The Thumbnails View

By dropping folders onto Pix's icon in the Finder or the Thumbnails… menu command Pix is told to create thumbnails for the image files contained in the chosen folders, which ae called the root folders of the view. In case of the Thumbnails menu command the root folder is the folder containing the currently displayed picture or video resp. (in the search results view) the folders containing the selected thumbnails. You might experience strange effects if one of the root folders contains another one, but it does anyway not make sense to make a subfolder of a root folder also a root folder.

Pix then opens a window with thumbnail views of these images in the preset size with the name of the respective image file written under them. The file name under the thumbnail is truncated if it does not fit into the thumbnail area. In this case the full file name is shown as a tool-tip when the cursor is moved over the file name field.

The window title is the name of the most specific folder containing the root folders, followed by the total number of thumbnails.

At the bottom of the window you will recognize a slider. This can be used to adjust the size of the thumbnails.

The thumbnails in the sections are ordered by their file name or creation date, depending on what is chosen in Pix's preferences.

Selection

Thumbnails can be selected by clicking on them. By command-clicking (i.e. clicking the mouse while the command key is pressed) multiple thumbnails can be (de-)selected, like files in the Finder.

It is also possible to select thumbnails by dragging the cursor. All thumbnails touched by the rectangle spanned between the current and the start point of the drag operation get selected.

Actions

The menu command Delete moves the image files corresponding to the selected thumbnails to the trash (If the files are located on a remote computer which is accessed via file sharing, the action is somewhat different: The files are copied to the local trash and get deleted on the remote computer.) and removes these thumbnails from the view.

The menu commands Mark resp. Unmark mark resp. unmark the selected media files, cf. the slide show documentation.

Double-clicking a thumbnail opens a window displaying the image as described on the page "The Single Image View"

Hitting the 'enter' or 'return' key opens the selected images in own windows (only available on macOS ≥ 14).

With the menu command Save as… pictures selected in the thumbnails view can be moved to other locations in the file system.

A section can be removed from the view by selecting one of the images in the section and then applying the menu command Remove Folder From View.

The menu command Refresh adjusts the thumbnail window to changes in the file system.

Scrolling

The following functionality is available only on macOS versions ≥ 14:

Hitting the space bar of the keyboard or the "page up"/"page down" key moves the visible part by one page vertically (if there is a page left over. Otherwise as much as there is left over). The direction is upwards if the "page up" key us used resp. the shift key is pressed while the space bar is hit, otherwise downwards.

The ↓ resp. ↑ keys scroll all the way down resp. up if the option key is pressed when they are hit.

Typing a letter tells the thumbnails view to scroll to the first section the name of which is lexicographically ≥ this letter.

Dragging

Image files can be moved to a folder covered by the thumbnails view by selecting their symbols in the finder and dragging them into the respective section of the thumbnails view.

If folders are dragged from the finder into the thumbnails view, the behavior depends on the number n of root folders. If n = 1, let ƒ denote this folder. Then the dragged folders are moved such that ƒ becomes their direct parent, if it is not yet, and they are made visible if they are not yet. If n > 1, then the file system is not touched and the dragged folders become additional root folders.