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Forum Discussion

BeauDanger666's avatar
BeauDanger666
Helpful | Level 5
3 months ago
Solved

Image previews in Explorer only showing the compressed preview for local files on Windows

Hello. Since the big Dropbox update in February 2025 I have been experiencing issues. I mainly use Dropbox in Windows file explorer, not on the Dropbox App / Site. I have Dropbox for Windows on 3 sep...
desktop
Photos
Preview
  • thomaskim's avatar
    thomaskim
    2 months ago

    Hello, Thomas from the Engineering team here! We're actively working on resolving this issue and appreciate you bringing this to our attention. Definitely understand the frustration here.

    One escape hatch here is to opt out of the update: https://help.dropbox.com/installs/dropbox-for-windows#How-to-optout-of-the-Dropbox-for-Windows-update 

    This will unfortunately mean you will have to go through the process of re-syncing again, but this should be a one-time thing (as long as you stay logged in) and will not be required every time we roll out a new Dropbox version.

eschac's avatar
eschac
Helpful | Level 5
3 months ago

I don't have a solution, but just mentioning that I've been experiencing the same issue. Several different file types no longer preview on the preview pane.

I reached out to Dropbox support and they claimed that it's not a Dropbox issue, and that it's caused by some kind of third party software/app... however this is not true, as the issue only affects files in Dropbox folders (for example, if I move a file from my Dropbox onto my desktop, it previews just fine).

I'm still chatting with them, but hopefully they see that more people are having this issue and fix it. It's super annoying!

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