10

The Problem

Can I make nautilus show thumbnails of book covers for files in .epub format?

It shows thumbnails for pdf files but not .epub. Is this achievable by adding a thumbnailer?

Each of these .epub files has a cover.jpeg file inside it.

Screenshot

Example Epub file (Google Drive)

3 Answers3

9

No need to worry about scripts. do everything one by one

 sudo apt-get install python-pil

Now download this file from epub-thumbnailer GitHub page

now extract that file to a folder, and go into the extracted folder, Right click in empty space and select Open in Terminal and type the following command

sudo python install.py install
nautilus -q

now check your Epub files they should have thumbnails

3

It works like a charm in Ubuntu 22.04.01

$ lsb_release -a 
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS
Release:    22.04
Codename:   jammy

$ python --version Python 3.10.4

Step by step instructions

  1. Clone the epub-thumbnailer projectgit clone https://github.com/marianosimone/epub-thumbnailer.git
  2. Change directory cd epub-thumbnailer/
  3. Install Pillow pip install Pillow
  4. Install epub-thumbnailer sudo python3 install.py install
Checking dependencies ...

Required dependencies: Python Imaging Library ....... OK

Installing epub-thumbnailer to /usr/bin/ ... OK Installing thumbnailer hook in /usr/share/thumbnailers ... OK You might have to restart your file manager for the thumbnailer to be activated.

  1. Clear the cache rm -rf ~/.cache/thumbnails
  2. Restart your file manager
  3. Done!
1

Using gnome-epub-thumbnailer

GNOME has a thumbnailer for EPUB files that is not installed by default. It's called gnome-epub-thumbnailer. Install it from the Ubuntu repositories like this:

sudo apt install gnome-epub-thumbnailer

Then restart the Files application (also known as Nautilus) by running nautilus --quit. Now it should work beautifully:

Screenshot

Flimm
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