Thumbnails for Mac OS Finder
I would love to see on my Mac thumbnails like I can have on windows, with a preview of my scene. I also think the basic blender icon is pretty ugly and could benefit a redesign, aligned with the new app icon.
I can already preview obj files on finder, it would be a dream to be able to do it for blender files, even just using the workbench renderer.
4 Comments
A patch for file-thumbnails exists (in some state). projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/107072
The interactive preview works well for simple files like obj. For complex files, it will be incredibly slow and very difficult to implement, forget it.
As for the file icon, it is standard and generated automatically by the OS. You can make a better custom design, but it took three years to update the application icon according to the Big Sur style (make your own conclusions).
"Preview" is a native macOS app, they have to add support for .blend, it's not up to Blender.
It's up to Blender. Just like on Windows, Blender provides thumbnal.dll.
On Mac, there is a large preview (Quick Look) and small file thumbnails. In both cases it's plugins that read your own file and render the previews.
This Quick Look can be interactive, meaning it's literally part of your program's functionality that the OS knows nothing about.
I can safely say I wasn't the one who made the change happen but I'm very happy to see they actually did it!