spacebarChangelog
What changed in each release of spacebar
0.5
· Space opens real windows, and spacebar can be your default app
Windows That Stay
Space opens a normal app window, one per file.
- A Space window is in the Dock and ⌘Tab, resizes, goes full screen with the green button, and stays open when you switch apps.
- Space on another file opens another window. Space on a file that’s already open brings its window forward.
- The newest window follows Finder’s arrow keys until you click into it.
- Esc, ⌘W or ⌘. in Finder close a window you haven’t clicked into. Once you have, ⌘W or the red button closes it, and Esc does nothing.
Your Default App
Open Markdown, images and data files in spacebar.
- spacebar can be the default app for Markdown, images and data files. Turn it on in Settings or the welcome sheet.
- Open hands a file to the app you pick for its type: Markdown and data to your editor, images to the app you choose, never back to spacebar.
0.4
· Search the text of files, open files in archives, a photo grid
Search And Archives
Search inside files, and open what’s in a zip.
- The filter’s new Names | Contents switch searches the Markdown, code, JSON, CSV and text files in every folder under the sidebar.
- Each result shows its folder, match count and line; opening one runs Find.
- It skips binary files, dependency folders and hidden files you haven’t shown.
- The Names filter searches every folder too, expanded or not.
- Open a file inside a zip, tar, tgz or 7z without extracting it: text, code, Markdown, JSON, CSV, images and PDFs show read-only, and nothing is written to disk.
- A lone .gz, .bz2 or .xz of text shows its text.
- In an archive, columns sort, folders show their size, and .DS_Store and __MACOSX are hidden.
Folders, PDFs And Diffs
A grid for pictures, pages for PDFs, color for diffs.
- A folder of six or more files, at least 60% of them pictures and video, opens on a grid of thumbnails.
- Space on any other folder opens its README, index or Home, else its overview.
- PDFs show their page and page count (“41 / 228”), and a click goes to a page.
- ⌘F finds in PDF and RTF documents, and ⌘+ ⌘− ⌘0 zoom PDF, RTF and HTML.
- A pinch and a two-finger double tap zoom photos in the Space window too.
- .diff and .patch files and Markdown diff fences tint added lines green and removed lines red.
Out Of The Window
Drag a file out, or open it in another app.
- Drag a file out of the Space window into Finder, Mail, a chat or an editor.
- Open With lists up to 12 apps for the file, its default first, and nothing for a script, an app or a file like .env.
- The Space window keeps its size and place.
- A selection across folders is listed in full as “N Selected”, with “2 of 5” in the toolbar.
Markdown, Code And Logs
Bigger files, more languages, richer Markdown.
- JSON up to 16 MB as a tree. Logs over 2 MB show their newest 2 MB, errors and warnings tinted.
- Wrap Lines is set per kind. Dockerfile, nginx, Scala and Terraform are highlighted.
- Markdown gets heading anchors, footnotes, ==highlight==, folded callouts, and tables that scroll and keep their header in view.
- A failed Mermaid diagram says why, and code fences show their language and a Copy button.
Fixed And Clearer
Plain answers when something goes wrong.
- A file deleted on screen says “moved or deleted” and keeps unsaved text to copy. A missing file offers Show Folder; a blocked one, Open Privacy Settings.
- Editing shows “Editing · Esc to finish” and a Saved tick. Undo goes back past an edit while the file stays open, and a change on disk waits behind a banner instead of replacing your text.
- When Space reaches Quick Look, the hint says why.
- Settings has an About section with Check Now, and a Quick Look status row.
- Better focus rings and VoiceOver labels throughout.
0.3
· Every File. Press Space
Space On Any File
An optional helper lets Space open any file in spacebar.
- Turn on the optional Space helper in the welcome window or Settings. It asks for Accessibility.
- Space in Finder then opens any file in the Space window: plain text, CSV, HTML with its scripts off, PDFs, images (HEIC, RAW and PSD too), video and audio.
- Apps, packages and .rtfd documents stay with Apple’s Quick Look, and ⌘Y still opens Apple’s. Without the helper, spacebar is a Quick Look extension, as before.
- Close the window with one press of Space or Esc (⌘W and ⌘. too); the arrow keys move through the sidebar.
- Select several files first and the sidebar shows just those.
- It hides when you switch apps, and keeps a PDF’s page, a video’s time, and its size and place on each display.
- What you type in the Space window stays there. Space still types a space while you rename a file, search in Finder or enter a password, and if spacebar doesn’t answer within 150 ms, Finder gets it.
- A median of 42 ms from Space to Markdown, text, an image or a PDF on screen, about 8 ms of it the helper’s, warm, on one Apple-silicon Mac.
Built To Be Trusted
A small helper holds the permission; a sandboxed viewer draws the file.
- “spacebar Helper” holds Accessibility, watches for Space in Finder, reads which file is selected, and never opens or reads a file.
- A separate sandboxed viewer renders it. Nothing you type is recorded, and HTML opened with Space runs no scripts.
- After an update the helper is back within about 20 seconds, and the uninstaller removes it with its permissions.
- Notarized with an Apple Developer ID, with a .dmg download. The Terminal command still works.
More Files, Drawn Natively
New viewers for photos, rich text, tables and Apple’s formats.
- Photos zoom as in Preview: pinch (in Quick Look), two fingers to pan, a double-click for actual size, and ⌘+ ⌘− ⌘0. A single click no longer zooms.
- HEIC, AVIF, TIFF, camera RAW, PSD, OpenEXR, TGA, JPEG 2000 and icons decoded natively; M4B, 3GP, MPEG-1/2 and AMR play too.
- Rich text (RTF and RTFD) drawn natively, and text in any common encoding detected and named.
- Apple’s own preview, inside spacebar’s window, for Office and iWork files, fonts, 3D models, certificates, calendars and e-books.
- CSV and TSV as a sortable table of up to 50,000 rows, JSON as a tree with Expand All and Collapse All, and Jupyter notebooks as their cells.
- A placeholder for a Markdown image that doesn’t load, and an info card for .dmg files, read without mounting them.
Fix, Find, Copy
Edit in place, search the file, take its text.
- Click to fix code, config, plain text, JSON, CSV, YAML, TOML or XML in place (JSON, CSV and XML in Raw), saved in the file’s own encoding.
- Files over 2 MB, and files that run on their own such as .zshrc, are never editable.
- A Copy button copies the file’s text, as does ⌘C with nothing selected in the Space window.
- ⌘F finds in Markdown, code, text, JSON and CSV; the sidebar filter moves to ⌥⌘F. Raw shows a formatted file as it is.
- Open in your editor for code, JSON, CSV and text. A script opens there as text, never in Terminal.
Calmer And Quicker
A faster sidebar, a still toolbar, a shorter Settings.
- A sidebar that lists a folder in Finder’s order, stays fast in big folders, and takes the arrow keys as soon as the preview opens.
- A toolbar that holds still: Open is one word, and the file’s kind and size sit in it as quiet text.
- Settings is one short page, with the rest under Advanced. Code font, line height, math, Mermaid and a few more moved to settings.json.
- Word count and reading time are off by default;
"stats": trueturns them on. - Other Quick Look previewers that claim spacebar’s types show in Settings, with a Turn Off button. If the helper isn’t taking Space, the first preview says so.
- A first-run welcome window, and a new icon.
0.2.2
- The PDF view keeps its place when the sidebar is hidden.
- The Open button keeps its app name after a file changes on disk.
0.2.0
· Press Space, See Everything
- Press Space on a folder or a Markdown file, and every file in that folder previews in one pane.
- Folder previews are on by default, and existing users are switched on once.
- Space also opens spacebar on code, JSON, YAML, XML, TOML, property lists and archives. macOS keeps Space for .txt, HTML, CSV, PDFs, images, most audio and video, and Word files; pick those in the sidebar.
- HTML renders in the pane. Downloaded pages get no scripts and no web loads. Files from git clone, curl, unzip or a USB drive aren’t marked as downloaded, so their scripts run; Settings › Advanced › Scripts in HTML files › Never turns them off.
- Video and audio play in the native player, paused on the first frame, with sound only after a click.
- Archives list their contents, binary plists show as XML, and other files show their Finder thumbnail.
- A sidebar filter, and Report a Problem and Uninstall in Settings.
- One-click Update; Quick Look shows an error for a moment while it runs.
0.1.3
- A blue dot on Aa when a new version is out, from a daily check you can turn off in Settings › Advanced.
- One-click Update in the Aa popover. It saves your edit first, and if it fails, gives you the install command.
- A click on the sidebar, the path or the toolbar ends an inline edit, and your keys land in the right file.
0.1.2
- iCloud files that macOS moved off the Mac download before they preview.
- A slow download never freezes the panel.
- Two color pairs lifted to 4.5:1 contrast.
0.1.1
- A sidebar on every preview: the folder as a tree, collapsible, resizable and remembered.
- A click shows any file in the pane, with a Finder thumbnail and Open with for the rest.
- Folder previews for any folder, and Obsidian vaults with wikilinks, embeds, callouts and tags.
- A toolbar with the sidebar button, the path, Aa and Open.
- Mermaid diagrams appear without a flash.
- Updates no longer ask about spacebar’s data.
0.1.0
- The first release. Press Space on a Markdown file and read it rendered: Mermaid, KaTeX math, code highlighting, live updates and inline editing, all offline.
- Six themes, light and dark, and a native settings window.
- Optional folder previews, for folders with Markdown at the top.
Every release is on GitHub (opens in a new tab).