What is the thumbnail cache?
Windows 11 creates thumbnails for photos, videos, and some document types so that they can be displayed more quickly in File Explorer. Instead of recreating the preview every time it’s needed, the operating system stores it temporarily in a local database.
This data is stored in the user profile at %LocalAppData%\Microsoft\Windows\Explorer. There you’ll find files with names such as thumbcache_32.db, thumbcache_96.db, thumbcache_256.db, or thumbcache_1024.db. These are individual thumbnail databases containing preview images in different sizes.
This thumbnail cache system has been in place since Windows Vista. Previously, Microsoft used the familiar Thumbs.db files convention, which were stored in individual folders.
Not every deleted photo is saved
The claim that’s circulating social media right now gives the impression that Windows 11 automatically archives a preview of all deleted images. However, there’s no evidence to support this.
For example, a test conducted by Windows Latest showed that several images that were downloaded and later deleted didn’t appear in the thumbnail cache. The database files weren’t altered at all.
The reason? A thumbnail preview is normally only saved when File Explorer (or another application) generates a thumbnail as part of the file preview process. If an image is never actually displayed as a preview anywhere, it won’t have made a thumbnail to end up in the cache.