Learn how to use Quick Look to view the contents of a document on the Mac without opening it.
In this lesson for the Mac, I show you how you can preview a document in a Finder window using Quick Look. With Quick Look, you can see the contents of a document, such as an image or Numbers document, without opening it up. You do this by selecting the document and pressing the space bar. See how to preview a document in a Finder window using Quick Look on the Mac.
Video Transcript (video also has closed captions):
In this video, I’m going to show you how you use Quick Look to get a quick look of your documents without opening them on the Mac. Now I’m going to show you in Mac OS Big Sur, but this does work in older versions of Mac OS as well. So if you’re using an older version of Mac OS such as Catalina or Mojave, you can still use this same technique to get a quick look of documents without actually opening them. Let’s see how Quick Look works on them. Let’s go to my Mac.
So if you look at my Desktop here, you’re going to see I have a few different documents. I have here a Numbers document. I have an EPUB document, which is my newsletter. I also have an image or a few different images here.
Well, if we look at some of the titles here, particularly this one here, it doesn’t really say what it is. What I would like to do is get a closer look at this, or a quick look at this image to see what it is. Now what I could do is I could double click on it to open it up. But then what has to happen is as the Mac has to open up an application to open up that document, I don’t really want to open up an application. All I want is a quick look at it so I can see what it is, and then if I want to open it, I want to open it from my quick look. Well, we can easily do this on the Mac.
All we have to do is just select what document we want to get a quick look at. So let’s go with this document here. I select it, we can see it as highlighted. Now all I need to do is just press the space bar. When I press the space bar, I get a Quick Look of what that document is. So now I can easily see this is a picture of Alaska. Now, if I do want to open this up, what I’m able to do is open it up with Preview. That’s not what I want to do. I want to close this. I want to take a look at another document. Well, all I need to do is just press the space bar again, and it closes Quick Look.
So let’s go to this one here. Again, the title doesn’t really say what it is. So what do I do? I select it, and then I press the space bar and now it can see what it is. Again, I can open it up in Preview, or what I can do is just close this Quick Look by pressing the space bar.
Now this does work with multiple types of documents. I have here this Numbers document, Charting Basics. I want to get a closer look at this Numbers document. I just select it, press the space bar. I get a good look at this. I can actually see what the different sheets are up here. And then if I want to open it up in Numbers, I go over to the upper right-hand corner and click on Open with Numbers.
Let’s take a look at my EPUB, my newsletter. I select it, press the space bar. I can see what it is. And then if I want to open it up in the Books app, I can do that.
Let’s go to my Downloads folder. I have some cryptic titles in my Downloads folder, so I’m going to press the space bar to close this. And now I’m going to go to my Finder and we’re going to go to Downloads. So I have these files here. I’m not really sure what they are. Well, let’s use Quick Look. I select web content. I press the space bar. It opens it up and now we can see what it is. Now, I want to go to the next file. Well all I really need to do is press the down arrow to go to the next file and being that I have Quick Look open, watch what happens. I press the down arrow, and now I’m looking at a movie here. I can open this up in QuickTime. I press the down arrow again to get to the next file. Now I’m looking at an image. I can open this up in Preview. This image is called Add Emoji. And then when I press the down arrow again, I can see that this was created in Textedit. The name of it is Read Me First and I can actually read the text in it. I want to open it up. Again, I just go back over to the upper right-hand corner and I can open it up in. To close this, again I just press the space bar and it closes it.
So that’s how we use Quick Look, to get a quick look at our documents without actually opening up the document. To use Quick Look, all you have to do is just select the document and press the space bar. From there, you’re going to be able to get a quick look of that document. Depending on what type of document it is, you may be able to interact with it. As an example of Numbers, you can switch to the different sheets. To open up the document in its default application, when you’re in Quick Look, you just go to the upper right-hand corner and click on Open. To close Quick look, you press the space bar again and it closes your Quick Look.
So that’s how we as Quick Look to get a quick look of our documents on the Mac.