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Free Plugin by gazchap v1.5

GazChap's WooCommerce Auto Category Product Thumbnails

Pick WooCommerce category thumbnails automatically from products contained within those categories.

GazChap's WooCommerce Auto Category Product Thumbnails

The facts

Rating
4.4★ from 14
Active installs
1k+
Price
Free
Last updated
21 May 2026
Added
Mar 2018
Requires WP
4.5.0
Tested up to
WP 7.0.0
Requires PHP
5.6
Downloads
16,896

Our analysis

AI-assisted

GazChap's WooCommerce Auto Category Product Thumbnails is a WordPress plugin designed to enhance the display of product categories in WooCommerce. By default, WooCommerce requires a thumbnail to be set for each category, but this plugin allows categories without thumbnails to automatically display product thumbnails instead. It offers various settings to customise thumbnail size, randomisation, and performance optimization through transients.

This plugin is suitable for WooCommerce store owners who want to improve the visual appeal of their category pages without manually setting thumbnails for each category. It is particularly useful for sites with a deep category structure or those looking to enhance performance with caching options.

Best for: WooCommerce store owners looking to automate category thumbnail management.

What it does well

  • ✓Automatically displays product thumbnails for categories without set thumbnails
  • ✓Offers options for thumbnail size and randomisation
  • ✓Includes performance optimization features using transients
  • ✓Can search in child categories for product thumbnails
  • ✓Free to use from the WordPress.org directory

Where it falls short

  • •Limited information on specific features or settings
  • •No details on compatibility with specific themes or other plugins

Verdict

This plugin provides a straightforward solution for managing category thumbnails in WooCommerce, though details on its full capabilities are limited.

From the developer

gazchap's own description of GazChap's WooCommerce Auto Category Product Thumbnails, lightly tidied.

By default, WooCommerce will only show thumbnails for categories if the category has a thumbnail set.

This plugin changes this behaviour so that WooCommerce will hunt for a product thumbnail in the category being displayed, and use that instead.

Upon activation, the plugin will configure itself with the basic settings. Any categories that you have on your WooCommerce store that do not have a thumbnail set will then start displaying any available product thumbnails inside the category.

There are a number of options, these can be found in WooCommerce -> Settings -> Products -> Auto Category Thumbnails.

  • Thumbnail Size sets the image size that the plugin should use when displaying the thumbnails. Defaults to shop_thumbail, but shop_catalog may be a better option for some themes.

  • Go into Child Categories makes the plugin look in child categories too, useful if you have products buried in quite a deep category structure.

  • Random Thumbnail tells the plugin to pick a random product thumbnail from those it finds every time the page loads – otherwise it always uses the first one it finds.

  • Use Transients tells the plugin to save the thumbnail it picks for a category as a transient in WordPress, so that it won’t have to do it again while the transient is still active. This can hugely increase performance on sites with many categories, so is enabled by default.

  • Transient Expiry is the length of time each transient is active for before the site picks another thumbnail for the category. By default it is set to 1 day.

  • Custom Transient Expiry can be used to define your own transient expiry period (in seconds) if none of the pre-defined options are suitable.

  • Exclude Thumbnail IDs accepts a comma-separated list of attachment IDs from the WordPress Media Library. The plugin will never use any thumbnail with one of these IDs for a category.

License

Licensed under the GNU General Public License v2.0

Read the full description on the official page →

Tagged as

purpose eCommerce & Online Store
platform WooCommerce
topic Thumbnails Thumbnail Categories Products Category Product Auto

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