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TUAW Tips: Get a better view with Quick Look

by John Burke Oct 2nd 2009 at 7:00AM

Quick Look is such an awesome feature of Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6, making it really fun and easy to view files and folders from anywhere on your Mac. But what happens when you have a folder with multiple items and want to get a better idea of what's inside? Well, you could always just open the folder in Finder, but there's a cool modification you can make to get an even quicker view.


You can get this working on your Mac in a few simple steps:
  1. Quit/Relaunch Finder using the Force Quit menu
  2. Open Terminal
  3. Paste (or type) the following command: defaults write com.apple.Finder QLEnableXRayFolders 1
  4. Relaunch Finder
The contents of the folder will now be shown when you use Quick Look. In true Apple elegance, the files will even fade and cycle through the contents.

[via Mac OS X Hints]

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Quick Look is such an awesome feature of Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6, making it really fun and easy to view files and folders from anywhere on...
 

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Alex

Damn that's pretty.

October 05 2009 at 11:23 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mark West

Does this work in SL? Is it only for images or all files? Thanks.

October 03 2009 at 11:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
James Dooley

Cool, thanks!

October 03 2009 at 8:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
BryanEnders

Anyone know where the image used for this feature is located? I remember finding it a while back (the old style folder in Leopard) and thinking, "I guess Apple worked on an alternate design for the new folders," not knowing that this feature existed.

I wish I had saved the path. I'm almost certain it was in /System/Library/CoreServices somewhere.

October 03 2009 at 8:15 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tyler

I wish there was a way to make the folders' actual icons do this instead of just being in quick look; I think it could help you visually identify folders quicker.

October 03 2009 at 5:08 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
beacantor@gmail.com

Neat trick.

I do have to ask. Why is this post tagged with the word "false" ?

October 03 2009 at 9:08 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to beacantor@gmail.com's comment
BryanEnders

I'd like to know as well. It's not the only post marked as such on TUAW. Click the tag and it bring up the "false posts" page—made me laugh. If TUAW knows it's false and published anyway, doesn't that make it disinformation? (That's a joke, don't analyze it)

October 03 2009 at 8:18 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
chris

Is there a way to make this work for all discs? I am booting off of a Wintec Filemate 48 gig SSD and it works great for folder on the SSD but doesn't work for any of the files on the internal drive. Any suggestions?

October 03 2009 at 2:30 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
julian

this is a freaking cool tip
thanks!

October 03 2009 at 1:14 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jon

Best TUAW tip ever! Great job!

October 02 2009 at 6:06 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
DataWizard

There's a reason this isn't enabled by default though. If you quick look a folder with tons of items, like Library, it hangs Finder. (Well, not really hang, but when it takes 20 minutes for it to get back on track it's as good as a hang.) :(

October 02 2009 at 4:57 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to DataWizard's comment
DataWizard

Well, I can't get it to happen again, so I'm not sure if it was a minor glitch in this or what, but for now I'm fine with my non x ray folders. :)

October 02 2009 at 5:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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