How To Delete Screenshots From Steam Desktop Using Windows Explorer

[Bravo Phantom]

Straight To The Point

• I've taken 5012 (Five Thousand And Twelve) Screenshots Of Call Of Duty 4 since yesterday. (Reason Not Important)

• Now I've to check each one and delete those that are blurry or not required, I'll probably reduce them to less than 500, and then I'll upload them to Steam Cloud.

• Steam's Screenshot Manager sometimes (well most of the time) is very slow and could take me literally months to check all screenshots and delete them. And now having 5000+ Screenshots it is not even opening properly and crashing Steam.

• I clicked on the "Folder Icon" in the Screenshot Manager, and it takes me to the local folder where all screenshots are saved, but there is another subfolder folder there called "thumbnails". If I delete photos from the main folder, then I suppose it will remove them from Steam Desktop as well, but do I have to remove the same pic from the thumbnail folder as well? It'll take me ages to do this, and match which picture is in the main folder and what thumbnail it has in the subfolder.

• I'm sure there should be a simple way... Maybe I could delete the thumbnail folder completely and delete unrequired screenshots, then when I open Steam; it will automatically generate thumbnails for the required screenshots. (I hope you get my point)

• Please Help Screenshot Spammers (I'm not one... I only take 10-15 Screenshots per game, this one is special). Looking Forward To Getting A Solution...

[Pscht]

Thumbnails are just that, small previews like for the Screenshot Manager. If you delete the whole folder they get recreated.

Also, who do you think wants to look at 500 of your screenshots?

[potato]

you have to manually go over them in the screenshot directory and delete the ones you don't want, or through the steam screenshots manager, there's no other way

maybe don't take five thousand screenshots if you don't want the hassle of managing them

[Bravo Phantom]

Originally posted by Pscht:

Thumbnails are just that, small previews like for the Screenshot Manager. If you delete the whole folder they get recreated.

Also, who do you think wants to look at 500 of your screenshots?

Hello, Thanks for the quick answer... So you mean I can delete the thumbnails folder after I set everything in the main folder... Steam will automatically create thumbnails when required... That's great :)

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You are right, no one would want to see 500 Screenshots but me... I didnt captured 5000 Screenshots to share them with people, they are for me... I could surely add them to Google Photos or OneDrive but having them in Steam will also be good as someone else can download them if required (Some of them are really nice ones for desktop wallpapers).

I surely dont take more than 10-20 screenshots of games as its just a waste of time and only gives boredom, but this game is something special to me (I'm sure everyone has at least one special game for some reason). However thanks for letting me know about this. Have a great day ahead

[Bravo Phantom]

Originally posted by potato:

you have to manually go over them in the screenshot directory and delete the ones you don't want, or through the steam screenshots manager, there's no other way

maybe don't take five thousand screenshots if you don't want the hassle of managing them

I know that... but that wasn't the point... I could surely do that, but the problem was the "thumbnails" folder. Do I have to repeat all of this process in that sub-folder also?

[potato]

yes, you have to delete the thumbnail for each respective screenshot if you're doing it manually through the folder

[Bravo Phantom]

All Right... So I checked it myself by using some common sense...

• I deleted the thumbnail folder, but first made backup of it in case something hinky happens.
• Then restarted my pc, then opened steam.
• Turns out no changes were made to the Screenshot Manager.
• I also opened the folder, and surprisingly no thumbnail folder was there, Steam didnt create it now.
• I'm not sure how is showing in the Screenshot Manager then, maybe it now displays directly the screenshot, then the purpose of the thumbnails is pretty useless. Maybe Steam stores it now in cache folder somewhere else.

• Whatever is the case, removing the thumbnails has no impact on the screenshots in the end.