What is thumbnail cache?
Windows 11 creates thumbnails of photos, videos, and some types of documents so they can be displayed more quickly in File Explorer. Instead of recreating the preview each time it is needed, the operating system temporarily stores it in a local database.
This data is stored in the user’s profile in %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer. There you will find files with names like thumbcache_32.db, thumbcache_96.db, thumbcache_256.dbeither thumbcache_1024.db. These are individual thumbnail databases containing preview images in different sizes.
This thumbnail caching system has been around since Windows Vista. Previously, Microsoft used the well-known Thumbs.db convention of files, which were stored in individual folders.
Not all deleted photos are saved
The claim now circulating on social media gives the impression that Windows 11 automatically archives a preview of all deleted images. However, there is no evidence to support this.
For example, a test by Windows Latest showed that several images that were downloaded and then deleted were not appearing in the thumbnail cache. The database files were not altered at all.
The reason? Typically, a thumbnail preview is only saved when File Explorer (or another application) generates a thumbnail as part of the file preview process. If an image is never previewed anywhere, you won’t have created a thumbnail to end up in the cache.
