What happens during the first scan

Updated Aug 9, 2026 · 1 min read

Indexing, content-hashing, background rendering, and why you can start browsing right away.

The first scan does three things: it indexes every supported file in the source, computes content and geometry fingerprints so identical models can be grouped as duplicates, and renders a thumbnail for each model in a background worker pool. Meshory indexes the formats it can actually work with (models, images, archives, and PDFs) and leaves everything else alone; see What Meshory indexes for the exact list and how to adjust it.

Sources sync one at a time. If another source is already scanning, this one waits its turn. Its row in the sidebar shows a queued badge until the running sync finishes.

Rendering is the slow part on a big library, so it runs in the background across several workers. The index appears almost immediately; thumbnails then stream in tile by tile.

Can I browse while it scans?

Yes. Browsing, search, and the 3D viewer all work during a scan. A tile without a thumbnail yet just hasn't been rendered; it'll appear once a worker reaches it. Meshory was hardened against a 3.3 TB, 39,000-model library before it ever shipped, so a large first scan is expected behaviour, not a problem.