The Preview pane gives you so much more than just a simple preview. You can view lots of information about a file, and even change things like the file name and tags. You can customize what is shown in the Preview Pane for each file type.
Hal: The Preview app is a very different thing. First, it is a while app that you open files with, not something you would use to view the contents of a file without opening it at all. Second, it only works with images, PDFs and a few other things. Not videos, sound files and many other file types. Third, Preview has markup tools and ways to convert and export images.
Lindy
1 week ago
OMG…this is an awesome tip. I use quicklook a lot but this is so much better for my purposes. Thanks, Gary, for being my Mac Guru.
Charles Solomon
6 days ago
Gary, when you showed how to use the … to add functions to Finder Preview I noticed that one of the options is “Create Searchable PDF.” That means Mac OS has given us an OCR engine to use with non-searchable PDFs, PDFs that are images! And it doesn’t just create a mass of text, it preserves formatting such as Bold and Underline and Center. Unless a person has Adobe products, that is huge! It is also relevant to your recent comment on OwlOCR.
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Gary…An amazing drill-down…thanks, but I’m curious how this differs from the PREVIEW app. Thanks…Hal
Hal: The Preview app is a very different thing. First, it is a while app that you open files with, not something you would use to view the contents of a file without opening it at all. Second, it only works with images, PDFs and a few other things. Not videos, sound files and many other file types. Third, Preview has markup tools and ways to convert and export images.
OMG…this is an awesome tip. I use quicklook a lot but this is so much better for my purposes. Thanks, Gary, for being my Mac Guru.
Gary, when you showed how to use the … to add functions to Finder Preview I noticed that one of the options is “Create Searchable PDF.” That means Mac OS has given us an OCR engine to use with non-searchable PDFs, PDFs that are images! And it doesn’t just create a mass of text, it preserves formatting such as Bold and Underline and Center. Unless a person has Adobe products, that is huge! It is also relevant to your recent comment on OwlOCR.