Is there a way to tell Nautilus not to generate previews of PDF files?

I tend to download lots of articles as PDFs, and I find that when I browse a directory of these Nautilus takes 1 minute to load the directory. I assume that's because it's generating previews of their front pages. That feature is useless to me, alas.

I'd like to tell it not to do that.

Solution 1:

Assuming you're using Ubuntu 11.10, running the following in a terminal should do the trick:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.thumbnailers disable "['application/pdf']"

Alternatively, you can do this in the GUI by installing the dconf-tools package and running dconf-editor. In the tree on the left, navigate org → gnome → desktop → thumbnailers, then edit the disable option in the right pane as above.

I'm not sure what specific vulnerabilities you are trying to avoid (if they existed, I'd expect you could avoid them by installing the corresponding Ubuntu security updates), but the above should prevent generation of new PDF thumbnails.

Solution 2:

In nautilus goto edit - preferences - preview and change the settings there.