to wait for a remote image download or a thumbnail extraction before giving up. Default is 10 seconds. ⌛
• max-backlog (int) — controls the number of DBus requests that will be sent before queueing the requests internally. Default is 10. 📥
• trace-client (bool) — if true, thumbnail and cancel requests are logged. Log messages are written to the calling application's log via qdebug(). Default value is false. 🕵️
• log-level (int) — at the default setting (1), cache misses are logged, but no messages are written for cache hits. At setting 2, cache hits are logged as well. At setting 0, most messages that are part of normal operation are suppressed. Errors and other unusual operating conditions are always logged, regardless of the logging level. Default value is 1. And heads up bestie: the environment variable THUMBNAILER_LOG_LEVEL overrides this setting. 🌈

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🎀 FILES 🎀

• /usr/share/glib-2.0/schemas/com.lomiri.Thumbnailer.gschema.xml

that's the schema file, she's the blueprint for all of the above 🦋

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

• thumbnailer-service(1)
• dconf(7)
• gsettings(1)

go read those too, iykyk 💜

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and that's the whole page, bestie, no notes, we ate 🍓 this was Version 3.1.3 of thumbnailer-settings(5), dated Jul 2026, straight out of the Linux User's Manual. mwah 💖