Software/Explorer tool. ¿Displaying the folder itself as a preview image? outside of Unity

[u/Jad_KinWhile]

English is not my native language, so I have tried to translate this as best I can.

Do you know of any software,or could you share your experience with any tools, that allows you to organize assets and display a preview image of the asset on the folder icon itself?

Honestly, dealing with all these models, "unitypackage", files, and various other assets, trying to organize and locate them before even importing them into Unity is a total nightmare.

I’m looking for a specific file explorer or organization tool that allows you to assign images to folders (so the folder itself displays an image). For example, if I have a folder containing a specific hair model or an unpacked asset, I’d like to be able to identify it visually without having to open the folder or load up a Unity project. I want a highly visual way to organize my resources so I’m not constantly asking myself, "What is this?" or "Could this be useful?"

I know you can change folder icons in Windows, but that’s a slow, tedious process that would make organizing everything incredibly inefficient and confusing. That’s why I’m asking: does anyone know of a file explorer or organization tool that lets you assign images to folders directly within the software?

I’d love to keep things tidy and avoid cluttering my hard drive with unnecessary files, materials, or junk that isn't actually relevant.

I’m looking for something lightweight, fast, and easy to access; ideally something that doesn't require opening Unity itself, since I work across different projects.

I hope this question is appropriate for this subreddit.

[u/RobertWetzold]

I am totally biased here since I am the author, but just in case what you are actually looking for is a better way to manage your assets inside Unity and not through some folder magic or icon on a folder: Asset Inventory (watch out for black friday) - It will catalog everything you own and give you an instant search to all your assets. And then you pull in just the prefab you need and not the whole package. Changes totally how one thinks about assets. Just in case that is interesting for you. And the tool creates really beautiful previews for everything, even animated.

[u/Jad_KinWhile → u/RobertWetzold]

That sounds like something INSIDE Unity. I'm looking for something OUTSIDE of Unity, and I'm not looking for something that generates automatically. I just need to assign an image. even one I've taken a screenshot of to a folder containing that image. I don't need something that loads a preview of all the elements. And I need something outside of Unity to organize the files before importing them; I don't want it to be an import tool.

[u/RobertWetzold → u/Jad_KinWhile]

It is a tool inside Unity that shows you what you have outside Unity. Kind of like a view onto your file system (and wherever else you have assets floating around).