Eleven formats supported
ZIP / CBZ / RAR / CBR / 7Z / CB7 / CBT / EPUB / FB2 / MOBI / AZW / AZW3 — comics and ebooks in one extension.
Windows shell extension
ArcThumb
ArcThumbBring your bookshelf into Explorer.
ArcThumb shows cover thumbnails and preview-pane previews for CBZ, RAR, EPUB, MOBI and more — a tiny shell extension written in Rust.
What is ArcThumb?
ArcThumb is a small Windows shell extension that extracts cover images from comic archives (CBZ/CBR/CB7/CBT) and ebooks (EPUB/FB2/MOBI/AZW) and renders them as Explorer thumbnails and preview-pane previews. It supports modern image formats including WebP, bringing the bookshelf glance to your file manager.
Features
Smart cover detection
Reads OPF manifests for EPUB, coverpage tags for FB2, and EXTH records for Kindle formats to pick the real cover.
Preview pane support
Implements IPreviewHandler so Alt+P shows a large cover in Explorer's preview pane.
No admin required
Per-user install. Doesn't touch the system registry. Uninstall any time, no leftovers.
Supported formats
Archives
- ZIP
- CBZ
- RAR
- CBR
- 7Z
- CB7
- CBT
Ebooks
- EPUB
- FB2
- MOBI
- AZW
- AZW3
Images (used as cover sources)
- JPEG
- PNG
- GIF
- BMP
- TIFF
- ICO
- WebP
AVIF, HEIC and SVG are not supported yet.
Enable only what you need
Open ArcThumb Configuration from the Start menu to toggle which extensions get thumbnails, choose the sort order, prefer specific cover filenames, and turn the preview pane on or off.
Install in three steps
- 01
Grab the .exe from Releases
Download ArcThumb-Setup.exe from the GitHub Releases page.
- 02
Run the installer
No admin rights needed — it installs into your user profile.
- 03
Pick your formats
Open ArcThumb Configuration from the Start menu, tick the formats you want, and hit Apply.
FAQ
Yes — WebP is supported, along with JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TIFF and ICO. AVIF, HEIC and SVG are not supported yet.