24 Things You May Not Have Known You Could Do With Quick Look

Quick Look is a great way to preview files on your Mac before opening them. But you can also do a lot with files right in Quick Look.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you some things you can do with Quick Look that you may not have known about. 
So, Quick Look on your Mac is the easiest way to preview a file without opening it. For instance here I am in the Finder and if I want to see what this image looks like right here I can select it and then press the Spacebar. Then I get the Quick Look window. It allows me to see the image clearly and another press of the Spacebar will close Quick Look  window. Often I find that people don't realize that you can still navigate around in the Finder with the Quick Look window open. So, for instance, notice I have this file selected. If I use the Down Arrow it goes to the next file. The Up Arrow will go up. If I use Quick Look with the Spacebar I can do that and it will go to the next file. The Quick Look window will simply show me the next file. I can, in fact, shrink the Quick Look window and move it off to the side. I can select any file I want using the pointer like that. Now when viewing an image, of course, it shows you the image. If you view another type of file it will show you the contents of that file. If the file is a document, like a PDF file or a Pages document and there is more than one page to it you can see all the pages. For instance, let's take a look at this PDF right here. If I press the Spacebar to bring up Quick Look I get a preview of it and I see the pages here. I can scroll up and down with my mouse or trackpad and it will show me which page I'm on. Or I can just click on the page here in the sidebar to jump to it. 
How this works depends on the type of document. For instance here's a Pages document. If I Quick Look that I won't get the thumbnails to the right. But I do get the entire document. I can scroll through it pretty easily. But something like a Numbers document you can actually look at the different sheets in the document. 
Now when viewing a document with text in it, like this Pages document, you can certainly preview it and then decide to open it in the app. But, you can also select Text right here. So if you just wanted to copy some text from a document, select it and then use Command C to copy. Now you can paste it somewhere else. This works just about anywhere there is text even images you can use Command C to copy. 
Now, of course, viewing any image is going to show you the image. But there is something called Live Text that is on your Mac that allows you to select text when you're using an app, say, like Preview. You can use that in Quick Look at well. For instance I can go here into the text even though this is an image not a text file and I can select text and once I have it selected I can Copy it and Paste it somewhere else. This also works with Data Detectors. Data Detectors are something when you see like an address or an email address or a date & time, it can help you use that data to do something like create a contact. In this case here you see if I control click or two-finger click on this I get Add to Contacts or Show Address, things like that. If I select a date, like this, I can create an event, create a reminder, show this date in the calendar, and things like that. But it will also work on any kind of file where you can read text. So here's a regular text file. I can select time here and I can create an event, create a reminder. 
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A lot of people don't realize you can use Quick Look to preview files that aren't even Apple Applications. For instance you can use it for Microsoft Word documents, like this one, so it is a handy way to see the contents of a word document even if you don't have Microsoft Word or here's an Excel document. You see how I can even jump to different sheets inside of it. You can even do things like CSV files. You can look at them. Even though the CSV file is plain text it actually will show it to you as a table. 
Another thing you can preview is an ICS file. An ICS file is a file that will allow you to add an event to your calendar. We commonly get these when we buy an airplane ticket or a ticket to some event and then it says Add to Your Calendar. What you get is an  ICS file. You double click on it and it adds that event to the calendar. You can preview these selected and then press Spacebar and it will show you the event in a Calendar like format and better still it shows you existing events in your calendar. So you can quickly look at this, see if there's a conflict, and not even have to open up the Calendar App. 
Another interesting file that you can preview with Quick Look is a Web Location File. This is when you Drag & Drop a URL from Safari to a Finder window. You get this bookmark file which you can double click, open it up in your default. You can use Quick Look to actually preview the location of that. It will load up the webpage in a Quick Look window.
Now if you double click on a file it will open up in the default app. For instance this JPEG image will open up in Preview, the default app for that file type. But if you want to know what the default app is before you open it you can do it a couple of ways. One is you can use Command i to get info and then you can see Open With and you can see what the default app is there. But Quick Look will do it too. You press the Spacebar. Notice the button at the top right. It tells you the name of the app it will open it with. You can use this button so you can preview it first in Quick Look and then decide, yes you do want to open it and then click the button here and it will open it. 
But another interesting thing about this button is if you Control Click on it, or two-finger click on a trackpad, right click on a mouse it actually gives you a list of all apps that will handle this type of file. So the default ones is at the top. But you can choose another one to open it instead. 
Now when you use Quick Look to preview an image not only can you select the text in the image, like that, but if you Control Click on it you can see a variety of different things including Translate. 
Now one of the things you can do in Quick Look with an image is you can rotate it. So if this was the wrong orientation I can use this button up here to rotate it to the left. If I hold the Option Key down notice the arrow changes to the other direction. I can rotate to the right. This also works with videos. If I use Quick Look you can see I can preview the video here but I have the ability to rotate the video if it is the wrong orientation. 
Also you can use Quick Look to copy the contents of an image. This is different than copying the file which copies the whole file and may actually work to paste it into some apps. But other times you just want to copy the actual image inside. So I can Control Click, two-finger click, or right click here and I can choose Copy Image to copy the entire image. I can also choose Copy Subject which uses the functionality to isolate the subject from the background. You find this in the Photos App, you find it in Preview but you can do it here in Quick Look without even opening up the app. As a matter of fact you can use Share Subject right here to instantly copy the subject and go right to an app, say like Mail, with just the subject copied. Not the entire image. 
You can also use all the Markup Tools in Quick Look. So if I look at a PDF like this I can certainly open it up in Preview and use Markup Tools. But I can also click on the Markup Tools right here in Quick Look. I'm still in Quick Look here and I can still do things like add shapes and arrows and things like that and then I can Share it directly from here. I can revert or Done to apply the changes to the document. 
Now in Photos and in Preview you can also identify objects. But you can do it in Quick Look as well. Just wait a second and you might see this little icon appear here at the top. When it does it means it has identified an object here. You click it and you'll see the identification icon there and then it will tell you information here to the right. This will work with plants and animals but also for landmarks. So for instance for this one you can see it appears and I can get info on it and it will tell me about the object it has identified.
Let's go back to video for a minute here. I can certainly open this up in Quick Time Player or a video editing app and trim it. But I can do it in Quick Look as well. In addition to having this little rotate button I've also got the Trim Button here and it allows me to trim the video. So cutting off portions of the beginning and end. If I click Done it will ask if I want to replace the existing video or Save it as a new file. 
Note you can also preview and trim some kinds of audio files. This MP3 file here doesn't come up with a trim function. But this M4A file actually does. You can see here I've got Trim and I can actually trim the audio.
Now usually when you use Quick Look you just press the spacebar and it opens up a Quick Look window. You can then go up here to this button at the top left, click it and will go full screen showing you the image taking up everything and clearing away everything else so you can focus on the image. You can then use the Escape Key or Click here to go back to the regular window. 
Now you can start full screen by holding the Option Key and pressing Spacebar. Notice it goes right to full screen. 
You can also choose several files. Like these four images here or even add a file of a different type, like a video here or let's go ahead and add a text file as well. Now if I press Spacebar it will allow me to Quick Look all of them together. Notice I have these arrows here. I can click on those or just use the right arrow and go through just those files and it will just loop through the files that are selected there, like that. I can combine this with full screen here if I want. Notice I've got these arrows here and I can flip through all of them.
Making basically a slideshow. In fact you've got a Play and Pause button here and this will act just as a slideshow. So a quick way to do a slideshow is, say, select a few images like this, press the Spacebar, and then go full screen. Or, better still, use Option Spacebar and it goes full screen and it is already playing slideshow. So it is going to go to the next one and to the next one after that until you use the Pause button here to stop it. 
In addition notice if you have a few files selected and you use Quick Look you can now use this button up here to create an index sheet that shows all of the ones you have selected. It can be more than just images as well. Let's add a Pages document here and also a video and if I use Spacebar and then click here I can see those six files here in an index sheet. I can actually click on one and it will go to it. I can go back to the index sheet like that. 
This also looks good in full screen if you go full screen you've still got the index sheet button here and this is how it looks. You can jump to each individual one and then back to the index sheet. 
Now notice how, when you do go full screen, you get this black background. That does something interesting when you select say a text file. Something that doesn't have its own background color. Usually you get black text on a white background. But if you go full screen it will give you white text on a black background. So if you want to see that to begin with you can just use Option and Space to jump right to the full screen view. 
Now so far we've looked at all sorts of different kinds of files. But we haven't looked at Folders. If you select a Folder and you use Quick Look you'll get just the Folder icon here but you get some interesting information to the right. You get the total size of all the files in that Folder and how many items there are in it in addition to a last modified date. It's the same information you get when you use Command i here but with Quick Look you can still navigate between different items. So let's use Spacebar here and I'll shrink this window and move it over to the right. Now I can select other Folders, like this, and you can see how I can get the data on those folders pretty easily. 
Now another place you can use Quick Look is when you have Search results. So I'm going to use the Finder Search here and then search for, let's say, JPEG images here in the documents Folder. I'm going to get all these results here. So these are files throughout my documents folder. Notice I can select one and then use Quick Look to see what's there. I can even now jump around in this list. The Quick Look window always remains on top. I can easily preview what's there. 
Now Quick Look also works in Spotlight. So if you use Command Space to bring up Spotlight, then you search for something, like this, you're going to get various results. Some of those results may be Files. So we go down here to images, for instance. It's going to show me image files that match that. If I select one I can use Quick Look to get a better preview of it. This works as well in Documents. So here is a document, for instance, and I can preview what's in that Pages file with Quick Look. As a matter of fact in the past Spotlight had its own little preview functionality. But now it relies completely on Quick Look to let you preview anything you find here. 
You can also use Quick Look inside of some apps to view things. So, for instance, here in Freeform I've got some images and I can select one and use the Spacebar and it will open up Quick Look. There's even a little Quick Look button there if I want to click that instead. In Mail if you've got an image in Mail and you want to get a better look at it you can select it and then press Spacebar and it opens up Quick Look to show you a larger version of it. Messages is another place where you can click to select an image and then press Spacebar to view it in Quick Look. 
So I hope this encourages you to explore and use Quick Look more on your Mac. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 11 Responses to “24 Things You May Not Have Known You Could Do With Quick Look”

roy whelden

2 months ago

Wonderful and informative.
Thank you.

Sheldon

Thanks bunches

Khazar

Great video! Facilitates working with files in a great way.

Kim

Great Video as ever.

Mark Gerber

I always like how you keep a “beginner’s eye” on these topics and approach them as if seeing them for the first time.
I’m frequently surprised at how many things have slipped past me because I had become “GUI blind”—having just become used to seeing things and had forgotten to explore other buttons or tried clicking with modifier keys.
Thank you!

Mike cusick

Very helpful - thank you - I learn something every time

Larry

Gary, Thanks again for expanding my knowledge about my Apple MacBook capabilities. Quick Look was something I had not been using, but from now on it will save me a lot of time.

Gil

I've used Quick Look for a long time, but still came away learning new ways to use it from this video. Thanks for the tips!

Caroline

1 month ago

Oh wow, this video has taught me loads of new uses of Quick Look, even though I've been using it for years. So helpful! Thanks masses, Gary!

Michael Clair

Great video! I’ve been using Quick Look for years and still learned something new in this video. Thanks!

Ed Adams

4 weeks ago

Wow Gary.. Great video on a tool I already used but after seeing the video I only use 2% of it..