Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1108546
Accepted
kerner1000
Asked: 2019-01-11 02:42:24 +0800 CST

Delete all Thumbnail Pictures

  • 772

I messed up with the thumbnails folder, now those thumbnail pictures are all over the place.

How can I find all of the thumbnail pictures and delete them? Do they have a specific size? Or naming pattern?

nautilus thumbnails 18.10

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    How can I find all of the thumbnail pictures and delete them? Do they have a specific size? Or naming pattern?

    They do not have a specific size but they do have a somewhat** specific naming pattern in that they are .png files with 32-character long prefixes. The prefixes contain only lower case numbers and letters:

    ~/.cache/thumbnails/normal $ ls -l
total 976
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dkb dkb  5306 Dec 18 19:09 085c000fbbf0acf30a6cd10fba7840b6.png
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dkb dkb 17064 Dec 18 19:10 096f43aca7514b077af55837fa2e991f.png
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dkb dkb  1007 Jan  7 14:04 0dea5b174496fdc296eeab1c16d14890.png
-rw-rw-r-- 1 dkb dkb  1609 Dec 18 19:10 0f61d62142d309ac7217c2db97f461f7.png

    **I found files fitting the naming pattern even in my ~/.config/google-chrome subfolders.

    The prefix of this type matches the string generated using md5sum. For example,

    echo -n "file:///home/dkb/Pictures/mogrify.png" | md5sum 5c876891579e1ddb68858fcd1285fa3e  -

    That said, you can list these files and their locations with

    find ~ -iname "*.png" -ls | grep -E "[[:alnum:]]{32}.png"

    Given that there's no guarantee that only thumbnails will be recovered by the command, you'll need to use your judgement in deleting these files.

    ~ $ find ~ -iname "*.png" -ls | grep -E "[[:alnum:]]{32}.png"
   263512      4 -rw-------   1 dkb    dkb          68 Dec 19 18:47 /home/dkb/.config/google-chrome/Default/Extensions/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm/1.17.4_0/web_accessible_resources/c77d1c55bb336440de0677e841870dd2.png
   263514      4 -rw-------   1 dkb    dkb          83 Dec 19 18:47 /home/dkb/.config/google-chrome/Default/Extensions/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm/1.17.4_0/web_accessible_resources/70a7e8510b6031f0d7d6dbf4a6e70c3e.png
   263513      4 -rw-------   1 dkb    dkb          68 Dec 19 18:47 /home/dkb/.config/google-chrome/Default/Extensions/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm/1.17.4_0/web_accessible_resources/08bccca4f0b22bca18001da690ef0f6b.png
  4992634    104 -rw-rw-r--   1 dkb    dkb      105801 Dec 31 19:12 /home/dkb/.cache/thumbnails/large/50300a09e33e5f5708ff995ce8780bf0.png
  4982659     44 -rw-rw-r--   1 dkb    dkb       43937 Dec 19 14:13 /home/dkb/.cache/thumbnails/large/e0f35cdc15dfa67a127d63b02be6198b.png
  4981212      8 -rw-rw-r--   1 dkb    dkb        7467 Dec 18 19:10 /home/dkb/.cache/thumbnails/normal/7254f83b68182514fc7da15bc055e11b.png
  4981237      4 -rw-rw-r--   1 dkb    dkb         134 Dec 18 19:10 /home/dkb/.cache/thumbnails/normal/4bfa9f4ef307e8662c6e3575272b0176.png
...
    • 1