Use Quick Look to Preview Files and Folders in the Finder, Spotlight, and Open Dialogs

ByEmily Dolloff

Finder icons sometimes hint at their file’s contents, but if you find yourself opening file after file to look at the contents quickly, the Mac has a little-known feature just for you: Quick Look. To give it a spin, select a file in the Finder and press the Space bar or Command-Y. If Quick Look supports that type of file, it instantly displays a standalone window showing the contents of the file without opening it in its native app. Press the Space bar again to close the window.

If the document you’re previewing has multiple pages, you’ll see thumbnails along the right side that you can scroll through using your mouse or trackpad, or by pressing the Page Up/Page Down keys. But you aren’t limited to just viewing a file: click the Open With button to open the file in its default app, or click the Share button in the upper right to send it to someone else via email, Messages, or another sharing service. PDFs and images will also show the Markup button that lets you annotate the file directly, and images have a Rotate button.

If you need to scan through a set of files in a folder, you can press the arrow keys while the Quick Look window remains open—how you move among the files depends on the Finder window’s view. In List view, for instance, using the Up and Down arrow keys can be a great way to browse through a collection of pictures. You can even interact with the Finder while using Quick Look, which means you can delete an unwanted photo by pressing Command-Delete while previewing it.

Quick Look works well for evaluating or comparing multiple files. Select a bunch of files and press the Space bar to open them all in Quick Look. The Left and Right arrow keys let you cycle through your selection; there are also Back and Forward arrow buttons at the top left of the Quick Look window. To the right, you’ll see a Thumbnail button that displays the selected files in a grid—click any thumbnail to focus on just that item.

To remove the distraction of your desktop, click the Zoom button in a Quick Look window. If you have multiple files selected, you can even start a simple slideshow from the zoomed Quick Look window—it’s a quick way to show off a folder of images. Another way to get to a zoomed Quick Look window is to select the files in the Finder and press Option-Space.

What file types does Quick Look work with? Not everything, but out of the box, Quick Look supports text files, RTF files, HTML files, images, audio, video, PDFs, iWork documents (Keynote, Numbers, and Pages), Microsoft Office files, fonts, and more. Third-party apps can extend Quick Look to support proprietary formats, and developers have released independent Quick Look extensions. Many people appreciate these three extensions:

  • Folder Preview (free) displays the contents of folders in Quick Look.
  • BetterZip (free for viewing) lets you look inside Zip archives and other compressed files.
  • Peek ($7.99) not only supports 530 file types but also lets you copy, search, navigate, and more directly within the Quick Look window.

Although it’s best known in the Finder, Quick Look is available elsewhere on the Mac, including the examples below, so it’s always worth selecting what you want to preview and pressing the Space bar to see if it works.

  • Spotlight: Preview search results to see if they’re what you want
  • Open dialogs: Preview files before you open them
  • Time Machine: Preview versions of files before restoring them
  • File transfer apps: Preview files on remote servers before downloading
  • Messages: Preview files added to conversations before opening them
  • Mail: Preview attachments to email messages

To manage your Quick Look extensions, open System Settings > General > Login Items & Extensions, scroll to the bottom, and click the ⓘ button next to Quick Look.

Finally, note that if your Mac has a trackpad, you can invoke Quick Look by force-touching a Finder icon (press deeply until you feel a click) instead of pressing the Space bar.

Quick Look takes just moments to learn, but it can save you hours of time poring through files on your Mac!

(Featured image by iStock.com/megaflopp)

Social Media: With a press of your Mac’s Space bar, you can use Quick Look to preview the contents of nearly any selected file, saving you time looking for the right file, comparing files, evaluating photos, and more. Try it in apps other than the Finder, too!

Similar Posts

  • Grace has tired of riding the little Vespa scooter so we are selling it. I bought an almost antique Victory cruiser so we both have bikes down here. I am going to Jasper, GA to pick it up this weekend and riding it back through the back roads of Georgia. It should be a nice little break.

    I am going to miss Johnny Dread and the reggae show down here but I am sure Grace will be there. It is hard to believe that we are heading into March already. My granddaughter, Gracie, is a Feb 29 baby so she is celebrating her 4th birthday as a 12-year old. My other granddaughter, Khadija, was off this week visiting colleges in the Boston area. Sure makes me feel old. I remember announcing Khadija’s birth here in Kibbles with the line “just call me gramps” and they still do!

    Thank you for reading this issue of Kibbles & Bytes!

    Your Kibbles & Bytes Team,

    _Don, Emily, Morgan & Hadley_

  • The Most Profit Ever in a Single Quarter

    Apple posted record earnings and profit for the holiday quarter disappointing those analysts that predicted less than stellar results. Of course, the realistic guidance for the next quarter sent Apple stock plummeting while those same analysts maintain a price target that is $40-50 higher than the current price of the stock. Okay, so Apple’s profit and revenue were all time records for the company but the remarkable tidbit is that no public corporation ever has posted that much profit in a single quarter. Let’s see how Apple did that.

    First of all, Apple sold 74.8 million iPhones in the quarter. Not too shabby and that revenue is nearly 70% of Apple’s total. The average sales price (ASP) for the iPhone was up to $691 which also led to slightly higher gross margin. To put that is some perspective that is an average of 34,000 iPhones sold per hour 24/7 for 13 weeks.

    They finished the quarter with about $215 billion in cash which represents about $39/share. Macs sales were down a bit at 5.3 million units and the iPad continues to do moderate in sales with sales dropping year on year from 21.4 million units to 16.1 million units.

    Currency “headwinds” have caused some of these results to be muted. With the exceptionally strong dollar it is more difficult to export US goods and sales suffer a bit. The Euro and British Pound were down double digits and the Canadian and Australian dollars were down 20% or more. It gets worse. The Russian Ruble is down by 50% and Brazilian Real is down 40%. Apple estimated that if it were not for these global currency fluctuations that their revenue would have been over $80 billion representing an 8% increase. But despite those headwinds, Apple posted their best quarter ever.

    Other high points were service revenue which was the highest ever at over $6 billion. Wow, $6 billion in just iTunes, App store and a few other things. That is more revenue that quite a few well known companies and a 24% growth year over year. Other products which include the Apple TV, Beats and Apple Watch also were strong with $4.5 Billion in sales.

    In another milestone that just points to the success of the services side of Apple’s business Tim Cook announced that they now calculate that there are more than 1 billion Apple devices in use worldwide which is up 25% year over year. That is simply incredible considering that there are only 7.4 billion people on the planet!

    What sent Apple stock down was Apple’s realistic prediction that iPhones sales in their 2nd fiscal quarter would decline year over year by as much as 15-20%. Last year’s 2nd quarter was strong because of supply issues that moved some revenue from the 1st to 2nd quarter and the impact of the global currency situation has caused some price adjustments. Apple remains very bullish on the iPhone market and pointed to the fact that in China over 50% of the iPhones sold were to people buying their first iPhone. Apple pointed out that the growth of the middle class in China is unprecedented with the middle class comprising about 50 million people in 2010 and now it is projected to be $500,000,000 by 2020.

    Even if Apple sells “only” the 40-45 million iPhones in this quarter that would still be more revenue that most companies earn overall in a single quarter. To put this in perspective, Apple books more revenue at strong margins, than Amazon, Facebook, Google or Microsoft generate from all of their operations.

    All in all the financial results that Apple announced were an incredible testament to the quality and innovation of Apple products and of a company doing things right. Congratulations to the entire Apple team!

  • Never Save Your Work in These Locations

    In every job that involves interaction with the public, amusing “Can you believe…” stories about customers abound. They’re often triggered by seemingly reasonable…

  • Holiday Guide for People with Everything

    Shopping for the people who “already have everything” is kind of our hobby. Here are a few of the personalities we see all…