Thumbnail

This article is about project thumbnails. For studio thumbnails, see Studio#Thumbnail.

The thumbnail of a project in the Featured Projects row.

A project's thumbnail is the display icon which represents a project on the Scratch website and can provide an attractive appearance for a project. When exploring the website for projects, the image of the project is the thumbnail. Thumbnails also refer to icons used to represent an object of some sort in other situations. Sometimes the thumbnail of a project could be showing what happens in the project but other times it could be just words. There are many different styles of thumbnails.

Other Media

In the Paint Editor, costumes also have thumbnails on the left-hand side to represent them when being selected. All sounds in Scratch have the same thumbnail, that of a speaker and sound physically coming out of it. The thumbnails of all media in Scratch represent the media in a visual way. If a project is being played in the editor and the sprites' costumes are changing, then the thumbnail will always be the current costume.

Changing the Thumbnail

The set thumbnail button in the editor, with a prompt asking if you want to set it.

The project thumbnail can be set by clicking the set thumbnail button in the editor, above the stage. A prompt asking for confirmation will appear. When clicked, a snapshot of the project viewer is taken and used as the thumbnail.

Before 21^st August, 2025, the thumbnail of a project could only be set when the project was saved. A "Set Thumbnail" button was added to the project page due to cost-related reasons. The button was then moved to the project editor, on the 16^th April 2026.

• 
  Window explaining what the Set Thumbnail button does when first used.
• 
  The Set Thumbnail button, as it first appeared to Scratchers.
• 
  The new Set Thumbnail button position, as it first appeared to Scratchers.

Displaying the Thumbnail When Stopped

The following scripts can be used to display the thumbnail when the project is stopped.

Using Effect Blocks

This uses the fact that if a sprite has the ghost effect set to 100, when the project is stopped all the effects are cleared thus showing the sprite. The code needed follows:

when green flag clicked//this can be replaced by a "When I receive" block to have the sprite hide at a certain point
show//This ensures that when the project stops, the sprite shows
set [ghost v] effect to (100)//This hides the sprite; when the project stops the sprite will show!
forever
go to [front v] layer//This keeps the thumbnail in the front.
end

Timer

See also: Action After Stop

Caution:

The following script given cannot be used if the timer is already used for other purposes since this could break the project, as it constantly resets the timer.

The timer block can be used to show the thumbnail. The code used:

when green flag clicked
hide

when green flag clicked//This can be replaced with a "When I receive" block to show at a specific point in the project
forever
  reset timer//The timer is reset constantly
end

when [timer v] > (0.1)//When the project runs, the timer is at 0. When the project stops, the timer starts running, activating this script
show
go to [front v] layer

Alternatively, one may use this combination of scripts instead:

Note:

The following script given can be used if the timer is already used for other purposes, since this uses a variable to set the timer.

when gf clicked
forever
set [stop detector v] to ((timer)+(0.1))
end

when [timer v] > (stop detector)
if <(timer) > (stop detector)> then // Due to the beginning value of stop detector being 0, this is needed.
show
end
stop [this script v]

Hacks

In late 2014, a hack was revealed which allowed users to set custom thumbnails, even animated thumbnails. This practice became popular, and many users tried it. One Scratcher even wrote a program that sets animated thumbnails. However, many other users protested, claiming the hack was flashy and annoying to users. The Scratch Team has declared that all projects with animated thumbnails would be marked NFE to avoid lag on the Front Page, and to prevent flashy images. This means that projects will not have an opportunity to be front paged, and if by chance they do, a Scratch Team member will remove it. In addition, they will rarely appear in the search results, but still can be viewed on a profile page.

Bugs

Currently, there have been glitches where the project thumbnail will only change for certain parts of the website. My Stuff often does not include the updated thumbnails, where as the front page does. However, this may not be consistent among all devices and browsers. After changing a thumbnail, the project may take a while to update to where one can see the thumbnail on the creator's profile page often resulting in either a thumbnail with just Scratch Cat on it or the thumbnail before the latest change. In certain cases, the thumbnail image can lead to a broken link, though this is now rare.

In early 2017, a major bug was reported that thumbnails couldn't update, even if many days passed or the cache was cleared. This was, however, fixed later on.

In July 2024, the same bug started happening again to some Scratchers.^{[citation needed]} As of August 2024, the bug is not fixed yet.^{[citation needed]}

See Also

• Project
• Action After Stop