When searching for a specific photograph in a folder containing hundreds of vaguely named image files, or trying to find a specific paragraph in a stack of PDF documents, opening every single file using an application like Preview or Adobe Acrobat is painfully slow. Apple solved this friction with a macOS feature called Quick Look.
Quick Look allows you to instantly preview the contents of almost any file on your Mac without actually launching the application associated with it. It is one of the most significant productivity features built into the macOS Finder.
How to Activate Quick Look
Using Quick Look requires only a single keystroke.
- Open a Finder window and navigate to a folder containing files (such as your Documents or Downloads folder).
- Click once on a file to select it. (The file name will be highlighted in blue).
- Press the Spacebar on your keyboard.
Instantly, a large window will pop up over your desktop displaying the full contents of the file. If it is an image, you will see the full-resolution photo. If it is a PDF or Word document, you will see the actual formatted text and pages. If it is an MP3 or MP4, the audio or video will immediately begin playing in the popup window.
To close the preview and return to Finder, simply press the Spacebar again.
Navigating Files with Quick Look
The true speed of Quick Look becomes apparent when you are browsing through a large directory.
You do not need to open and close Quick Look for every single file. While the Quick Look preview window is open on your screen, you can use the Arrow Keys (Up, Down, Left, Right) on your keyboard to move to the next file in the folder. The Quick Look window will remain open on your screen, instantly updating to display the contents of whichever file you just navigated to.
How to Interact with Previews
Despite being a “preview” tool, Quick Look offers surprising interactivity without requiring you to open the full application.
- Scrolling: If you Quick Look a multipage PDF or a long text document, you can use your mouse wheel or swipe up/down on your trackpad to scroll through all the pages right inside the preview window.
- Selecting Text: In modern versions of macOS, you can click and drag your cursor over text inside a Quick Look preview (even text inside an image, thanks to Live Text) to copy it to your clipboard.
- Markup and Editing: In the top right corner of the Quick Look window, you will often see a small marker icon. Clicking this opens the Markup toolbar, allowing you to instantly crop an image, draw an arrow, or sign a PDF document, without ever launching an editing application.
- Sharing: Next to the Markup icon is the standard Apple Share button (a square with an upward arrow). You can use this to instantly AirDrop or email the file you are currently previewing.
Opening the File
If you decide that you need to make deeper edits to the file you are previewing, you do not need to close Quick Look and double-click the file.
Look at the top right corner of the Quick Look window. You will see a button that says Open with [Application Name] (for example, “Open with Preview” or “Open with Microsoft Word”). Clicking this button will transition the file from the Quick Look popup directly into its native application.