I hate thumbnails. Building them just takes up space and a lot of CPU time. Is there any way to completely disable them so that they are never built?
There is a simple workaround for this.
In the filelist view of (all) your viewschemes replace the field Image (small thumbnail) with Image (small Icon)
Option->Library & Folders->Options->Build thumbnails (uncheck)
And finally Options->Tree& View->Thumbnails->Erase all thumbnails
though i've never wanted to ever do this, just not displaying them was enoughYou will have to go through all your viewschemes, playlists & smartlists display options to ensure thumbnails are not required to be displayed. If there is, MC will automatically rebuild them again for that view, you cannot disable this behaviour.
From now on, no more thumbs will be built unless you ask MC to do so.