A macOS Quick Look extension that previews Apple's CCF (Color Compressed Font) sidecar files — the proprietary emoji bitmap format used in iOS 8.3–9.3.
Selecting a .ccf file in Finder (or pressing Space) renders a grid of 30 curated emoji decoded directly from the CCF image records. When a companion .ttf file is present in the same directory, glyph IDs are resolved via cmap parsing so the preview shows a consistent, recognisable set of faces, objects, and keycap sequences.
| Version | Magic | iOS | Header |
|---|---|---|---|
| v1 | \x40\x30\x20\x10 |
8.x | 48 112 B |
| v2 | fcca |
9.x | 105 332 B |
Both versions use the same image-record format: a 40-byte header followed by a packed 21-bit BGR palette, a run-length table (Mode A uniform alpha / Mode B per-pixel alpha), and an LSB-first bit-stream of palette-index opcodes.
- macOS 12.4+
- Xcode 13+ (any version with macOS 12 SDK)
- Open
ACCF-QuickLook.xcodeprojin Xcode. - Build & Run the ACCF-QuickLook app target (installs the extension).
- Reset Quick Look to pick up the new extension:
qlmanage -r && qlmanage -r cache
# Preview a CCF file (companion TTF must be in the same directory for curated glyphs)
qlmanage -p /path/to/AppleColorEmoji@2x.ccf
# Watch extension logs
log stream --predicate 'subsystem == "com.ps.ACCF-QuickLook.ACCFQuickLook"' --level debugIf the preview does not update after a rebuild, kill the running extension process:
pkill -f ACCFQuickLookWhen a companion .ttf is found, the preview renders:
- Row 1 — faces & animals: 😃 😇 😍 😜 😸 🙈 🐺 🐰 👽 🐉
- Row 2 — objects & food: 💰 🏡 🎅 🍪 🍕 🚀 🚻 💩 📷 📦
- Row 3 — keycap digits: 1️⃣ 2️⃣ 3️⃣ 4️⃣ 5️⃣ 6️⃣ 7️⃣ 8️⃣ 9️⃣ 0️⃣
Simple codepoints are resolved through direct cmap format-12 parsing. Keycap sequences (multi-codepoint ligatures) are resolved via CoreText shaping to handle morx/GSUB substitution.
Without a companion TTF, the first 30 unique images from the largest available tier are shown instead.
ACCF-QuickLook/ Host app (required to install the extension)
ACCFQuickLook/
CCFDecoder.swift CCF binary parser & image decoder
PreviewProvider.swift QLPreviewProvider implementation
Info.plist Extension manifest (UTI, QLIsDataBasedPreview)
ACCFQuickLook.entitlements
See LICENSE.