Today I want to share a small trick: I use it to show blend file previews in Windows Explorer.

ATTENTION! I used this trick on Windows 10 pro x64 italian (some descriptions could be slightly different) with a portable version of Blender (this means it doesn’t need installation, just unzip its folder somewhere in your hard drive), particularly this one.

First things first, let’s see how a blend file appears:

We need to “connect” blend file extension to Blender app (right click on the file > open with > other apps > scroll down > search for another app in this pc > now search for blender.exe on your hard drive; make sure “always use this app to opend .blend file” is checked); blend file now appears like this:

No preview, only Blender icon; let’s start CMD.exe as administrator (click on Windows icon > type “cmd” > right click > run as administrator):

Go to Blender installation folder (type chdir c:\path_to_Blender_installation_folder)

Type blender.exe -R

Press Enter; click Ok on the dialogue window that appears:

Go back to Windows Explorer and… ta-daaa!

Our system will “identify” blend files and will show their preview.