10 Places You Can Use Quick Look To Preview Files

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at different places that you can use Quick Look on your Mac.

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The most common place to use Quick Look is in the Finder. This is where most people already know it is there. But in case you don't this is how it works. You select a file in the Finder, like this photo right here. Now you could just double click it to open it in a default app or drag and drop it into the Dock to open it up in another app. But let's say you want to preview the file first to make sure it is the right one. You can do that with Quick Look.

The easiest way to bring it up is to use the Spacebar. Just with the file selected tap the spacebar and it brings up Quick Look. That's what this little window here is called. With Quick Look you can do various things. Like, for instance, you can move the window around like I showed there. You can also resize the window if you want for a closer look. You can use the trackpad with two fingers to zoom in and zoom out. There is usually a variety of options up at the top depending upon what the content is. Like sometimes you can do Markup like with this image here. You can rotate. You can Share or you can open it in the default app. You can even go full screen with this button here. You can use the Spacebar again to close Quick Look or click on the X button here at the top left and you can select another file.

Here's a PDF file. I'm going to use Quick Look for that and you can see it will show me the contents of the PDF file. It's not just for images. You can zoom in and zoom out and move this window around. In fact, you can leave the Quick Look window open and select another file. So I'll select this Pages file here. The Quick Look window will change to show you a preview for this document. So you can see it works with lots of other types of documents. Not just things like images and PDFs. Pretty much all the Apple Apps, like Pages, Numbers, Keynote and such will support Quick Look for previewing and a lot of third party apps do so as well.

But a lot of people don't know there are other places you can use Quick Look. Places where it is even more handy because you want to preview the file before you open it or import it. So, for instance, I'm going to go to Pages here. Let's say in Pages I go to open a new document. But I want to make sure it is the right one. This is the Open Dialogue. This is what you get if you start Pages fresh and no document is open or you go to File, Open. You can select a file here and just like with the Finder you can use the Spacebar and preview the contents of that file in Quick Look to make sure it is the right one before you select it and open it.

Quick Look works almost universally in any app with an Open Dialogue. Now sometimes apps that you import content into a current document or into a library. For instance, in the Photos App here you go to File, and then Import you can import files and you can use Quick Look in Import Dialogues as well. So, I can check to see what a photo is before I decide to choose it for import. So let's say you wanted to import something into a Pages document. You don't actually have a menu item called Import here but you have Insert and then Choose which allows you to import a file. So I could use Quick Look here in this Import Dialogue to preview the image before I select it to insert in the document.

Now in Mail you often attach files to email messages. You can use the Attach Button right here or you can use File and then Attach files. Either way you end up with this dialogue here that allows you to select a file. You can select the file and before you click Choose File you can use the Spacebar and Quick Look. Then you can make sure the file is the right one.

Likewise online on a webpage sometimes you want to choose a file to upload. So, for instance on this webpage you can click here to choose a file or video to upload. It will open the Upload Dialogue here. It says Choose File To Upload at the top. You can then select a file here and to get a closer look at it you can use the Spacebar to Quick Look before you choose it.

Now starting very recently you can use Quick Look in Spotlight as well to preview the files there. So if you use Command Space to start a Spotlight search and then you start the search, like that, you can use the Arrow keys to go down to select one and before you decide to click on it to open it you can use the Spacebar and you get Quick Look here. You can use the Arrow keys to actually view the different documents that are there.

Sometimes apps allow you to use Quick Look to get a closer look at the content inside of a document. So, for instance, the rather new Freeform App does this. I can go into a board here I've created and I've got these images. If I select an image notice that there is actually a button here and you can click it to bring up Quick Look to get a closer look at the image. You can also use the Spacebar. So I can select this one here and use the Spacebar to Quick Look that image. Here's an example of a 3D object in a board and I can select it here and use Quick Look to view it and even manipulate it in 3D.

So before I showed you how to use Quick Look to decide which file to import as an attachment for a message. But you can also use it while viewing messages. So here's a message I received and there is an image in there. I can select the image with just one click and use the Spacebar and bring up a closer view in Quick Look. The same will work for PDF documents and other things as well.

The same is true in the Messages App. If you get an attachment in a message you can click it once to select it and then the Spacebar will bring up Quick Look. Keep in mind in that almost all cases where you use the Spacebar to bring up Quick Look you can also Control Click, two-finger click on a trackpad or right click on a mouse and bring up the Context Menu. You should be able to see Quick Look there as an option.

You can also use Quick Look in the Notes App. So here I've got a note that is an image and a PDF. I can select the image here, use the Spacebar to bring up Quick Look or I can two-finger click on it and you'll see Quick Look right there. Here's a PDF. It is a little tricky to select it. But if you select it just right you can just select the PDF and then use Spacebar to Quick Look at the PDF.

So there are ten different places where you can use Quick Look on your Mac. But it doesn't stop there. It can be used in a lot of other places both in native apps and third party apps. For instance, here's an example of an unlikely place to find it. I'm in Reminders here. I've got a reminder with a photo attached to the reminder. I can click to select this reminder and use the Spacebar and Quick Look the photo that's attached. So you can find it in lots of different situations like that. More or less if you can select an image or PDF or a video or a sound file or anything that can be reviewed in Quick Look then you can usually use the Spacebar or the Context Menu to bring Quick Look up. 

So I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.