Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to preview
the contents of a file without opening it.
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Often you want to be able to see what's inside a file without opening it up in an application
or importing it into a document you're working on. There are many different ways that you can
preview a file in macOS without opening it at all. The simplest way is right here in the Finder.
If you're in Icon View then you get icons representing each file. For image files,
like the first six here, you get a little mini representation of the image in that file. This
works for a variety of different file types. Here we have some jpeg files and a PhotoShop document.
But it will work for other things like png's and gifs. You even get little previews for things like
Microsoft Word documents, Numbers spreadsheets, and Pages documents. The icon shows you a little
miniature representation of what you'll see on the first page of those documents. This
works for pdf's as well. Now for media, like videos, you'll see an icon here that shows you
a frame of the video. But you could also move your cursor over it and play the video inside the icon.
For sound files you don't get any information in the icon that helps you
tell what's inside but you do get a Play button if you move your cursor over it.
Now you can adjust the size of these icons. Go to View and then Show View Options or Command J.
Here you'll see Icon Size. You can enlarge the size of the icons to make it easier to
see images. Also there's a checkbox here if you have this turned off you won't get icon previews.
But do note that a lot of icon previews rely on the app. The app needs to either create
a preview when it saves the file or provide information to macOS so it can show a preview.
So some third party apps their files will show you a generic icon and not a preview of what's
inside the file. It's up to the developer to include this functionality in that app.
Note you also see icons if you use Column View or List View. The icons are rather small.
If you bring up View Options you can choose a larger icon size which can be more useful. Another
way to be able to preview files, even if you're using List or Column View is to bring up the
Preview Sidebar, also called the Preview Pane. Go to View and then Show Preview if you don't see it.
It brings up this area here to the right. Then if you select a file you'll see a preview of it
here along with other information. This works for images. It will work for other kinds of documents.
For media, like videos, you get a Play button over here. The same thing for a sound. You can use this
in List View. You can also use it in Column View. You can even use it in Icon View. So you can get a
small preview here as an icon and a larger preview here in the right sidebar. To Hide this just
go to the same menu item which now will be Hide Preview. Shift Command P is the keyboard shortcut.
Now the Finder does have another view that is specifically for previewing files.
So if you go to Gallery View, the fourth view here, the preview becomes very large
and right in the middle of the window. The list of files is now at the bottom
and basically a horizontal list showing you icons. You can click to choose a file there
and now the preview shows in the middle. You can also use the arrow keys just like you can
in any other Finder view but it's more useful in Gallery View because right will move to the right
and left will move to the left. If you have a folder full of images it's really easy now to be
able to flip through them using the arrow keys, see previews, and find the file that you want.
Sounds will play here as well. Videos will even include a set of playback controls at the bottom
Now in addition to using the Finder window to see a preview you can also use functionality
specifically built for previewing files. It's called QuickLook. So you select a file that you
want to preview. You can bring up QuickLook by going to File, and then QuickLook. Notice that
the keyboard shortcut is Command Y. But there's another keyboard shortcut that you can use and
that's just the Spacebar. That's what most people do. So with the file selected press the spacebar
and you get this QuickLook window. It's a separate window here that you can move around
and see a large preview of the image. You can also resize the QuickLook window and
move it around and it will stay there if I click to select another image.
It will stay there until I hit the spacebar or the X here to dismiss it. Since you can use
the arrow keys to navigate around files in the Finder you can just simply use the arrow keys
and get a preview of what's there. It works great in List View and now I can use the up and
down arrow keys here to go to different files. You can see it also shows things like Pages, Numbers,
and Word documents.There's even the ability to scroll through multiple pages in documents.
Also notice it works with PhotoShop documents too. So even though this is a proprietary format
macOS has the ability to generate a preview and show it to you. If you select many files,
like I'll select all of these image files, and then bring up QuickLook I get little arrows here
at the top and I can flip through them. So now I can actually use the right and left arrow keys
instead of these buttons to go through them and there's even a button here to show me all of
the items at once and I can click to jump into one. You can also take Preview into full screen
mode by clicking this button here. Now you can see it fills the screen. I can click here to exit full
screen but since I've selected multiple images I can now actually play a slideshow and it will go
from one image to the other. Or I can use these arrows here or jump to this contact sheet view.
I can also use the Escape key to get out of this and go back to the regular windowed version of
QuickLook. Notice QuickLook also even tells you which app will be used to open it
and it gives you an Open button here at the top right. So when I select this file
and go to QuickLook you can see it says it 's going to open that in PhotoShop. When I
go to this file in QuickLook it says QuickTime Player. In this file it will say Open with Pages.
Now one last method I want to show you is to use the Preview app. After all it's called Preview.
Right! If you double click on an image file or a pdf and various other types it will open
up in the Preview app. But this isn't really previewing the file. This is actually opening
the file. It's now open in the app. You can now make changes to it. There are tools that you can
use. You can export it. Do all sorts of things with the file. So it's not really previewing.
However, if you want to do something like find an image to be able to bring
into a video you're creating or a document you're building then the preview app can be considered
one step towards that. You're opening up in Preview to find the right image before you
actually import it into your document. In fact if you select several files it will open up in
Preview. You could see here a left sidebar. If you don't you can click here and select
Thumbnails and then can easily flip through them to be able to find the image you want
and it shows me the name right here. I can even go to Edit, Copy to copy this image and paste
it into a document I'm working on if that's the way I want to import it into my project.
So even though Preview is a full app where you're actually opening a file
it can also be used to preview things like images before you use them elsewhere.