Display Thumbnails In Icon View But Not In Compact View

Question

I use the Nemo file manager on Linux Mint 19 Tara. Usually I only work with the compact view without thumbnails (see image A), but occasionally I switch to icon view with thumbnails (see image B).

To switch from A to B I have to

1. Open the settings
2. Enable thumbnails
3. Change to icon view

and to switch back from B to A

4. Open the settings
5. Disable thumbnails
6. Change to compact view

I'd like switch by just clicking the icon view (see image 3) or compact view (see image 6) buttons in the toolbar so that I have to click only once instead of seven times.

Q: Is there a way to enable thumbnails only in icon view?

I already checked for hidden dconf settings but couldn't find any. Maybe there is a plugin for what I need or a simple way to write one.

Possible workarounds which would also be acceptable:

• A toolbar button to toggle thumbnails on/off.
• Enable thumbnails only for icon sizes > ??px. I always use small icons in compact view and bigger icons/thumbnails in icon view.

I'm not interested in

• showing thumbnails only in certain directories or for certain file types.
• using another file manger.

This question is tagged as nautilus since Nemo is a fork of Nautilus. If there is a solution for Nautilus please post it. I may be able to use that solution for Nemo too.

Answer 1

Starting with Cinnamon 4.0, there is a new thumbnail setting and a new toolbar button. See new features in Linux Mint 19.1:

You can configure Nemo to show thumbnails depending on the directory you are browsing. In this mode, a thumbnail toggle button appears in the toolbar and lets you decide whether or not show thumbnails for this particular directory.

The new button shows enables/disables thumbnails only for the current directory, but it is built in and probably the simplest way to get something similar to what you want.