Mac 101: Using Quick Look
So far as I can tell, practically everybody loves Leopard's Quick Look previewer. For today's Mac 101 I thought I'd share a few tips about using Quick Look.
- First is nice little tip from Mac OS X Hints about zooming in Quick Look. If you invoke Quick Look with the spacebar you can actually zoom in on the image in a couple of ways. You can hold down the option key and use your mouse's scrollwheel/ball (or two-finder scrolling on a touchpad) to zoom in and out. You can also zoom in by holding down the option key and clicking on the image, or zoom out by holding shift-option. While zoomed in you can also click and drag to pan the image. Strangely, the same shortcuts don't work with PDFs, but you can still zoom in and out with ? + and ? - (command plus/minus) with the Quick Look HUD selected.
- The second is that you can use Quick Look with more than one file at a time. So if you select several files in the Finder by command-clicking and then invoke Quick Look with the spacebar, you can scroll between the images with the arrow keys. However, there's also a nifty index sheet icon at the bottom that will bring up a kind of contact sheet with the selected files (as above).
- Finally, I know some folks had complained that the slideshow option has disappeared from the Finder's contextual menu. But if you select a group of files in the Finder and then invoke Quick Look you'll also see a play button that runs a slideshow in the Quick Look HUD.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
mark said 10:08AM on 11-14-2007
Not to be missed: Try QuickLook with a music file. Go to your iTunes Music folder, pick a file, and click the spacebar.
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canestrini said 10:15AM on 11-14-2007
The last word: Heads-Up-Display??
Is it really called HUD when it's not in a helmet or in direkt relation to ones viewing angle?
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mark said 10:16AM on 11-14-2007
Not to be missed: Try QuickLook on music files. Go to the iTunes Music folder, select a music file, and hit the spacebar.
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Scott said 10:28AM on 11-14-2007
My favorite part of QuickLook is that you can FINALLY view images in ORDER! I never understood why the slideshow feature in Tiger would scramble the files (and it may still in Leopard). But with Quicklook, they display sequentially, at least in the one-image-at-a-time view. I'm not sure about the index sheet view.
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Mitch said 10:29AM on 11-14-2007
I can't get over how useful Quicklook is.
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DrWho said 10:30AM on 11-14-2007
@2 nice!
First time it seemed to play with no sound, tried again and sound came booming out.
Also just noticed that finder displays artwork for music files. Maybe it always did - I rarely poke around int he music library.
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Douglas F Shearer said 10:31AM on 11-14-2007
Does Quicklook work from stacks?
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brian said 11:02AM on 11-14-2007
My #1 question is... can you change it to work with something other than the spacebar? I changed Spotlight from command-space to control-space because all Adobe apps use command-space for zoom but I can't find a way to change the Quick Look key. For over ten years, I've been pressing space to jump to the first (alphabetical) file in a folder--spacebar is the only thing that always works, because sometimes the first file name starts with a number, an underscore, a hyphen, or even a space. Spacebar is a big, easy-to-hit target that always selects the first file, no matter what. I didn't see a preference... is there a 'defaults write' command I can invoke?
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Jeff Greenstein said 11:43AM on 11-14-2007
Only problem is, Quick Look chokes on large MP3 libraries. I have 50,000+ sound files, and QL previews take over 30 seconds to open... sigh...
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robogobo said 5:04PM on 12-03-2007
sounds like you need a faster mac.
Dasutin said 11:48AM on 11-14-2007
It would be nice if videos could come with a option where you can scale the video, from 100% or 200%, I hate when in quick view, videos are sometimes too small and I'm always resizing, but quick view is very nice!
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Howard said 11:56AM on 11-14-2007
I'd just like the QuickLook window to not disappear when the Finder is in the background... or if you could "lock" items in quick view, so if you clicked on something else, the contents of the QuickLook window wouldn't change...otherwise it's nice.
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Gene Cowan said 11:58AM on 11-14-2007
QuickLook is useful once you get used to having it there. Still, I wish Apple hadn't REMOVED functionality from the Finder; for example, the Quicktime previews in Column View. QuickLook is less capable than what it replaces -- when "quicklooking" a video or music, there is no volume control. The speaker icon in QuickLook simply mutes or unmutes, there is no way to adjust the volume.
As with the Stacks feature, it seems that Apple always replaces a well-used feature with one that is less capable but more glamorous.
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thekevinmonster said 12:15PM on 11-14-2007
I was surprised that Apple would implement Quick Look; after all, even Windows 95 had a similar thing way back. Of course, it wasn't used very well.
Aside from that, I find myself using it all the time. And, there is one terribly silly UI issue: if you click on a folder and press the space bar, you quick look at the folder icon.
Who would want to do that? I dont' want to sit and carefulyl select all the files in that one folder. I want to click on the folder and quick-look them all at once!
Also, a really cool feature is the ability to add images from Quick Look right into iPhoto. That way, it's easy to go through some random photo downloads or an archive someone sent you and pop them into iPhoto while previewing them.
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xamevou said 12:18PM on 11-14-2007
Pressing option (alt), the quicklook button changes to slideshow button.
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Micah Diamond said 12:49PM on 11-14-2007
Another handy Quicklook tip is one that immediately let's you jump into slideshow mode, thereby allowing you a full screen preview of images, or a full screen display of video files - simply highlight a media file, then press Option+Command+Y
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byaah said 1:21PM on 11-14-2007
@8
I don't know if you knew it but option+space jumps to the first file like you wanted. But I do echo your sentiments that the user should get more control over the triggers.
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BobbyW said 1:42PM on 11-14-2007
You used to be able to bring the grid / index view up with the I key. I want that back!
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robogobo said 5:06PM on 12-03-2007
bobby, it still works that way for me.
Registered99 said 1:58PM on 11-14-2007
"(or two-finder scrolling on a touchpad)"
=
"(or two-finger scrolling on a touchpad)"
I think.
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