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Better Folder Thumbnails™ #1614

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Description

@RepeatingCommandBlock

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
For media libraries, the most representative file is often the largest file in the folder (e.g. the main movie, the highest-resolution photo). Manually creating symlinks or renaming files to match --th-covers is cumbersome and clutters directories.

Describe the idea / solution you'd like
Add a new option that tells copyparty to use the largest file (by byte size) inside a folder as its thumbnail, provided that file is of a type that copyparty can generate a thumbnail from (image, video, or any format handled by the thumbnail pipeline).

--folder-thumb-largest would be ideal.

Describe any alternatives you've considered

  • Using --th-extract - but this only works for files with extensions, not for folders; there is no hook for folder thumbnail generation.
  • A cron script that creates folder.jpg symlinks - works but writes extra files into every directory and needs periodic maintenance.
  • Accepting the current default – often picks an arbitrary small image or an image from the wrong video in a folder, not the main one.

Activity

  1. 9001 commented on Aug 20, 2026

    @9001
    Owner

    and if there's a filename matching --th-covers then that should always win, and selecting the largest file should just be the fallback if nothing matched right?

  2. RepeatingCommandBlock commented on Aug 21, 2026

    @RepeatingCommandBlock
    Author

    and if there's a filename matching --th-covers then that should always win, and selecting the largest file should just be the fallback if nothing matched right?

    Exactly! I mostly use copyparty to get access to video and audio files when I'm outside. Sometimes there are folders that you can't (or shouldn't, if in use by particular programs) edit for some reason or another, so you make copyparty use the first image it finds, but that's almost always a frame from some video file that doesn't describe the content of the folder correctly. So I just give up and find myself having to read the full file name 100% of the time; not very pleasant on small screens.

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