Add These Plugins to ‘Quick Look’ on Your Mac

Quick Look is one of your Mac’s best features. With it, you can highlight any file and press the space bar to view image previews, see text inside certain files, and check other information such as the file size. Many of us use this feature every day to preview files without needing to open them first — and you can install plugins to make Quick Look even more useful.

View the contents of compressed files

BetterZipQL is an excellent app that allows you to view the contents of various compressed file formats (zip, rar, and 7z) as easily as if they were regular files. Once you install the app, go to its settings page and select the Quick Look tab. Enable all options here to make the most of the app.

Check if package files are safe to install

Some apps, such as Zoom, are available as macOS installer package (.pkg) files. Suspicious Package is an app that lets you quickly verify what’s inside a package file without opening it. When you install the app, it automatically adds its features to Quick Look.

Press the space bar after selecting any .pkg file on your Mac and the app will tell you what’s inside, whether the app has been notarized by Apple, as well as some information about the developer. Suspicious Package can also give you a look inside disk image files (.dmg), but not via its Quick Look plug-in.

Preview an ebook

For a quick preview of an ebook before you start reading it, install a Spotlight plug-in called epub-quicklook. The install instructions on its GitHub page are easy to follow, but macOS might block the plug-in initially. You can get around these restrictions by going to System Settings > Privacy & Security and manually letting the plug-in run. Once it’s installed, press the space bar on any epub file on your Mac for a quick preview of its cover and an introduction to the book.

View what’s inside a torrent file

By default, macOS doesn’t let you view the contents of a torrent file. Normally, you have add the file to a torrent client, such as Transmission, and view the full list of files using that app. BitTorrent QuickLook Generator helps you skip that step, so you can press a single key to reveal everything within any torrent file.

Download the app, install it, select a torrent file, and press the space bar. You’ll now see the full list of files it contains. Remember, this is useful only to check for duplicates, and not really a way to check if the files are safe. Anyone can easily rename files inside a torrent to hide malware, so be sure to download from trusted sources only.

See better thumbnails for video files

macOS doesn’t do a stellar job with thumbnails for video file formats such as mkv. You can fix that by installing QLVideo. Once you do, run the app once and click the Refresh button within the app.

Then, select any video files that don’t have a thumbnail (such as mkv, avi, or webm files), and press the space bar. You’ll now see multiple screen grabs from the video file, so you can instantly gauge the quality of the video. You’ll also notice these files now have useful thumbnails, instead of the app icon for their default video player.