Quick Look
Encyclopedia
Quick Look is a quick preview feature developed by Apple which was introduced in their operating system
, Mac OS X v10.5
"Leopard". It was announced and demonstrated at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference 2007.
at full or near-full size, depending on the size of the document relative to the desktop. It can view files including, but not limited to: PDFs, HTML
, QuickTime readable media
, plain text
and RTF
text documents, Apple Keynote, Pages
and Numbers
, ODF
documents, Microsoft Word
, Excel
, and PowerPoint
files (including OOXML), RAW
camera images.
Quick Look can also be opened in full screen by pressing Opt-Spacebar or Cmd-Opt-Y in the Finder. Press the Escape key (esc) to exit full screen.
Quick Look can also be launched from the command line (e.g. a shell in Terminal) by entering qlmanage -p[filename] .
Additionally, multi-page documents like Powerpoint slide shows can be navigated by hovering the cursor over the file's icon in the Finder, and using the left and right arrows that appear to browse the document.
+. Some examples are iChat Theater
, Time Machine
and the Cover Flow view on the Finder
.
Support for additional formats can be achieved via use of 3rd party plug-ins.
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
, Mac OS X v10.5
Mac OS X v10.5
Mac OS X Leopard is the sixth major release of Mac OS X, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Leopard was released on 26 October 2007 as the successor of Tiger , and is available in two variants: a desktop version suitable for personal computers, and a...
"Leopard". It was announced and demonstrated at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference 2007.
Overview
While OS X's Finder has always had icon previews, Quick Look allows users to look at the contents of a file in the FinderMacintosh Finder
The Finder is the default file manager used on Mac OS and Mac OS X operating systems; it is responsible for the overall user-management of files, disks, network volumes and the launching of other applications...
at full or near-full size, depending on the size of the document relative to the desktop. It can view files including, but not limited to: PDFs, HTML
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
, QuickTime readable media
QuickTime
QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...
, plain text
Plain text
In computing, plain text is the contents of an ordinary sequential file readable as textual material without much processing, usually opposed to formatted text....
and RTF
Rich Text Format
The Rich Text Format is a proprietary document file format with published specification developed by Microsoft Corporation since 1987 for Microsoft products and for cross-platform document interchange....
text documents, Apple Keynote, Pages
Pages
Pages is a word processor and page layout application developed by Apple. It is part of the iWork productivity suite and runs on the Mac OS X & iOS operating systems. The first version of Pages was announced on January 11, 2005, and was released one month later. The most recent Macintosh version,...
and Numbers
Numbers (software)
Numbers is a spreadsheet application developed by Apple Inc. as part of the iWork productivity suite alongside Keynote and Pages. Numbers 1.0 was announced on August 7, 2007 and thus it is the newest application in the iWork Suite. Numbers runs on Mac OS X v10.4 "Tiger" or newer...
, ODF
OpenDocument
The Open Document Format for Office Applications is an XML-based file format for representing electronic documents such as spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents....
documents, Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processor designed by Microsoft. It was first released in 1983 under the name Multi-Tool Word for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms including IBM PCs running DOS , the Apple Macintosh , the AT&T Unix PC , Atari ST , SCO UNIX,...
, Excel
Microsoft Excel
Microsoft Excel is a proprietary commercial spreadsheet application written and distributed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications...
, and PowerPoint
Microsoft PowerPoint
Microsoft PowerPoint, usually just called PowerPoint, is a non-free commercial presentation program developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite, and runs on Microsoft Windows and Apple's Mac OS X operating system...
files (including OOXML), RAW
RAW image format
A camera raw image file contains minimally processed data from the image sensor of either a digital camera, image scanner, or motion picture film scanner. Raw files are so named because they are not yet processed and therefore are not ready to be printed or edited with a bitmap graphics editor...
camera images.
Activation
To activate Quick Look, select the document and press the space bar (or choose File > Quick Look, Cmd-Y) and the file will be viewable in a separate window. Press space bar again to close, or double-click the window to open the file with its default application.Quick Look can also be opened in full screen by pressing Opt-Spacebar or Cmd-Opt-Y in the Finder. Press the Escape key (esc) to exit full screen.
Quick Look can also be launched from the command line (e.g. a shell in Terminal) by entering qlmanage -p
Additionally, multi-page documents like Powerpoint slide shows can be navigated by hovering the cursor over the file's icon in the Finder, and using the left and right arrows that appear to browse the document.
Implementation
Quick Look technology is implemented throughout Mac OS X v10.5Mac OS X v10.5
Mac OS X Leopard is the sixth major release of Mac OS X, Apple's desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. Leopard was released on 26 October 2007 as the successor of Tiger , and is available in two variants: a desktop version suitable for personal computers, and a...
+. Some examples are iChat Theater
IChat
iChat is an instant messaging software application developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its Mac OS X operating system. It has audio, video and screen-sharing capabilities as well as text messaging...
, Time Machine
Time Machine (Apple software)
Time Machine is a backup utility developed by Apple. It is included with Mac OS X and was introduced with the 10.5 "Leopard" release of Mac OS X. The software is designed to work with the Time Capsule as well as other internal or external drives.-Overview:...
and the Cover Flow view on the Finder
Macintosh Finder
The Finder is the default file manager used on Mac OS and Mac OS X operating systems; it is responsible for the overall user-management of files, disks, network volumes and the launching of other applications...
.
Formats not supported by default
There are various file formats not supported by default Quick Look or Cover Flow:- AIAdobe IllustratorAdobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. Illustrator is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to its competitors, CorelDraw, Xara Designer Pro and Macromedia FreeHand....
(Adobe Illustrator vector file) - Animated GIF (multiple frames stored in Graphics Interchange Format) - Only first frame preview displayed
- APEMonkey's AudioMonkey's Audio is a file format for audio data compression. Being a lossless format, Monkey's Audio does not discard data during the process of encoding, unlike lossy compression methods such as AAC, MP3, Vorbis and Musepack....
(Monkey's Audio) - APNG (Animated Portable Network Graphic) - Only first frame preview displayed
- AppleScriptAppleScriptAppleScript is a scripting language created by Apple Inc. and built into Macintosh operating systems since System 7. The term "AppleScript" may refer to the scripting system itself, or to particular scripts that are written in the AppleScript language....
(Apple's scripting language) - FLV (Flash Video File)
- FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)
- JNG (JPEG Network Graphic)
- MKVMatroskaThe Matroska Multimedia Container is an open standard free container format, a file format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks in one file. It is intended to serve as a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like movies or TV shows...
(Matroska video) - MNG (Multiple-image Network Graphic)
- OGM (Ogg Media video)
- RM, RMVBRealMediaRealMedia is a proprietary multimedia container format created by RealNetworks. Its extension is ".rm". It is typically used in conjunction with RealVideo and RealAudio and is used for streaming content over the Internet....
(Real Media video files) - SWFSWFSWF is an Adobe Flash file format used for multimedia, vector graphics and ActionScript. Originating with FutureWave Software, then transferred to Macromedia, and then coming under the control of Adobe, SWF files can contain animations or applets of varying degrees of interactivity and function.,...
(Shockwave Flash video) - textClippingTextClippingtextClipping is an extension used by Macintosh computers for strings of text, used since Mac OS 9 was released. When a string of text is selected and dragged to the desktop of a Macintosh computer, the computer automatically converts it into a .textClipping file. The icon formed can conveniently be...
(Apple's own unformatted text file) - Support added in 10.6 "Snow Leopard" - VOBVOBA VOB file is a container format in DVD-Video media. VOB can contain video, audio, subtitle, menu and navigation contents multiplexed together into a stream form. VOB is based on the MPEG program stream format, but with additional limitations and specifications in the private streams...
(Video Object, DVD format) - WVWavPackWavPack is a free, open source lossless audio compression format developed by David Bryant.-Features:WavPack compression can compress 8-, 16-, 24-, and 32-bit fixed-point, and 32-bit floating point audio files in the .WAV file format. It also supports surround sound streams and high frequency...
(WavPack) - XMLXMLExtensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....
(Extensible Markup Language text file)
Support for additional formats can be achieved via use of 3rd party plug-ins.
External links
- A directory of Quick Look Plugins for Apple’s OS X 10.5 Leopard
- Gloobus, an application based on Quick Look for LinuxLinuxLinux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...