The Crawling Folders
Whenever you open a folder in Windows 11 containing hundreds of images or videos, the operating system works frantically in the background. It attempts to read every single file to generate a tiny preview image (a thumbnail) so you can see what the file is without opening it. While this is helpful in a dedicated “Pictures” directory, it can absolutely cripple system performance if you open a massive network drive, a folder containing thousands of unoptimized raw camera files, or a directory full of complex 3D assets. The file explorer will freeze, the green progress bar at the top will crawl indefinitely, and your hard drive usage will spike to 100%.
Enforcing Generic Icons
To prioritize raw navigation speed and stop Windows 11 from automatically generating and loading image thumbnails, you must force the operating system to display standard file icons instead.
Open any standard folder (File Explorer). Look at the command bar across the very top of the window and click on the three horizontal dots (See more). From the dropdown menu, select Options to open the Folder Options dialogue box. Click on the View tab at the top of this box. Look at the “Advanced settings” list. The very first option at the top of this list is a checkbox explicitly labelled Always show icons, never thumbnails. Click this box so that a checkmark appears. Click Apply, and then OK. The change is immediate. Regardless of the folder contents, Windows will now instantly load generic JPEG or MP4 icons, allowing you to scroll through thousands of files without any lag.