What Meshory indexes (and how to change it)

Updated Oct 25, 2026 · 6 min read

A curated list of supported formats, plus four ways to shape it: exclude patterns, hidden names, folder exclusions, and index-only names.

Rhino .3dm (3DM) files are also indexed, including models inside ZIP, RAR and 7Z archives. Previews use saved render meshes locally, with partial preview warnings when surfaces have no saved mesh. Duplicate detection is content-only; Rhino files do not receive geometry fingerprints.

Meshory indexes the file types it can actually do something with, and deliberately nothing else. A model library shouldn't fill up with logs, installers, and program files that happen to live near your models. For 3D models, the supported set is: STL, OBJ, 3MF, FBX and STEP/STP (full thumbnails, duplicate detection, and 3D viewing), PLY (thumbnails and 3D viewing for meshes and point clouds; a PLY mesh also gets geometry duplicate detection, and goes to your slicer as an STL copy), Rhino 3DM (thumbnails and 3D viewing), GLB (a neutral mesh thumbnail, geometry duplicate detection, and 3D viewing with materials and textures), Fusion designs, F3D and F3Z (the card shows the picture Fusion saved in the file, and the design opens in the 3D viewer, assemblies included), Lychee Slicer scenes, LYS (experimental: a thumbnail and 3D viewing for loose files, though some scenes may preview incomplete, while a scene inside an archive is listed without a preview), GLTF (indexed, searchable and tagged like any model, with no thumbnail or 3D preview yet), and sliced G-code, GCODE (the card shows the picture the slicer saved in the file, or the toolpaths drawn when it saved none, and the 3D viewer steps through the print layer by layer; only exact copies count as duplicates).

Alongside the models come JPG, JPEG, PNG, GIF, WEBP, BMP, HEIC, HEIF, AVIF and SVG images and xTool laser projects (XCS and XS) (all of which get a rendered thumbnail), LightBurn projects (LBRN and LBRN2, shown by the preview LightBurn saved in the file, or drawn from the design when it has none), DXF drawings (drawn in 2D) and DWG drawings (shown by the preview AutoCAD saved in the file, when it has one), ZIP, RAR, 7Z, TAR, TAR.GZ and TGZ archives (browsed inside, with models in them treated as first-class entries, and the contents of a RAR split into .part1, .part2 files listed once, under the first part, while every part keeps its own card), and PDF, TXT and Markdown (MD and MARKDOWN) for the manuals, readmes and instructions that ride along with models. Those open in the app: a PDF's card shows its first page, a text or Markdown file's card shows its opening lines, and Markdown opens formatted. The TAR family means .tar, .tar.gz and .tgz; standalone .gz files are not indexed or browsed.

Everything outside that list is simply invisible to scans. Binary G-code (BGCODE), resin slicer scenes other than Lychee's, and office documents aren't indexed even though they're common next to models. If a format you care about is missing, tell us on Discord and it'll be considered for real support rather than half-support.

Videos are the one type you switch on yourself. Turn on Index videos in Settings → Scanning and MP4, M4V, MOV and WebM files join the library, loose or inside archives, each with a frame from the video as its thumbnail. Inside an archive, only videos of 64 MB or less get one. A loose video plays in the app; one inside an archive plays once you extract it. Videos are never counted as duplicates. One your computer cannot decode gets no picture, and the player says so; open it in another app. That covers older MPEG-4 Part 2 files everywhere, and HEVC files on a Windows or Linux computer whose graphics card cannot decode HEVC. Turning the setting off takes videos out of the library again; the files stay on disk.

A web link inside a PDF or a Markdown file asks before your browser opens it. The dialog names the site, as in Open example.com in your browser?, and offers Cancel, Open link and Don't ask again. To open those links straight away, turn off Ask before opening links in documents in Settings → Privacy.

Excluded names

Settings → Scanning takes a list of excluded name patterns: one per line, * matches anything, case-insensitive. Files and folders matching them are left out of scans entirely. Sensible junk is excluded out of the box (installer files, partial downloads, Thumbs.db and friends). Exclusions apply everywhere a file can appear, including inside ZIP, RAR, 7Z and TAR/TGZ archives. Excluding *.png keeps preview renders out of your library whether they're loose or archived.

Names starting with a period

Meshory skips files and folders whose name starts with a period. On macOS and Linux that prefix means hidden, and what sits behind it is app state and system metadata rather than models. Windows has no such convention, and some people use a leading period there to sort a folder to the top of Explorer. If that's you, turn on Scan dot names in Settings → Scanning. Your sources rescan straight away, because an ordinary sweep only re-reads folders that changed on disk. A setting change alters nothing on disk, so the folders it had been skipping would otherwise stay invisible.

Excluding whole folders

Right-click any folder, in the library grid or in the sidebar tree, and choose Exclude from library to drop that subtree from the index. That's handy when a watched folder like Downloads contains trees that aren't 3D content at all. Excluded folders are listed in Settings → Scanning, where removing an entry re-indexes the folder on the next sweep. Nothing on disk is touched either way. Other sources scanning don't get in the way: only a scan of the folder's own source holds Exclude from library back, and the menu item says Source scanning until it finishes.

To exclude several at once, Cmd-click (Ctrl-click on Windows and Linux) or Shift-click folders in the sidebar tree, then use Exclude in the bar that appears or in the right-click menu. For a source full of folders that never held a model, choose Clean up folders with no models… from its ⋯ menu: it lists every folder under that source with no models, archives or cut files in it, ready to exclude in one go.

Index-only names

Below the exclusions sits the opposite lever: index-only name patterns. Files matching them are indexed past the supported-format list (they show up in your library and in search) but get no processing at all: no thumbnails, no duplicate detection, no content reads. Use it to keep sight of project files like *.blend alongside your prints without pretending Meshory can render them.

Sources can't overlap

A folder can only belong to one source. If you add a folder that already sits inside a watched source, or one that contains a source you've already added, Meshory refuses it and tells you which source it clashed with. That's deliberate: an overlapping source would scan, match every file against the copy already indexed, and store nothing, leaving you with a source that stays permanently empty for no visible reason. To narrow an existing source, exclude the subtree you don't want rather than adding a second source inside it.