Thermal effect is essential to regulate the interfacial instabilities for diverse technology applications. Here we report the fingering instability at the propagation front for a spreading liquid film subjected to the supercooling at the vertical direction. We find the onset timescale of hydrodynamic instability is strongly correlated with that of the vertical solidification process. This correlation is further validated in a nonuniform geometry, demonstrating the capability of controlling fingering instability by structure design. We attribute the identified interfacial instability to a pronounced thermoviscous effect, since the rapidly increased viscosity of propagation front undergoing solidification can significantly enhance the mobility contrast locally in the vicinity of the spreading front, consequently producing the instability analogous to viscous fingering. This work offers another valuable dimension by gating the vertical temperature to exploit the interfacial stabilities and steer liquid flow, consequently shedding light on the microfluidic cooling for electronics, and the advanced functional fibers and fabrics.

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• Fingering instability
• Hele-shaw flows
• Thin fluid films
• Viscosity
• Hele-Shaw cell