---
name: "thumbnailer-service"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "lomiri-thumbnailer-service"
version: "3.0.4-2"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/thumbnailer-service"
---

# thumbnailer-service(1)

Thumbnailer service

## NAME

thumbnailer-service - Thumbnailer service

## SYNOPSIS

**thumbnailer-service**\

## DESCRIPTION

The **thumbnailer-service** program provides a DBus service for creating thumbnail images from local media files (photos, audio, and video files), as well as album cover artwork and artist images for many musicians and bands.

Original images and scaled thumbnails are cached on disk, so requests for a thumbnail for a previously retrieved image (whether in the same size or a different size) are delivered as efficiently as possible.

The service is fast and scalable, and it guarantees the integrity of on-disk data structures even in the face of a crash or power loss.

The service is activated on demand by DBus and, by default, shuts down after 30 seconds of idle time.

The service connects to the DBus session bus as **com.lomiri.Thumbnailer**. The interface to retrieve thumbnails is provided at the path **/com/lomiri/Thumbnailer**, and the administrative interface (see [**lomiri-thumbnailer-admin**(1)](/lomiri-thumbnailer-admin/1.md)) is provided at the path **/com/lomiri/ThumbnailerAdmin**.

## CONFIGURATION

The service uses [**dconf**(7)](/dconf/7.md) for its configuration. See [**thumbnailer-settings**(5)](/thumbnailer-settings/5.md) for details.

## ENVIRONMENT

The service reads the following environment variables:

- **THUMBNAILER\_UTIL\_DIR**

  The directory in which to look for the **vs-thumb** executable, which is used to extract images from streaming media. If not set, the program is expected to be in **/usr/lib/***\<arch\>***/thumbnailer**.

- **THUMBNAILER\_MAX\_IDLE**

  The service exits once it has been idle for the number of milliseconds specified by this variable. If not set, a default value of 30000 is assumed.

- **THUMBNAILER\_UBUNTU\_SERVER\_URL**

  This variable overrides the URI of the remote image server. If not set, the default URI **https://dash.ubuntu.com** is used.

- **THUMBNAILER\_LOG\_LEVEL**

  This variable overrides the value of the **log-level** setting.

- **XDG\_CACHE\_HOME**

  This variable determines the location of the on-disk caches. Caches are written to subdirectories of **$XDG\_CACHE\_HOME/lomiri-thumbnailer**. If **XDG\_CACHE\_HOME** is not set, **$HOME/.cache/lomiri-thumbnailer** is used. If **$HOME** is also not set, the home directory is determined by its setting in **/etc/passwd** and *home-dir***/.cache/lomiri-thumbnailer** is used.

## SEE ALSO

**lomiri-thumbnailer-admin(1), thumbnailer-settings(5), dconf(7), gsettings(1)**