# System Resources

System Resources

This page lets you customize the amount of system memory allocated for various purposes. It also allows you to set the size of thumbnail files that GIMP produces.

## Options

Resource Consumption

Minimal number of undo levels

  GIMP allows you to undo most actions by maintaining an Undo History for each image, for which a certain amount of memory is allocated. Regardless of memory usage, however, GIMP always permits some minimal number of the most recent actions to be undone: this is the number specified here. See for more information about GIMP's Undo mechanism.

Maximum undo memory

  This is the amount of undo memory allocated for each image. If the Undo History size exceeds this, the oldest points are deleted, unless this would result in fewer points being present than the minimal number specified above.

Tile cache size

  This is the amount of system RAM allocated for GIMP image data. If GIMP requires more memory than this, it begins to swap to disk, which may in some circumstances cause a dramatic slowdown. You are given an opportunity to set this number when you install GIMP, but you can alter it here. See How to Set Your Tile Cache for more information.

Maximum new image size

  This is not a hard constraint: if you try to create a new image larger than the specified size, you are asked to confirm that you really want to do it. This is to prevent you from accidentally creating images much larger than you intend, which can either crash GIMP or cause it to respond verrrrrrrry slowwwwwwwwly.

Swap compression

  This sets the compression method used for tile data stored in the swap. Compression can both reduce the swap size, and increase its speed, by minimizing input and output. Values are best performance (the default), balanced, and best compression, or none to disable compression altogether.

Number of threads to use

  Multi-threading allows making use of multiple cores for processing. Not all features make use of that for the moment. A point of interest is that multi-threading happens through GEGL processing, but also in GIMP core itself, for instance to separate painting from display.

Network Access

Check for updates

  When this option is enabled, GIMP will regularly check at start-up if a new version is available. If there is, you will get an alert that you can update. Note that this option requires you to have an internet connection and for GIMP to be allowed access to the internet.

Image Thumbnails

Size of thumbnails

  This options allows you to set the size of the thumbnails shown in the File Open dialog (and also saved for possible use by other programs). The options are No thumbnails, Normal (128x128), and Large (256x256).

Maximum filesize for thumbnailing

  If an image file is larger than the specified maximum size, GIMP will not generate a thumbnail for it. This options allows you to prevent thumbnailing of extremely large image files from slowing GIMP to a crawl.

Document History

Keep record of used files in the Recent Documents list

  When checked, files you have opened will be saved in the Document history. You can access the list of files with the Document history dialog from the main menu: File Open Recent Document History .

Using Preferences System Resources
System Resources