Mac Lists

8 Ways to Use Quick Look with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)

One of the great new features of Leopard is Quick Look. With Quick Look, you can view images, documents and media files just by pressing the spacebar. If you're using Leopard, you've probably tried Quick Look in the Finder, but that's not the only place you can use it. Quick Look saves me time everyday as I use it in the Finder, in Mail, in Time Machine, and in third-party applications. Here are some ways you can use Quick Look.

1.  Finder images

Select an image in the Finder and press the spacebar to open the image in the Quick Look window. If you want, you can view the image in full-screen by clicking the button at the bottom of the window. When you're finished viewing the image, you can send it to iPhoto or you can exit Quick Look by pressing the spacebar again.

2.  Finder documents

You no longer have to open documents to view their contents. Just select a document, for example, a pdf file, in the Finder and press the spacebar. You'll be able to view the document and navigate through it with a scroll bar. If the print in the document is too small to read, click the button at the bottom of the window to enter full-screen mode.

3.  Finder media files

If you use the column view in the Finder, you know that you can preview audio and video files directly in the Finder, but the image will be small. Instead of using the old-fashioned preview mode, press the spacebar after selecting a video and view it in the much larger Quick Look window. Again, if you want to view the video in full-screen, just click the button at the bottom of the window.

4.  Mail attachments

If you use Mail, you know that image attachments will often appear as inline images in your message. But documents appear as icons and you may not want to open an attachment if you don't know what it contains. That problem is eliminated with Quick Look. Just select the attachment and click the Quick Look button on the toolbar in Mail and you can preview the document without opening it.

5.  Spotlight searches

Spotlight is great for searching but sometimes you can end up with a long list of search results with odd names. Knowing if a file is actually the one you're searching for can sometimes be a challenge. Quick Look, however, can come to your rescue by letting you preview files in the Spotlight search results window, just as you would in a Finder window.

6.  Time Machine

If you use Time Machine for backing up your data, Quick Look can save you time if you need to restore a file. Instead of guessing if the file you found in Time Machine is the one you really need, you can use the spacebar to access Quick Look and preview the file before restoring it.

7.  The Trash

If you're like me, your Trash might sometimes fill up with many files and, of course, it's at those times that you realize that you need a file you deleted. Going through all that trash can waste time but Quick Look can make the task easier for you. Invoke Quick Look with the usual press on the spacebar and you can easily navigate through the files until you find the one you need.

8.  Third-party applications

Some third-party applications, particularly those that relate primarily to file or document management, let you use Quick Look with the application. For example, I use ForkLift to transfer files from my computer to my website's server and sometimes I need to check that I'm transferring the correct file. Fortunately, the developers of ForkLift have incorporated Quick Look technology into their application and I can use the spacebar to preview a document before sending it to the server. If you use third-party applications, try the old "press the spacebar" trick and see if Quick Look is available from the application.