Topic List Thumbnails

	Summary	Topic List Thumbnails allows you to show topic thumbnails in topic list views.
	Preview	Preview on Discourse Theme Creator (blog style) Preview on Discourse Theme Creator (grid) Preview on Discourse Theme Creator (list) Preview on Discourse Theme Creator (masonry) Preview on Discourse Theme Creator (minimal grid)
	Repository Link	https://github.com/discourse/discourse-topic-thumbnails
	New to Discourse Themes?	Beginner’s guide to using Discourse Themes

Features

Optimized images are generated for the lists, and different resolutions are made available for high-dpi displays. Images are lazy-loaded as you scroll (where native browser support is available).

By default, Discourse will use the first image in the OP of the topic. If you would like to select a different image from the OP, add |thumbnail to the markdown. For example

![alttext|100x100](upload://aaa)
![alttext|100x100|thumbnail](upload://bbb) << this one will be the thumbnail

There are five modes, configurable per category or tag using the theme settings.

For example:

Grid mode:

grid mode example2410×1932 862 KB

Masonry mode:

masonry mode example2418×1926 880 KB

And list mode:

list mode example2290×1754 401 KB

Tips and Tricks

If you want Oneboxes in your posts to generate thumbnails, you will need to turn on this site setting: download_remote_images_to_local. You’ll also need to rebake the relevant posts.

Settings

Hosted by us? Theme components are available to use on our Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans.

Last edited by @Moin 2026-05-19T07:03:58Z

Check document

Perform check on document:

Wonder where you got the idea for this?

Absolutely fantastic that core is paying more attention to image delivery and presentation. I like the direction!

(If this doesn’t fully replace Topic List Previews, there is now at least potential to eliminate a lot of bespoke API work from it which I won’t have to maintain anymore, great stuff!)

PS I just tested it and one thing that would be quite nice is if Polls generated a thumbnail so the charts could surface …

This is a great feature. Does this come with Discourse 2.7 as mentioned here? Or is the syntax different?

It’s available in Discourse 2.7 stable, yes. The syntax is the same

I have a very odd problem that only applies to one member on my site. Some thumbnails do not display, seemingly randomly. It displays the default icon as if there was no image, yet for myself and everyone else the thumbnail displays. I had him look in his console and there is nothing pertinent, nothing in the logs either. I’ve had him try clearing the cache, trying different browsers and devices, and using a different isp. I even had him try a theme with only this component enabled. No matter what he tries this still happens. I even tried impersonating him and then it doesn’t happen for me. Any other thoughts on troubleshooting this? Thanks!

Have him try on mobile with wifi disabled so he’s not going through his home network, but the cellular network. This will eliminate anything on his network from interfering.

But if you have tried “different ISP” then maybe not.

I can’t get this to work anymore, did this revert perhaps?

Also, the feature is not easy to discover for users. Would it be possible to add an option to select the thumbnail to the ‘size selection’ in the preview?

Thanks Jeff, he has tried hotspotting to his phone, and at a friends house with a different ISP. I thought it might be a CDN issue so I tried clearing the CDN cache which did not help him. I also tried impersonating him while using a VPN in Atlanta where he is from which did not help either. I’m not sure what else to try.

3 posts were split to a new topic: Caching for tag topic lists?

It’s still working for me. Can you share some more details about what you tried, and what result you’re seeing? This is what I have in my test OP:

![image|690x460](upload://1lGVHoB5KKnftUZoEYVgANxKdWL.jpeg)
![image|612x500|thumbnail](upload://cILOby5v31IEtJtbOEEDgXQPZ7Z.jpeg)

and the second image is correctly selected as the thumbnail.

I agree that would be nice, but I don’t think it would be needed for most sites. I think it would make a great separate theme component.

Ha, that’s embarrassing, of course it does work now…

Hi @david,

I have the following requirement and maybe you can point me to how to achieve this.

Sometimes we have a topic that we want to share via social media and we prepare an image for it that should be used as thumbnail and for the og:image tags, but we don’t want it to be visible inside the topic.

How could we realize something like this e.g. add “hide” to the sizes and then a class is added to the image container that applies “display: none;”?

![image|612x500|hide](upload://cILOby5v31IEtJtbOEEDgXQPZ7Z.jpeg)

Maybe you could use Generic bbcode wrapper for theme components to do something like

[wrap=hidden]
  ![image|612x500|hide](upload://cILOby5v31IEtJtbOEEDgXQPZ7Z.jpeg)
[/wrap]

Then some CSS like

div[data-wrap="hidden"]{
  display: none;
}

Oh, did not know about this one. Neat, thank you!

The alert-info banner overlaps the thumbnails, is this by design or a bug?

CleanShot 2021-06-09 at 18.38.09@2x2298×1512 549 KB

It’s somewhat by design. Normally, that bar sits on top of the column headings in the topic list. The alternative would be for the bar to “push down” all the topics when it appears, which would make the entire UI jump down, and could be quite jarring.

I’m not sure why there is a ~1px gap on the right hand side of the bar in your screenshot. That could be an issue with the component, or it could be related to your custom theme CSS.

Is it possible to show the number of likes on the thumbnail cards + make it clickable so images can be liked straight from the gallery view?

list categories is not working on mobile mode even when check Enable thumbnails on mobile devices ?

Hi, it is pretty cool.
Is it possible to use the hotlink figure (from imgur for example) as thumbnail?

hi I just set the blog category to use list categories, but it shows in every categories, have I did some wrong set step?

image1738×1428 175 KB

Default thumbnail mode should be set to none if you don’t want to use it everywhere.

The other settings will work as expected

I don’t want to be annoying, but I’m curious if this could be considered? We feel that liking from a thumbnail is a valid use case (you can judge the image without seeing the full version), and that it would greatly increase engagement for the more ‘instagram-oriented’ visitors.

Hi folks,

great components. I want to make it so that the thumbnail shows the LAST image of a topic, not the first one provided by the topic creator.

I looked through the code and found the topic.thumbnails decorator but I cannot reverse engineer how this is created so that I can build logic myself to get the last image in that topic.

Can anyone point me to docs on how to extend/build decorators for the topic?
Discourse is amazing!

Thank you

It also is great to add a User Preference so that users can control the list types themselves. And also make this an optional thing assuming some forum owners wouldn’t want that. We want that option though.

I could build it and rais a PR I guess.

It’s a Theme Component, they can just choose another theme without this component. No code required, just name the Themes appropriately.

That worked well, thank you!

Hey David

what do you think about adding the topic author avatar to the minimal-grid on top of the thumbnail in the lower right corner, something like this? That would be a great addition.

Screenshot 2021-11-08 at 13.33.281920×1139 76.4 KB

If it’s behind a theme setting (default disabled), then I agree this would be a good option for some sites. pr-welcome

On @jrgong forum the images don’t load after the 10th row. This seems to be independent on the actual amount of images (i.e. it’s always the 10th row, even if there are only a few topics that even have a thumbnail).

No network errors, nothing in console. Any ideas?

I’ve seen this happen when the last topic in the list is hidden via CSS (e.g. someone has added a CSS rule to hide closed topics). Could that be happening here?

Happy to take a quick look if you can send through a link.

@jrgong the TC is currently in preview mode so non-users cannot repro it (they can’t preview_theme_id). Is it ok to enable the TC temporarily on that one category so David can have a look?

Quick update: We figured out that some inofficial plugin was the culprit. We will update here once we pinpointed the one responsible

So it was not even another plugin. It’s a bug(?) in preview mode.

The lazy loading turns out to break when you open the Topic Thumbnails theme component in preview mode while your currently selected theme does not already include it. Fully able to repro this on stable, did not try it on beta or tests-passed.

Is any way not to upscale tiny images 30x30 etc? They come with incoming emails:

Played with CSS, got some result, but ideally skip them totally…

To hide picture as thumbnail you can use spoiler/hide details as well:

изображение820×252 14.3 KB

the result is a tiny triangle

![image|612x500](upload://cILOby5v31IEtJtbOEEDgXQPZ7Z.jpeg)

UPD:
You even may blur it:

[spoiler]
[details=""]
![image|612x500](upload://cILOby5v31IEtJtbOEEDgXQPZ7Z.jpeg)
[/details]
[/spoiler]

I’m sorry if this was asked before, I tried searching without any luck.

I was wondering if it’s possible the make it so that clicking the thumbnail in list mode could send you to the first message of the topic?

Thank you for your hard work

It seems just what I was looking for: a simple replacement of the original plgin topic-list-previews, as I have tried the replacement as a theme component and could not get it to work, and it is full of options I won’t need.

We just use the option to present a miniature of the firs image in each topic instead of the image profile of the author, at the left, in the list views.

But I have activated this TC and used list as the thumbnail default mode:

image1160×271 9.45 KB

But it does not show the thumbnails, it continues showing the avatar of the author in every page, for example here in recent page list:

image1372×457 44.7 KB

I must be misunderstanding something.
How should I configure it?
Is there a detailed config guide?

May be it is due to only showin thumnails for new posts… in that case Is it possible to recreate thumbnails for old posts to be shown with them?

That “Author” column does not come from Discourse core, or the topic-list-thumbnails theme component.

Do you still have the old topic-list-previews plugin and/or theme component installed? If so, make sure to completely uninstall it.

Thank you David
No, I deleted the topic-llist-thumbnails in the app.yml and make a launcher rebuild.

I have deleted the topic-list component too from the Themes Components.
These are my current components:

image371×510 6.13 KB

And the app.yml hooks:

hooks:
  after_code:
    - exec:
        cd: $home/plugins
        cmd:
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/docker_manager.git
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-chat-integration
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-math.git
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-solved.git
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-staff-notes.git
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-assign.git
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-checklist.git
#          - git clone https://github.com/angusmcleod/discourse-topic-previews.git
          - git clone https://github.com/discourse/discourse-data-explorer

Do you have any other third-party plugins installed? Can you share a link to your site?

Maybe you have Discourse Topic Author installed?

I have updated it in my response.
The site:

Yes topic author is installe, but used in other places.

With the topic list preview, the image was showed.

I’m afraid it looks like the Discourse Topic Author component overrides some core templates, which means that it’s incompatible with topic-list-thumbnails. You’ll need to pick one of them to use.

It seems you are right, I can do the previews with the thumbnails from the preview link at the bottom of the TC page.

We used the author theme component to customize the avatar where it was shown, and we used a customization in order to get squares with rounded corners instead of circles.

But even if I disable the topic author, I cannot see the thumbnails.

What if you go to the topic-list-thumbnails component, and use the “Preview” button. Does it work then?

If so, it suggests a conflict with one of the other themes/components.

Yes it seems to work.

Seems both are incompatible between them.
I have to see what was the use of topic author and decide if we disable it (or we find a solution).

I see that this plugin does not excepert the post and you have another one that does, will try it too.

Now it seems to work, with excerpts and thumbnails and avatar customization.

Just disabling Author topic.

Have to read what it did, and why we installed it, as it has been working for quite long and I don’t remember the use.
If it is not all that important I just will disable it.
Thanks a lot.
@david :
By the way: as an improvement, it would be great to add an option to show the avatar for topics that have no image in it, instead of just showing a selected image.
With an option or using a special meaning placeholder name like $avatar or something like that.

For many uses, it is better to see the author avatar than just the same icon for all the topics with no image.
Another improvent I would like to see is the option to include the excerpts (generated by the corresponding TC) in the masonry and grid views, not only in the list view.

It woud be great to be able to read something of the content.

I run into the same issue, did you find how to display the last image instead of the first one in OP?

Hi, is there an easy way to use e.g. category icon as a place holder image? With old solution (excerpts module) only topics with image in first post had image thumbnail, other had nothing (in list view). With TC I am able to see thumbnails of images, but if topic has no image in a body, it displays a placeholder icon. Is there a way to disable the icon (but keep thumbnails for topics with images), or use category logo as thumbnail? Thank you! Other than that, great component!

Set thumbnails for tag settings seems broken on latest discourse ( 6555f0c11b) + latest topic list thumbnail component

image358×596 25.6 KB

Those 4 settings are not working on desktop/mobile.

The tag setting also doesn’t work on b20307377a and does not work on theme-creator.

The bug was fixed on the latest commit, I was assuming the excerpts component is broken due to a similar reason and tried to apply the same fix on a forked repo. Sadly the result works on theme-creator but not on 6555f0c11b still.

Yep, discourse-topic-thumbnails should be fixed by FIX: Correctly detect current tag (#15) · discourse/discourse-topic-thumbnails@4c666e0 · GitHub

I’ll take a look at the excerpts component Thanks for reporting @th21!

Hi David,

Is there any way this component could be set up for a single category and not the whole site?

Thanks,
Tom

Yep, it can be applied based on a specific category or tag. Once installed, you should see these settings in the theme admin section:

Screenshot 2022-04-11 at 17.28.511622×2046 293 KB

(e.g. here on Meta we have it enabled for theme and plugin, with a different mode for each)

This is great! Can we get this installed?

Thanks,
Tom

What is needed to get this installed?

Thanks,
Tom

There is a guide linked on the op

Thank you so much for this useful component!
I find that the last replied user’s avatar appears beside the thumbnail on mobile. Is this on purpose or a bug? Is it possible to hide the avatar?

2022-04-29_17-15-06828×450 65.6 KB

I believe the component intentionally leaves other parts of the UI unchanged, so it’s up to the admin to make a decision about whether or not to hide the avatars there.

It can be done by adding a little CSS to your theme…

.mobile-view .topic-list-data .pull-left {
  display: none; // hides the avatars
}

.mobile-view .topic-list .right {
  margin-left: 0; // removes the space for the avatars
}

Thanks!!! It’s really kind of you.

Just a heads up - I’ve noticed a bug, when using the setting:

Enable thumbnails on non-topic-list pages (e.g. user activity, personal messages, suggested topics)

On the suggested topics list, the user avatar uses the url of the topic thumbnail instead of the user avatar. So there is a small blurry square shown instead of the user avatar.

Running on Discourse stable with the latest version of the component and using the Masonry grid layout.

I’ve attempted to set this up here, but thumbnails don’t seem to actually be generating for our topics.

Is this in any way tied to the editing grace period setting? The Topic List Previews theme component doesn’t get thumbnails until the first post is no longer editable, either — but this category does not suit that approach at all, and we’d prefer that users are able to edit their posts indefinitely in this category.

Correct.

As front end mods only, Topic List Thumbnails & Topic List Previews leverage the same core process that generates thumbnails in the back end. That async job is not run until the editing grace period is over UPDATE: if the image is remote. If the images are uploaded locally the thumbnail generation process is kicked off straightaway.

The process is not modifiable by a Theme Component and would require a plugin or PR to the back end to change (not withstanding that TLP has a complementary plugin for some added features)

Note before thumbnail support was added to core, Topic List Previews was a plugin and worked in much the same way in terms of scheduling the creation of thumbnails. I can’t speak for the team but you can understand the logic of keeping it that way: you don’t want to be generating thumbnails whose source image might be frequently edited out or what if an image is added at last minute?

One way you can mitigate it is use the default icon/image feature in each theme component respectively. For masonry/tiles view this at least reduces dramatic changes in layout. Or minimise the grace period?

Ah, yeah, I see. It makes total sense for that to be the default behaviour — we’re in a tricky spot here because much of what will be posted in this category will be Minecraft mods, so it stands to reason that the first post in any topic will need to be edited infrequently, and the thumbnail is likely to be changed.

I assume you’re not aware of any plugins that allow you to change this behaviour, off the top of your head? I can see why Core doesn’t support this, but relying on the grace period just isn’t going to work for us.

No, I don’t think so. The closest thing was the old deprecated topic list previews plugin that you could have modified.

You either need to do this work yourself or marketplace

Alright, no worries, thanks for your time!

Just to add though, a significant part of the battle is actually specifying the exact practical behaviour you want that will work in all edge cases. Then follow up with the work, ie make sure what you want will work in practice. It’s all modifiable. :).

If the post changes past the deadline I believe the system should schedule a another pull and update the thumbnail.

I think I may have been getting confused between the grace period and editing lockout, because as of a short while ago, thumbnails have just kinda started generating.

I think maybe I need to attribute that to a CDN caching mistake, haha. Still, thanks for your help!

Oh, yes, I’ve heard that happen, fantastic!

There was some related confusion going on here too, in this issue

image2426×1520 106 KB

looks like it’s broken after the latest commit, test on theme-creator with gird tags.

That could be a lot of things. Do you have an error in the JavaScript console?

image1658×1136 174 KB

Yes

Gareth, apologies for confusion, but now I’m back at my desk, I’ve done some quick testing and review of the logic.

My statement was incomplete:

• If the image is remote in any way (including onebox of remote link, when it is held in a CDN?) the thumbnails are impacted by a delayed job: Jobs::PullHotlinkedImages and this is indeed scheduled after the editing grace period (this part was correct):

• BUT: it appears if you upload an image directly to the site (e.g. by pasting an image), the thumbnails are created in an async process which appears to be kicked off immediately. If you update the image to another local image, this will also be reflected almost immediately. I’ve updated a couple of Posts above. Because I don’t do this very often, I’d omitted this part.

Huh, okay, that’s fascinating behaviour, but it makes sense to me, I think.

That’s very useful info, I can update my posting guidelines then. Thanks for the clarification!

Bug

If I have the Topic Thumbnails theme component enabled, it breaks my forum. I am at 2.9.0.beta4 [222c8d9b6a]. I am using the graceful theme.

Disabling the Topic Thumbnails theme component unbreaks my forum, but of course now topic thumbnails do not appear.

I created this bug post but someone recommended I post here since the bug is not with the forum itself.

Does this also happen with Topic List Previews? If so might be a bug in core …

No, that worked. I just installed it to test and did not configure anything non-default, but it seemed to apply and work properly.

Yeah, component broken in my forums too

This is also broken in our forums.

@jtooker, @undasein I’ve just added a fix, updating the component should solve it (@tkearsley your site should already be updated).

Thanks for reporting it everyone!

Thanks! It worked just fine.

Thank you too, component and site running as expected

I just merged a change in Discourse core which will significantly speed up the fetching of hotlinked images:

For people using this theme component, that means that thumbnails for hotlinked images will be generated almost immediately, rather than the previous 10 minute delay

Don’t tell me you read my posts? ;). Thanks very much for working on that!

David, I’m assuming that doesn’t require any config changes to the Theme Component code as I can’t see any related commits?

Correct - no theme changes needed.

The core change is part of a wider refactoring of our ‘hotlinked image’ handling. The speed improvement for thumbnail-consuming-theme-components is a nice side effect!

A massive win for the Discourse platform, thanks!

I used to be able to add more than 5 tags in the settings, but I’m getting an error now:

image766×206 16.6 KB

Thanks for the report @bartv - should be fixed by FIX: Ensure there is no limit on tag list settings (#17355) · discourse/discourse@fb31ae0 · GitHub

Probably there is a workaround, but it is applied to all images:

// Do not upscale thumbnails
.topic-thumbnails-list .topic-list-thumbnail .main-thumbnail, 
.topic-thumbnails-grid .topic-list-thumbnail .main-thumbnail, 
.topic-thumbnails-masonry .topic-list-thumbnail .main-thumbnail, 
.topic-thumbnails-minimal .topic-list-thumbnail .main-thumbnail {
	width: max-content;
	height: max-content;
}

In a recent build I started getting these horizontal lines behind the thumbnails, you can see them live on my site now https://community.naturephotographers.network/ I’ve tried removing all components except TLT and any CSS but they still remain, any ideas?

CleanShot 2022-07-09 at 15.37.38@2x2246×860 368 KB

@techAPJ / @Roman it looks like the recent changes in the discourse-adplugin are introducing a blank <tr> between every topic in the topic list. Can we use the shouldRender hook on the connector to make sure it’s only rendered if we’re actually displaying an ad there?

The ad slot render logic is a bit complex, so I’m not sure if it’s that easy. I’ll work on a fix!

Should be fixed by:

Thanks Roman, unfortunately the problem still exists for me. I only updated the plugin, does core need an update too?

I thing is should select any images form all detail post. Sometimes the first image doesn’t convey what this thread is all about.

image1006×752 70.6 KB

Sorry about that. Can you please try again now? I pushed another fix.

I believe that did it, thank you Roman!

I use plugin pull rss can add images in detail more?

image987×121 5.76 KB

image784×446 40.7 KB

image925×639 131 KB

Thank you.

I’m not sure I understand how to change the placeholder icon.
@david Any help would be appreciated

At the moment, the placeholder icon is limited to Font Awesome icons. You can find a list of available icons at Search v5 Icons | Font Awesome. Adding them can be a little tricky depending on what you end up choosing. If you find an icon you like, go ahead and share it and I can help walk you through how to ensure it works.

The setting does not support custom images at this point. That would need to be filed as a feature request if that’s what you’re after.

Ah! That helped and I think I got it figured out. Added the one I wanted to svg icon subset and used the icon name (without the fa/far/fad part).
Looks great! Thank you so much!

If boss decides an image would be better, how do I submit a feature request for a component?

Great! No problem.

Just go ahead and follow up here and we’ll add a current feature request section to the OP. There’s a way around it with a CSS hack that I can share if it’s critical, but it would be ideal if we can properly implement a solution in the component.

I second this feature request. Custom placeholder image would be a great addition to the theme component!

And a custom placeholder image per category would be heaven on earth.

This would be brilliant!
Boss and I were trying to figure out how to not make everything look exactly the same and he mentioned asking if we could have multiple options.

Could we please have custom images, @tshenry?

Me too, i would like to be able to refer to any image in OP (not only last image).

this works, but as a “workaround”, not a fix.

I believe ideally we could be able to indicate the exact image we would like thumbnail from. Maybe something like the spoiler/hide - but without the triangle.

Did you try this format?

I’ve just added a feature request section to the OP! It’s particularly busy days around here right now, so I suspect it’s going to be a little while before any of us can look at it. I’ve set a reminder to check on this in a month. In the mean time, if anyone wants to submit a PR that adds the functionality, they are more than welcome.

Yes, thank you @renato .

Maybe i did not put my question right…

My point is, for example in this conversation:

The first image of the topic is in the post #2.
So, it seems there is no images in this topic, and so, no thumbnail.

image852×196 11.9 KB

I would like thumbnail to be for the image in post#2, like this:

image822×219 23.7 KB

But it only shows this if I paste the image from post#2 (or any other post) into post#1.

It works, but don’t make sense… for example, how will the image, with explanation, be there with the question?

My workaround when I want a Topic List thumbnail but don’t want (and/or don’t have) an image in the Topic Post, is to insert a tiny-sized version of an image (50px x 32px) at the bottom of the Topic post. It’s blurry but at least it’s minimal on the post…

Here is one example of a post wherein the only content is an iFrame…

noobish-me-tiny-topic-thumbnail-demo-post1532×1430 94.2 KB

… and here’s what the Topic List Thumbnail looks like…

noobish-me-tiny-topic-thumbnail-demo-topic-listing1960×260 51.5 KB

Thanks so much. I love this component. Any idea how to get thumbnails to show up in the Kanban view Kanban Board

What would be the easiest way to set the masonry layout to have maximum 2 columns instead of 3 via CSS?

3 posts were split to a new topic: Issues with the masonry grid

hi -

i wonder why the excerpt is limited to the list view and is not showing up in the tile/mason view.

would it be possible to have the excerpt also show up in the tile/grid/masons mode?

kind regards

ré

@david Is there a way to just not show an image thumbnail or the space for the image if there is no image (instead of showing the comment icon)? In other words… can the title just show for the topics that have no image?

2 posts were split to a new topic: Is it possible to display the thumbnails in Docs?

I noticed that if you specify certain categories for the component to work, then in the sections New, Discussed, Recent and others, where topics from several categories, all topics will work with the component globally, although they are not specified in the settings

A post was split to a new topic: Topic List Thumbnails don’t play well with Docs

A post was split to a new topic: Can we display de categories’ names in blog style?

10 posts were split to a new topic: Thumbnails missing when using the Minima theme

A post was split to a new topic: How to define a default thumbnail when a topic has no picture?

Hello,

Thumbnails with blog style mode do not appear with the Air theme (discourse-air) theme

image1240×457 52.5 KB

The Thumbnails appear with Air Theme only with list mode selected.

image1237×546 131 KB

When a choose the default Theme the Thumbnails with blog style appear.

image1366×380 95.8 KB

1°/ Can someone explain me how to make Thumbnails with blog style work with Air Theme (discourse-air)please ?

2°/ How can I get more text under the thumbnail please, like this:

and not like this :

Hi,

1. How to display all titles when using blog style mode ?
   

2. How to choose different modes for desktop and mobile. For example, for desktop we use list mode and for mobile we use blog style mode.

Thank you very much for your help

Hi,

1. You can add this CSS in your theme or in component:

.topic-thumbnails-blog-style-grid {
  .main-link {
    .link-top-line {
      white-space: normal;
      overflow: auto;
    }
  }
}

2. I don’t think you can do that out of the box – that’s a cool idea, though

A post was split to a new topic: Blog-style layout affects Tooltips

Another issue with the air theme (list view) is that the thumbnail doesn’t take all the vertical space in the list entry:

found a bug with grid view

inside this topic:

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This plugin theme component is absolutely incredible and has transformed the way our blog and marketplace look.

For the blog style categories option, is there any way to change the default # of topics width from two topics to 3 or 4?

Just to note, this is a theme-component rather than a plugin

Force of habit!

In addition to this, I’d be curious to know if we could adjust the images so they aren’t cropped off at the top:

Previously I saw the insert link thumbnail image default option but now I don’t see it anymore. If that topic does not post any photos, the default thumbnail from the link will be displayed.

Or if the topic does not have an image, only the text should be displayed without any spaces.

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Im curious if we can play the video on the thumbnail without opening the topic?

Try switching to Topic Cards Theme component

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Also using Air Theme.

Update: This issue seems to be due to Cloudflare minification (html, css, js), disabling that and clearing the cache fixed these issues.

// Original post:

Hi @david @Discourse

Just a heads up, default thumbnail mode appears to not work anymore with Discourse Stable 3.3.0.

List view will show for all cases regardless of what has been set, unless you use an override setting - but that only will apply for specific categories, making it impossible to use e.g. masonry or grid on the home page.

It was working as expected prior to upgrading from 3.2.x to 3.3.0 and has been observed on multiple instances.

Just noticed this… hopefully it can be fixed sooner than later. This is a fantastic add-on.

so far my experience with this component is great, but one feature I really wish to have is choose the cover thumbnail even it’s not the first image, or choose the cover image without showing in the topic, will this be difficult to approach?

This is possible

I think a solution to hide the image in the post was suggested here:

I tried and it works, the bbcode wrapper is exactly what I need, thank you so much

Has anyone been able to display a thumbnail in conjunction with WP Discourse Wordpress plugin? Since any images as well as the featured images are displayed via img tag in the first post imported from WP, it cannot be used as thumbnail.

Is there any workaround for this? Since we frequently update our WP Posts, we would like to find some solution here.

Not sure if this would work. But this Theme component might work maybe as an alternative.

It doesn’t work, I tried. Discourse core provides the thumbnail based on the image in the post, I am afraid

Is it just me or arhe the first 4 previews not working? I only see a regular topic list

Strange, I can see it just fine.
Can you confirm you’re in the #topic-list-thumbnails-example category?

How can I adjust the image size and ovality like on this forum site forum.xboxera.com

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It would be nice, if there is an option for adding excerpts from topics.
Thanks

You can combine it with this theme component :

It’s really nice with a few tweaks

Here is an example:

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Thank you

Any chance that the Topic Cards mode could be added to to TLT?

How can I set the search results displayed in grid or mansionry
Thanks

Frank

4 posts were merged into an existing topic: How can I set the search results displayed in grid or mansionry

This is an exceptionally well-designed component; with some modifications to the code, it can achieve highly customizable effects.

Is there any way to add a setting to enable an option so that thumbnail settings will also be applied for subcategories automatically?

Hi there - I’ve read through this whole thread but still have a question about this component.

Specifically, is it possible to set it so the thumbnail is only displayed if an image is found to display? i.e. - rather than having a placeholder when there’s no image, just don’t display anything?

Currently we have many topics without images and the placeholder images are overwhelming.

Note that we are focused on List view if that is important.

I agree that this should be an option.
If not yet implemented or if it won’t be implemented at all, maybe using CSS (and if necessary, some JavaScript) can achieve the same result?

I still don’t have the component installed, but I would guess that maybe this could be a workaround?

Hello!

It would be nice to have an option to show thumbnails in search results. Some users would like to look at the thumbnail to find the topic that they are searching for.

That would be great for directories, catalogs etc. You are right.

I have the mobile thumbnails setting turned off. After updating the software from 3.3 to 3.5.0 yesterday, the thumbnails is displayed in the mobile topic lists. Though instead of properly displayed, it is now shown as background images. Also, it’s now showing five user avatars for each topic, ie it seems like the desktop topic list format is now used for mobile when this component is included in a theme. Removing the component fixes the issue, for now.

It happened to me on ios 18.6.2/ firefox and chrome. also happened to my users on Android. The component is on the latest version.

Is there a way to suppress mobile thumbnail display like it used to?

Component included:

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Component excluded:

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I did some additional testing on two different Discourse deployments. and here’s the combination of settings that causes the component to cause issues on mobile.

1. Included in theme, Mobile thumbnails setting on. Thumbnail displayed ok.

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2. Included in theme, Mobile thumbnails setting off. topic list is all funky.

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Discourse version: v3.5.0 (05a3040066)

Topic Thumbnails: latest as of Sep 15 2025.

I’m having an issue with this component:

Using the Horizon theme, thumbnails do not render at all in grid mode, minimal grid mode, or masonry mode. They do render in list mode.

The thumbnail renders oddly in blog mode using the Horizon theme (it’s at the bottom right corner, very tiny):

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I tested with the Foundation and Material Design themes and they do render correctly for all modes.

I tried adding another image and declaring that it should be the thumbnail, with no luck. I also tried adding text before the image, no luck.

For topics without images, I only want the topic title to be visible. Is there a way to do this?

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I was able to do this with a little CSS

.topic-list-thumbnail.no-thumbnail {
    display:none;
}

Thank you very much, that’s exactly what I was looking for.

A post was merged into an existing topic: How to display content excerpts in the theme component Topic List Thumbnails if no image in a topic?

Thanks to the authors. It is a great component.

There are some issues in masonry mode. When the thumbnails are retrieved from different ways, uploaded images, logos and images pulled from links and placeholder image, the current solution is using blur to take the unused width.

I think the better way is to use let thumbnail to take the whole width of the container and then let the height naturally take space while keeping image radio.

I tried to customize CSS but the issues like thumbnails and texts will conjuncture I cannot solve. I am expecting a newer version will solve it for me.

2 posts were split to a new topic: Disabling thumbnails on mobile breaks mobile view

Thank you so much, David Taylor, for such an amazing theme component!

In the blog style, it seems that the reply count is not working:

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Really appreciate if you can fix this, many thanks!!!