Quick Tip: Give Quick Look a Boost with Plugins

Quick Tip: Give Quick Look a Boost with Plugins

on Aug 1st 2012 with 13 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Topics: Quick Look, File Management
  • Difficulty: Beginner
  • Estimated Completion Time: 5 Minutes

Quick Look is an amazingly helpful little tool that allows you to preview files without taking the time to open them in any specific application. Today’s Quick Tip screencast will walk you through not only how Quick Look works, but how to make it even better with third party plugins. We’ll finish off with a quick walkthrough of the new Quick Look features in Mountain Lion.

Tutorial


Give Quick Look a Boost with Plugins

Use the below links if you wish to visit the website mentioned in the Quick Tip video or download the shown plugins.

Qucklook Mountain Lion Update

Quicklook has received some great improvements in the latest version of OS X, Mountain Lion. An active Quicklook window will now stay active even if you change focus to another window or program. With iOS sinking its claws deep into the core of Mountain Lion, you now have the ability to share any file right inside of Quicklook. Below is an overview of the new Quicklook window inside of Mountain Lion:

The New Quicklook Window Inside OS X Mountain Lion
The New Quicklook Window Inside OS X Mountain Lion
  • 1) Maximize/Minimize window
  • 2) Document Navigation (when using Quicklook on multiple items)
  • 3) Contact Sheet view
  • 4) Open Document in application
  • 5) Full screen mode
  • 6) Resize corner (the corner works the same as in Snow Leopard/Lion but the drag indicators have been removed)

Another area that has been improved is how Quicklook behaves in Spotlight and in docked folders. Quicklook now has the ability to view almost any file inside of Spotlight, including playing audio and video.

Hovering Over An Item Or Pressing The Left Arrow Will Qucklook A File In A Spotlight Search
Hovering Over An Item Or Pressing The Left Arrow Will Qucklook A File In A Spotlight Search
Hovering Over A File And Pressing Space Bar In A Docked Folder Will Quicklook The File
Hovering Over A File And Pressing Space Bar In A Docked Folder Will Quicklook The File

Quicklook is a powerful and time saving feature inside of OS X Mountain Lion that will undoubtedly become your favorite trick when working on your Mac. Whether watching a movie, previewing an audio file or viewing a document that you normally wouldn’t be able to, Quicklook is sure to prove useful again and again.

 
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Robert Anthony is an audio producer, graphic designer and self appointed Apple Evangelist. When not spreading the good news of Apple and freedom from the bondage of lesser operating systems, Robert can be found in his design studio or strolling around Lady Bird Lake in Austin Texas, where he currently lives and has no plans of leaving from.  

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  • http://fifasamfunnet.com Thomas

    Amazing tip, definitely some features I have wanted that I can now finally get.

    • http://www.robertanthonyperez.com Robert Anthony
      Author

      I’m glad it help you out Thomas. The BetterZip plugin is a must get, but there are a lot more plugins available for specific fields on quicklookplugins.com like photography and design.

  • ratzeputz
    • http://www.robertanthonyperez.com Robert Anthony

      Thanks for sharing ratzeputz! That’s pretty cool. As a designer I always like when the color scheme is consistent, which is kind of a problem when using software from multiple devs.

  • JD

    Nice Article!

    One thing tho, The “X” in Mac “OS X” is a roman ten (10) not the letter “X”! So its pronounced Mac OS “10″ – not Mac OS “Ex”, like in the video!

    Open up Terminal and type “say Mac OS X”. OS X is smart enough to know what roman numbers are. ;-)

    • http://www.robertanthonyperez.com Robert Anthony
      Author

      Glad you liked the article, JD. On the pronunciation, I think I half way knew that, but just slipped my mind! Thanks for pointing it out, I’ll be more mindful with future postings.

      I wasn’t aware of the Say command in Terminal, that’s pretty cool!

  • http://nathanrjones.com Nathan Jones

    Great tut! I’ll definitely check that site out shortly.

    What I want to know is, since Mac’s can obviously render Excel and other file types natively, why are we limited to just view them in Quick Look?

    Seems silly, but I’m sure it would eat into their iWork sales to have a native iWorks reader app.

    • http://www.robertanthonyperez.com Robert Anthony

      Glad you found it helpful Nathan!

      I’m not sure I would say OS X can read them natively. If you watch where I drag the Quicklook plugins into the Quicklook folder you can see two plugins already there. One of them is called “OfficeBundle”, or something of the like. So the ability to render Office files, iWork and MS Office, are themselves plugins.

      On the whys of only being able to view files and not actually edit them; I’m sure the sales of iWork are part of the reason but I’m sure there are some legal reasons as well, seeing as .xls is a proprietary format.

      I’m sure there would need to be some kind of licensing if a end user could actually access and edit the files because OS X is being sold, unlike say Open Office Or Google docs, which are free.

  • Ti Mo

    cool, thank you :o )

  • http://www.akasa.com.hr Akasa

    Great, it will definitely save my time :)

  • Brock Sampson

    Dude, how did you get your Quick Look back to the pre-Lion/Mountian Lion look? I cannot find a plug in or instructions anywhere!! I hate the new look!

  • Brock Sampson

    I just watched the video again and see the scroll bars. You must have tested this on SL (Mac 10.6.8)

    • Robert Anthony

      Hi Brock, I’m not sure what you mean by “SL (Mac 10.6.8)”, but I have the scroll bars set to always show because I use a Wacom tablet/ pen, and its a pain to navigate with a pen on an OS that is, at this point, designed for touch input via the Magic Trackpad or Mouse.