Windows: Even if you're the world's biggest Microsoft fan, you have to admit that Apple's "Quick Look" feature for macOS is pretty convenient.
If you're such a purist that you haven't even touched a Mac in the last decade or so, here's a brief introduction: You click on a file. You press the space bar. A preview of the item pops up - such as a photograph, the contents of a PDF, and so on.
It's a great way to take, well, a quick peek at something without wasting time loading an actual app.
A new, unpleasant report making the rounds today is a great reminder that your Mac's Quick Look feature - useful as it might be for previewing files by mashing your space bar - stores information about the contents of encrypted USB drives you've connected to your system.
Windows: In OS X, you can select a file and press Space for a quick preview of it. You can't do that in Windows -- at least not without Seer, a free utility that gives you the same power. Tap the space bar to bring up an image, video or audio file in a quick view, and press space again to dismiss.
Mac OS X only: Free FTP application Cyberduck's 3.0 beta release adds gobs of impressive new functionality to the already excellent client, including Leopard-only features like Quick Look. Other new features include Amazon S3 and WebDAV support, Web URL support (which opens files in your browser from a corresponding URL), and the handful of already impressive features like integration with external text editors. Cyberduck continues to add innovative features that make it a viable contender to even the most popular shareware FTP clients, like Transmit. Cyberduck is free, Mac OS X only; Windows users, check out previously mentioned Filezilla. Cyberduck
All-things-Mac web site Mac OS X Hints discusses how to automatically Quick Look certain files as soon as they're downloaded to your Downloads folder. The best approach from the thread involves setting your browser to automatically open certain file types (like your PDF or Word documents) with the Quick Look Droplet, a simple application that launches a Quick Look preview of whatever file it opens. Of course you could just set your browser to automatically open downloaded files with their default applications, but if you don't want to load up heavy software like Microsoft Word just to peek at the file's contents, this Quick Look Droplet might be a worthwhile solution. 10.5: Automatically Quick Look certain downloaded files
Mac OS X Leopard only: You wouldn't think that Leopard's new Quick Look feature would work anywhere but from Finder, but you'd be wrong. From the command line in Terminal, you can invoke Quick Look to preview the contents of a file. Tips web site Mac OS X Hints details how: the command is qlmanage -p somefile where somefile is your document. As Mac OS X Hints recommends, setting up an alias (qlf, perhaps?) is a good way to save your typing fingers when reusing this technique. Use Quick Look from Terminal
Mac OS X Leopard only: Why would you start a filename with spaces? To make it appear at the top of the list in Finder when you sort by name, that's why. Macworld's Rob Griffiths has been using this trick for a while now, and would hit the spacebar to select the files named that way. But in Leopard, the spacebar invokes Quick Look. His workaround: hold down the Option key, then hit the spacebar to select the space-starting file at the top of the list. Good to know.
File selection tricks for Leopard
Now that Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard's been out almost three months, several apps, tweaks, and plug-ins have emerged that can customise (and sometimes re-Tigerise) your Mac. Now that you're comfortable with Leopard's new features, like Stacks, Quick Look, Time Machine, and Spaces, it's time to roll up your sleeves and make your Mac look, feel, and behave just how you like. Personalize Leopard's great new features, revert the annoying ones, or just get a taste of the things you didn't know your Mac could do with our favorite Leopard tweaks.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog runs down 10 ways to use Quick Look in Leopard, including one we hadn't tried before for browsing fonts: Open a Finder window, select Cover Flow view and navigate to the font you're interested in. Click the space bar and presto! Instant preview. In fact, the Quick Look font preview is better than the Cover Flow view, because it displays the entire alphabet, not just two letters. Other Quick Look tricks include previewing the contents of ZIP archives, folders, and the Trash. 10 ways to get the most out of Quick Look
Leopard users: One simple annoyance when browsing the Trash on your Mac is that Finder won't allow you to open a file from the Trash. Your Mac may have good reasons for it, but this can be particularly frustrating when you're ready to empty the Trash but you want to make sure you don't actually need that ambiguously named file. That's because you can't open files that are in the Trash. If you try to, you'll get a message saying the file can't be opened because it's in the Trash, and if you want to open it, you'll need to drag it out of the Trash—which is kind of a pain. But weblog TUAW points out that Quick Look works with files in the Trash, meaning you can get a quick look (!) at the file to make sure it's ready for oblivion.
Leopard love: Quick Look works on files in the Trash
