Files show icons not photos

Hi there,

I understand how concerning it is when your photos only appear as icons instead of previews, especially after dealing with cloud storage and file recovery.

What’s likely happening here is that your File Explorer’s thumbnail cache or preview settings got affected when your files were removed and re-synced from the cloud. Sometimes Windows defaults back to icon view when thumbnails aren’t cached locally or the sync path points to files that aren’t fully downloaded.

Let’s start by opening File Explorer Options, go to the View tab, and make sure the option “Always show icons, never thumbnails” is unchecked (which you mentioned you tried), then click OK. Next, open the Disk Cleanup tool, check the box for Thumbnails, and clean them to refresh the cache. After that, restart your PC and open your photo folders again.

If thumbnails still don’t show, please confirm whether your images are stored locally on your computer or if they still have a cloud symbol beside them, this will help me check if the files are only placeholders from the cloud service.