Mac OS X

Quick Look

Quick Look

Instantly preview the contents of your documents without ever opening them. Flip through multipage PDFs, watch full-screen video, view photo slideshows and more. With a single click.

Opening files is so last year.

So you’re flipping through files in the Finder, but you’re looking for something specific and you don’t have time to open lots of files to find it. Enter Quick Look, the innovative technology that gives you a sneak peek of entire files — even multiple-page documents and video — without opening them. All you have to do is select a file and press the Space bar. An elegant transparent window appears, showing you the contents of the file instantly.

Opening Files

See everything.

Quick Look works with nearly every file on your system, including images, text files, PDF documents, movies, Keynote presentations, Mail attachments and Microsoft Word and Excel files. To see a file in Quick Look, just tap the Space bar or click the Quick Look icon in the Finder window. Then click the arrow icon to see the same file full screen — even video as it plays. If you want to open the file, just double-click the window and it launches the application that created the file.

A Quick Look back in time.

You can use Quick Look to your advantage when you’re searching for files to restore in Time Machine. Once you locate the file you’re looking for, use Quick Look to verify its contents before restoring it to the desktop.

View attachments, no detachment.

Quick Look also works in the Mail application in Mac OS X. Say you receive a message with a bunch of attachments. Instead of downloading and opening each one, you can use Quick Look to see them with a click. It’s great for viewing PDFs, Microsoft Office documents and other files. You can even view attached photos as a slideshow and add them to your iPhoto library with ease.

View Attachments