Ideas to make thumbnail/icon view work in 2025

[pseudoryx]

I use BRU *because* I have to tag and rename photos a lot. I know suggestions for this feature date back to at least 2007, so there is clearly a demand for it. I have been circumventing this issue by using a multi-monitor setup so that I could see the photos through explorer while renaming them, but sometimes I still mismatch the file names between windows and screw things up.

Option 1 - ideal world scenario: BRU supports full thumbnail view. Instead of displaying both the old and the new filenames, there is only space for one filename field and the new name replaces the old name as you type. This sounds complex and might not even be possible by the current infrastructure of the program, but I want to throw it out there as my "ideal bulk renamer solution".

Option 2 - less useful, but sounds closer to reality (I hope). The file display layout remains the same. BRU fetches thumbnails from Explorer and replaces the file icon with them. Line/row height can be adjusted to change thumbnail size, or you can pre-set a predetermined height in this view mode. In the most barebone scenario, I would still find use in seeing thumbnails even if they are loaded to same size as the current icon size. But, of course, a bigger thumbnail size would be even better.