---
title: "Customize Tumbler's Thumbnail Entries on Arch Linux — Nick Janetakis"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/customize-tumbler-s-thumbnail-entries-on-arch-linux-nick-janetakis-csjfixtft
source_url: https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/customize-tumblers-thumbnail-entries-on-arch-linux
type: article
source: "Nick Janetakis"
published: 2026-07-14T11:48:48.503Z
updated: 2026-07-14T11:49:12.816Z
tags: ["linux"]
reading_time: 6
upvotes: 0
comments: 0
language: en
---

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# Customize Tumbler's Thumbnail Entries on Arch Linux — Nick Janetakis

**[Nick Janetakis](https://daily.dev/sources/nickjanetakis)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

A debugging walkthrough for fixing missing MKV video thumbnails on Arch Linux. The root cause was a MIME type mismatch: Thunar sends `video/matroska` to Tumbler via D-Bus, but the ffmpegthumbnailer thumbnailer file only listed `video/x-matroska`. The fix involves creating a custom `~/.local/share/thumbnailers/mkv.thumbnailer` file with the correct MIME type, then restarting tumblerd. The post also covers useful debugging techniques: using `pacman -Ql` to inspect package files, `xdg-mime` and `bash -x` to trace MIME detection, `dbus-monitor` to observe what Tumbler receives, and `gio info` to check GLib-based MIME resolution. A patch to ffmpegthumbnailer was later merged upstream.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://nickjanetakis.com/blog/customize-tumblers-thumbnail-entries-on-arch-linux>

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Tags: [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/customize-tumbler-s-thumbnail-entries-on-arch-linux-nick-janetakis-csjfixtft)