SageThumbs 2k Files

What's new in 1.3.0

Thumbnails for ZIP, RAR and 7z archives

A plain archive no longer shows a generic icon. It shows what's inside: either a single cover image, or by default a contact-sheet collage of up to four, so a folder of photos zipped up looks obviously different from a single photo. Covers are picked the same way comic covers are: natural filename order, an image named "cover" preferred, junk like __MACOSX and Thumbs.db skipped.

It stays cheap on huge archives. The file list is read from the archive's own index and only the chosen images are ever extracted, so a multi-gigabyte ZIP costs a few KB plus a handful of images, in the Explorer thumbnail and the preview pane alike. Archives with no images, or encrypted ones, keep their normal icon.

New toggle in Settings ▸ Ebook/comic: "Contact-sheet thumbnails for ZIP/RAR/7z" (on by default; turn it off for a single first-image thumbnail, classic CBXShell style). Comic and ebook archives (cbz/cbr/cb7/epub) are unchanged and still show their one cover.

GIMP .xcf files finally thumbnail, including modern GIMP

Older .xcf files worked, but anything saved by GIMP 2.10 or GIMP 3 showed nothing at all in Explorer. The bundled converter simply cannot read the current XCF format. SageThumbs now reads XCF itself, decodes its tiles and flattens the visible layers, so it works on every install including the compact one with no bundled converter. This was the bug behind #5.

Quick preview: Markdown

• Task lists render as real checkboxes instead of literal [ ] / [x] text.
• Copying keeps the document's structure. Ctrl+C used to flatten everything: nested bullets came out flat, headings and quotes lost their markers, code ran into the prose and paragraphs were jammed together. Copied text is now proper Markdown, so it pastes with its headings, nesting, numbering, quotes and fenced code intact, and still reads fine anywhere plain. Tables still copy tab-separated so they paste into a spreadsheet as columns.

Fixes

• st2k doctor <file> now probes one specific file end to end and tells you whether that file can be thumbnailed, instead of only confirming the install looks healthy. If a file isn't working, run this and paste the output into an issue.
• Silent installs no longer hang. A first-time /VERYSILENT install in a headless session could deadlock before copying any files.
• Hardened archive handling against malformed and hostile inputs (bounded entry listing, duplicate-name handling, and the upstream 7z num_files fix).

Tested on Windows 10

1.3.0 was verified on a clean Windows 10 Home 22H2 (build 19045) virtual machine, not just on Windows 11: silent install, all four Explorer integrations registering and loading, 326 of 326 formats hooked, and real thumbnails produced.

Install

Download SageThumbs2K-Setup-1.3.0.exe below and run it.

Windows may show a blue "Windows protected your PC" box on a new download. That is SmartScreen reporting an unrecognised file, not a malware finding: click More info ▸ Run anyway. The checksum and scan results below are there so you don't have to take that on faith.

Verify this download

SHA-256 of SageThumbs2K-Setup-1.3.0.exe:

8BE7138281198171A273771CC76D54AB7FADA49ED202C78756811E925221EE14

Check it yourself before running anything:

:::powershell
Get-FileHash .\SageThumbs2K-Setup-1.3.0.exe -Algorithm SHA256

VirusTotal (all ~70 engines): https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/8be7138281198171a273771cc76d54ab7fada49ed202c78756811e925221ee14

Three engines flag it, and it's worth being upfront about what they are. Microsoft's is Trojan:Win32/Wacatac.B!ml; the other two are APEX and Skyhigh. All three are generic machine-learning verdicts rather than a match on anything specific. The !ml suffix is Microsoft's own marker for a machine-learning guess. The previous release, 1.2.2, carries the same 3/69 spread from the same three engines under a different generic name, and Windows Defender on a normal installation (which has cloud and reputation data these scanners don't) reports both as clean.

This is the well-known pattern for a new, unsigned, low-prevalence installer: the file has no download history yet, so the guessers guess. It settles as the same hash accumulates clean downloads, which is why the published file isn't re-uploaded between releases. A false-positive report has been filed with Microsoft. If any engine ever reports a specific signature rather than a generic, that's a different matter and the release would be pulled.