# Frontend Image (thumb) generation delay - best practice?

**URL:** <https://forum.getkirby.com/t/frontend-image-thumb-generation-delay-best-practice/34156>\
**Category:** Questions\
**Tags:** v4\
**Created:** [May 27, 2025, 7:16pm UTC](https://forum.getkirby.com/t/frontend-image-thumb-generation-delay-best-practice/34156 "2025-05-27T19:16:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![slgdev](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/forum.getkirby.com/slgdev/32/12420_2.png) [@slgdev](https://forum.getkirby.com/u/slgdev)\
**Post date:** [May 27, 2025, 7:16pm UTC](https://forum.getkirby.com/t/frontend-image-thumb-generation-delay-best-practice/34156/1 "2025-05-27T19:16:01Z")

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Hi everyone, I’m facing an issue with newly uploaded images in my Kirby site:

When accessing them for the first time in the frontend, there’s a noticeable delay while Kirby generates the thumbnails in the media folder (e.g. using the $image-\>thumb() function). During this process, visitors see a blank space until the image suddenly appears.

Has anyone found an elegant solution to handle this more gracefully? Maybe with placeholders, pre-generation, or progressive loading?

Just asking for a best practice 🙂  
Thanks in advance.

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**Author:** ![texnixe](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex017/user_avatar/forum.getkirby.com/texnixe/32/5754_2.png) [@texnixe](https://forum.getkirby.com/u/texnixe)\
**Post date:** [May 27, 2025, 7:35pm UTC](https://forum.getkirby.com/t/frontend-image-thumb-generation-delay-best-practice/34156/2 "2025-05-27T19:35:35Z")

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Placeholder are definitely an option, additionally you can also pre-generate all thumbs. The [Janitor plugin](https://github.com/bnomei/kirby3-janitor) has a job for this.