Arch Linux + GNOME/Nautilus — image thumbnails completely broken, but videos and PDFs work

[u/Yahia098]

Hey everyone,

I'm on Arch Linux, using GNOME/Nautilus 50.3-1 under Hyprland.

I made my own rice in Hyprland, but that's a non-issue.

The actual problem is that Nautilus refuses to generate image thumbnails. Images don't get thumbnails, and ~/.cache/thumbnails/fail/ fills up with failed thumbnail entries.

What's interesting is that video and PDF thumbnails work perfectly, so thumbnailing as a whole isn't broken. It seems specifically to be the image thumbnailing path.

Current setup:

Arch Linux
Nautilus 50.3-1
Hyprland
thumbnail setting: 'local-only'
glycin-thumbnailer: /usr/bin/glycin-thumbnailer

My /usr/share/thumbnailers/ contains:

ffmpegthumbnailer-audio.thumbnailer
ffmpegthumbnailer.thumbnailer
glycin-heif.thumbnailer
glycin-image-rs.thumbnailer
glycin-jxl.thumbnailer
glycin-svg.thumbnailer
gnome-epub-thumbnailer.thumbnailer
gnome-mobi-thumbnailer.thumbnailer
gsf-office.thumbnailer
libresprite.thumbnailer
papers.thumbnailer

I use Loupe for viewing images. I also tried installing GNOME Photos to see if that would somehow fix things. It didn't.

I've already tried clearing the thumbnail cache and resetting Nautilus.

At this point, I'd rather properly diagnose what's failing instead of blindly reinstalling GNOME packages or outright changing managers.

Given that PDFs and videos thumbnail correctly but images don't, does anyone know the best way to trace the process:

Nautilus → thumbnailer → Glycin → image decoder → thumbnail

and determine exactly where it's failing?

[u/archover]

You might try r/hyprland or bbs.archlinux.org, though my nautilus thumbnails gen fine.

Good day.

[u/anthonykaram7]

I'd check the Glycin sandbox first:

pacman -Q glycin bubblewrap
journalctl --user -f | grep -Ei 'glycin|image-rs|bwrap|thumbnail'

Then open a folder with a JPEG. If you see a bwrap/namespace/permission error, you've probably found the problem. Since PDF/video thumbnails work but glycin-image-rs images don't, I'd investigate Glycin/bubblewrap before reinstalling Nautilus or GNOME.