Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you why you should be
using Quick Look to preview files on your Mac and not the Preview App.
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So this is a common mistake that new Mac users make particularly if they are switching from
Windows. There's an app called Preview. You think you would use that to preview things
like images that you have in the Finder. For instance, here I have a folder full of images.
If I double click on anyone of them it will open up the image in Preview and I could see what it
looks like. You would think from the name that you would use this to preview the image and then
if it's the right one open it up in another app like PhotoShop. But the problem arises when you
want to preview more than one image. Here I've double clicked on the first image in the folder
and I want to preview the next one. I can't simply use the arrow keys to arrow down
or right. It doesn't go anywhere. You can however select several files,
like these three, and open them. I'm going to use Command O and it will open all
three in Preview. Then you see them here on the left. You can use the down arrow to go
between them. But if you want to add a fourth image to that you can't easily add them to it.
Now the Preview App is great for lot of things. You can quickly preview files.
You can use Markup Tools to edit them and do things like Crop them, Rotate them, do all sorts
of functions inside of Preview. It's a pretty capable app and it works for images as well as pdf
files. But if you want to do is actually view the file so you can pick one out to use then what you
want isn't Preview but Quick Look. Quick Look is built into macOS. It isn't really a separate app.
You can get to it a few different ways. One is with the file selected you can hit the Spacebar.
Officially the keyboard shortcut is Command Y. That works in more situations. But in most
situations Spacebar will bring up Quick Look. Now some of the great things about Quick Look
are that it stays in this floating window that's always on top. You can resize it and you even
have some of the tools that Preview has like the ability to mark things up. Crop and Rotate
them and all of that. There's even a handy button here to open up the document in the default app.
But the important difference is that it's actually just showing you a preview of
whatever you have selected here in the Finder. So you can actually use the arrow keys in this
case. I'm going to use arrow down to go to the next one in the list. I can look through
all the files in a folder. I didn't have to choose them in advance
before activating Quick Look. I can just start with one and then use the arrow keys to go to
the next. Use the up arrow key to go back. There is however a special mode where if you select
several images, I'll select five here, and then activate Quick Look I use the spacebar.
Then you get these little arrows here on the top. You can use the right and left arrow to go through
the group that you've selected. In addition you get this little button here. Click that and it
will show you thumbnails for each one. So Quick Look has two modes there. The single file mode
and the multi-file mode where you get this button here to get an overview of everything.
You can switch between the modes depending upon what you have selected. So with these
five items selected I press the spacebar. But if I then go and select a single item here
then it's going to show me that item. If I select three items by holding down the Shift key
it will switch into that mode. So you can still use the arrow keys
and even Shift and the arrow keys to change what is viewed here. It's a great
partnership between Quick Look and the Finder to show you exactly what you have selected.
Another great thing about Quick Look is it will show you just about any kind of file.
So, of course, we've got images. But if I were to go up one you could see it's going to show
me a preview of a Numbers document. It even shows me the different sheets in that document.
Here's a pdf and I can actually look at the different pages in the pdf.
Here's is a Pages document. Here's a Microsoft Word document. You could view a video like this.
It even has playback controls here at the bottom.
A Sound file also gives you playback controls and you could hear the sound.
So most files that you work with can be previewed in Quick Look. You can even leave the Quick Look
window open, I'll make it smaller here, put it there and I can select any file here in this
folder. I can dive down into another folder. You can see the folder selected so it shows me
information about the folder. I can select a file here. I can just leave that Quick Look window open
to continue to preview files no matter where I go. There's also a Full Screen mode here
which will show you the image full screen and you can exit full screen.
That's really handy if you select several files like this.
You go to Full Screen mode and now you can actually arrow through them or actually play
it as a slideshow. Then you can also go to the Index Sheet mode as well in Full Screen Mode.
Now I've been using List View this whole time and I can use the up and down arrows to go through the
images. But if I switch to Column View I could do the same thing. Let me shrink this here so you can
see and I can do up and down. I can even go to the left in Column View and then up and down at this
level and then the right arrow to go down to this folder. If I'm in Icon View I could do the same
thing but I could use all four arrows to navigate around. So I could do Quick Look there and go to
the right, I could go down, I could move around through all of the different files in this folder.
There are some other alternatives as well. For instance, in any viewing mode here you can go
to View and then Show Preview and you'll get the equivalent to Quick Look at a column here
on the right. So I can select an image, another image or a document and I'll see the Quick Look
preview here but as part of the Finder window. That will work in List View and Column View as
well. Gallery View is a view that is just about previewing. You'll get the list of files here at
the bottom arranged horizontally. You get a large preview there. You can select anyone to jump to it
and you can use the right and left arrow keys to move around through them.
So in addition to Quick Look you have View, Show Preview, and also Gallery View.
So there are actually three better options for viewing files to find one
than actually using the Preview App. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.