Folders: I'm missing Folder contents preview/thumbnails

Hi ​@ariel_sativa, thanks for your honest feedback! 

I completely understand why this change has disrupted your workflow. The "wall of identical icons" framing is a useful way to put it. To be transparent, the folder icon replacing thumbnails was a deliberate design decision in the move from Projects to Folders. With folders now nestable and sitting alongside files, the team chose icons to keep the two visually distinct, but losing at-a-glance recognition is a real cost of that trade-off.

This isn't currently on the roadmap, so I don't have an exact timeline to share yet. But the team said they'd revisit previews if this came up once folders were in wider use by the Community, so I've passed your topic along to the team directly. One thing that would help me advocate on your behalf: What would a useful preview actually tell you? That a folder isn't empty, what kinds of files are inside, or genuinely recognizing specific files by thumbnail? That distinction matters a lot to which approach they'd build.

For anyone else hitting this issue, please add your use case below. Volume on this thread will help, and I’ll ensure your feedback is passed along to the team!

...the same way as it was before - to see the thumbnails of the projects inside the folder. It was really good and easy! Having to make additional thumbnail for the older would add another task - to manually update, maintain… unnecessary - instead, seeing “live” what is inside, is the most amazing thing that no other  widely used file management systems have done (eg MS One Drive, Google Drive etc.). 

Folders are great, but the lack of thumbnails is terrible! Reducing everything to a view of small folder icons is a disastrously inconvenient design choice. It makes working incredibly difficult, and hardly anyone actually finds this view suitable.

You’ve deprived your users of a convenient way to work with their projects. Why not offer a choice of display options? Why not include a toggle so people can decide what works best for them?

There used to be a convenient linear view with five large thumbnails per row, making it easy to spot the right one and dive straight into it. You took that away from us and switched to a tile layout where only four tiny thumbnails are visible—it was less convenient, but we resigned ourselves to it. Now you’ve taken that away too! It’s terrible! Don’t you realize that people don’t want to search for things by name? They want to quickly spot the right image and click on it.

I am attaching a visualization of a very convenient folder display option.
 

I support this, it would be a great solution.

​@Viriart 

An excellent proposal for resolving the current problem.

I missed out on the linear view with five large thumbnails in a row, but it looks incredibly convenient—especially if the preview thumbnails are clickable and open the project immediately. Why abandon great solutions in favor of something archaic? Change for the sake of change isn't always justified.As for the proposed view-mode switcher, that’s a fantastic idea. If the developers love those bland, generic folders so much, let them use them—be my guest. But give designers back a proper visual representation of folders and the projects inside them.

This update just hit me and it’s so disorienting. I rely on thumbnails to help me navigate, especially since FIGMA refuses to make “alphabetical” the default sort setting. I’m a visual person… I see the contents of the folder and can easily find and click on what I need. It was such an improvement from standard folder organization that I have to sift through all day every day in every other part of my job. I hate being a slave to a dozen software programs who are constantly and drastically changing workflow on me, and FIGMA has always been such a breath of fresh air in so many ways because it felt so innovative and different and so much more user-oriented. At least give us the option to have thumbnails of the contents, rather than just taking it away completely. Even if we could replace the boring gray folder icon with a logo or something, ANY visual distinction would be better than this. 

Please, add a way to use project thumbnails inside the folders as it was before. Forcing visual users to read. Folder concept is great, execution it isn’t.
Please, don’t prioritize management over usability and accessibility 🙏

Support for all of the above. Now it does not work.

Hi I agree with all the points above, as this change is now affecting the rest of my design team. 
The ease of navigation / recognition of the thumbnails for folders made it very accessible and easy to locate projects and share projects along. 

The new generic folders is adding a lot more extra steps in terms of navigation, having to read the folder name for every project. It’s very hard to locate the folders as they all look the same at first glance and disorienting.

This is a BAD design decision, please either go back or move forward with another way to enable visual navigation. As a design lead working a global company who has thousands pf people needing to access our files and folders this is created so much friction!