Embodiments automatically create dynamic thumbnail images corresponding to accessed web pages. Thumbnails, snapshots, or other images are generated for each of a plurality of the web pages (e.g., viewed or visited by a user, or pre-fetched by a browser). The images are provided to the user as, for example, active tiles in a browser tab or on a desktop background. As content on the web pages updates, the images are re-created and visually distinguished from other images to enable the user to quickly identify the images that correspond to updated web pages. The user interacts with the images to view the corresponding web pages.