Quick View For Files - Peek

[RXminuS]

Being able to select any file in any window (explorer but especially in file upload dialogs) and by pressing spacebar see a quick preview of the file.

There's several tools already that copy this popular MacOS feature but they never fully integrate with the OS well. They usually only work in explorer.exe but this feature is most useful if you want to upload a certain file to a website and you're trying to see a slightly larger preview to make sure you picked the correct version of a document or logo.

Check out #99 which had some great comments too.

[phuclv90]

Spacebar cannot be used for this because it's already used for toggling file selection status

[Stanzilla]

Check out https://github.com/QL-Win/QuickLook there is already an issue over there QL-Win/QuickLook#626 asking for inclusion in PowerToys.

[vivadavid]

Hi!

I also think it would be a great idea if users could press the space key and get a little preview window on top of file explorer, as it's implemented on MacOS (or on Windows through Seer or QuickLook). I personally keep the preview panel off because it takes space and, in addition to this, usually you don't want to get a preview of every file. Pressing the space key to display a little preview window seems to me like an intuitive solution worth implementing. I keep my fingers crossed.

[ThoAppelsin]

QuickLook is perfect, and available as a Microsoft Store application. I enjoy the updates via the store more than updating via Chocolatey (where I get the PowerToys). Still, I wouldn't mind one less icon on my taskbar if QuickLook was merged into PowerToys.

I don't enjoy the idea of PowerToys swallowing the QuickLook, though. I sincerely think that QuickLook is single-handedly enables more productivity than the entire PowerToys combined, although PowerRename is really nice, too.

[Stanzilla]

QuickLook has limited functionality if installed via the store btw. You'll want to use the msi

[Martin-Hausleitner]

There is already a software called quicklook in the microsoft store you can implement that

[Cdddo]

This would be a great addition, I use Quicklook all the time... its a feature I used constantly on MacOs. I love its ability to pin windows to stay always on top. Use that often with pdfs, images and text files. The file explorer preview pane is often buggy and slow so I tend not to use it, and Quicklook works much faster and unintrusively.

[jaanli]

Yes this would be awesome! Also migrating from mac.

[LimonPelador]

Unless we have missed something, the problem with QuickLook is that it requires the user to select the file before pressing the SPACEBAR for a preview. The feature is great, unless you are trying to preserve a prior photo or file selection as an anchor point to extend a selection over a large group of files. Sometimes that anchor point is many screens above and inconvenient to find once lost.

See the comment #23722 for an explanation of a live hover feature that others have suggested for previewing files. A large preview (like QuickLook ) triggered by simply hovering over a file would eliminate the need to ever select the file first. We would also recommend configuration options to toggle this feature ON/OFF, set the delay from immediate to longer delays, and options to set the size or resolution of the previews.

Such a feature would be an incredibly powerful feature for organizing and processing large quantities of photos or other documents with ease.

[DraakjeYoblama]

@LimonPelador I migth be misunderstanding, but QL-Win/QuickLook has an option to pin a file you're looking at. That way you don't lose the file you had selected before. (It would be nice if that had a button to reselect a pinned item in file browser)

I think a lot of people wouldn't like random stuff opening on hover, although the option to choose either or both would be great.

Peek is planned for the next version, so I guess we'll see how it works in a month or so

[htcfreek]

Can someone please update the single todo item issues if they are done.

[yaira2]

@crutkas is there an API or way we can support this feature in Files? files-community/Files#12432

[Jay-o-Way]

CC @SamChaps ⬆️

[crutkas]

@yaira2 open up a new issue and let’s kick off a discussion

[yaira2]

I opened an issue #26422

[jaimecbernardo]

This has been shipped for 0.70.0. Please updated to the latest release. Thank you.

[Remzi1993]

Check out https://github.com/QL-Win/QuickLook there is already an issue over there QL-Win/QuickLook#626 asking for inclusion in PowerToys.

I think the licensing will conflict since their project is licensed GPL-3.0 (strong copyleft) and this project uses the MIT license (permissive licenses). This would mean that this whole project needs to be licensed GPL-3.0, because GPL-3.0 demands the same strong copyright protections and a similar license. I think this would be in conflict of what the maintainers want for this project.