SVG thumbnail regression

[kristofmulier]

Microsoft PowerToys version

0.60.1

Running as admin

• Yes

Area(s) with issue?

SVG Thumbnail

Steps to reproduce

PowerToys v0.57.2 generated the SVG thumbnails reasonably fast. However, since I upgraded to v0.60.1 the SVG thumbnail generation is terribly slow. Opening a folder with tens of SVG files takes almost a minute to have all the thumbnails available. The following screenshot shows the behavior in v0.60.1:

On top of that, most thumbnails show a bit of text that appears somewhere in the SVG drawing. It should instead show the whole SVG drawing, like what v0.57.2 did:

✔️ Expected Behavior

Show SVG thumbnails fast. Show the whole SVG drawing in the thumbnail.

❌ Actual Behavior

Generate SVG thumbnails slow. Show part of the SVG drawing in the thumbnail.

Other Software

No response

[KaiHuaDou]

I have the same problem, my work needs me to preview hundreds of SVG files. Hope to fix it soon.
The behavior is wrong in Windows 10, too.

[konero]

Same issue here, folders with hundreds of SVG files (Win 10).

[softlion]

Same issue here (win 11, v0.64.1).

[kristofmulier]

After five months, I still experience this problem. Right now, I have:

• PowerToys v0.65.0
• Windows 11 Home Insider Preview Evaluation copy. Build 25267.rs_prerelease.221209-1557

PowerToys runs in admin mode:

My current PowerToys settings:

What can I do to make the rendering of the svg-files faster?

PS: It's slow, even when the SVG files are really simple.

[KaiHuaDou]

Even when I preview an SVG vector with even a few straight lines in an ideal operating environment (Intel Core i9-13900K, 16GB RAM, latest PowerToys, Windows activated with all updates and patches installed), the problem persists in on my Windows 10 (22H2) and forced me to look for other solutions.

[tcfurrer]

I'd like to add that during the super-slow rendering, there is a single "COM surrogate" process which appears to be using as much CPU time as is possible for a single-threaded process.

I observed this issue while attempting to render thumbnails for all of the iconoir SVG icons:
https://github.com/iconoir-icons/iconoir/tree/main/icons

[KaiHuaDou]

I think this problem may be caused by the conflict between Windows and PowerToys thumbnail policy.

If you bind the rendering thread to the thumbnail handler, Windows will start a rendering process for each thumbnail.

I think the correct approach should be: only one thread is responsible for rendering, and a small and fast program is registered as a thumbnail processing program. This program does not perform calculations, but is only responsible for transferring data. This way it will only start one renderer thread, not multiple ones, no matter how many files there are.

If PowerToys is using the browser engine for rendering, then previewing 100 SVGs will bring about as much performance pressure as opening 100 Edge tabs.

[tcfurrer]

Just to add to the hypothesis put forth by @KaiHuaDou, I saw (via the "Details" tab on Task Manager to see PIDs) a separate new "PowerToys.SvgThumbnailProvider.exe" process for each individual thumbnail.

[tcfurrer]

Here's one hard data point: I'm seeing it take 3-4 seconds to render each trivial SVG (simple icons). This is with PowerToys 0.66.0 on Windows 11, a high-performance CPU, with many GB of free memory, and no other significant simultaneous workloads.

[kristofmulier]

My system is also pretty fast:

• Processor: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-12700H 2.30 GHz
• Installed RAM: 64,0 GB
• System type: 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
• OS Edition: Windows 11 Home Insider Preview
• Version: 22H2
• Installed on: 11/01/2023
• OS build: 25272.1000
• Experience: Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.25272.1000.0

I use now the latest PowerToys v0.66.0

I notice everyone experiences this issue of slow rendering svg-thumbnails - no matter how powerful the PC. Is anyone working on a fix? I love PowerToys, but this bug is really a dealbreaker.

[KaiHuaDou]

Just to add to the hypothesis put forth by @KaiHuaDou, I saw (via the "Details" tab on Task Manager to see PIDs) a separate new "PowerToys.SvgThumbnailProvider.exe" process for each individual thumbnail.

Thank you! This means that PowerToys uses multiple render processes instead of a single one.