How to Preview A .svg Images in Windows 11/10?

I’m currently working on the redesign of the website of Sciences Humaines magazine. I am currently integrating the webdesign of the new site: basically, I transform the design of the pages into HTML code that will be read in the web browser. I have many images on my PC that will be displayed on the future site. These images are in different formats: jpeg, png, gif and svg mainly. I remind you, by the way, that there is a trick to see the extension of a file and thus know its type.

Unfortunately, I had a problem that I can’t preview .svg  image on Windows 11/10, that was bothering me. Indeed, I set Windows 10 to change the display mode of Windows 10 and have a large thumbnail display in Windows Explorer. Problem: it doesn’t work with svg images! Only the Internet Explorer icon is displayed because it is the default program to open .svg image file format…

How to Preview A .svg Images in Windows 11/10?

I like to preview images without having to open them in a browser or photo software. This allows me to quickly verify that it’s the right photo I want to use. Since svg previewing was not working on my PC running Windows 10, I searched and found a solution on the web: just install an extension called SVG Viewer Extension for Windows Explorer.

Here is the procedure to install SVG Viewer Extension for Windows Explorer and be able to preview .svg files in Windows Explorer.

  1. Go to the SVG Viewer Extension for Windows Explorer download page: https://github.com/maphew/svg-explorer-extension/releases
    You will need to choose the correct 32-bit or 64-bit version that matches your PC architecture.
  2. Launch the SVG Viewer Extension for Windows Explorer installer in your Downloads folder and install the extension.
  3. In order to take into account the change, restart your computer or apply the tip shared in my article on The sound icon no longer works in Windows to restart Windows Explorer. Once the explorer is restarted, you will finally have a display in your browser of the svg files.

Of course, in order to preview .svg files on Winodws 11/10, you will need to switch to icon mode(Very large icons / Large icons / Medium icons or Small icons) or display the view pane or the details pane of the file explorer.

If you still  can’t preview svg  images files on Windows, it could be a cache problem. So you will have to delete the cache of the file explorer. To do this, open the Windows 10 command prompt by clicking on the Start menu and then selecting Command Prompt (Admin) then type in the command prompt window :

TASKKILL /IM explorer* /F
DEL " %localappdata%IconCache.db " /A
explorer.exe

To continue the discussion of file previews, I will discuss previewing of pdf files in a future article, a question frequently asked by website visitors.