spacebarEvery File Type
What spacebar shows for each file, and which ones Space opens
Markdown, code, config, JSON, tables, notebooks, archives, HTML, PDFs, photos, video and text. Office, iWork, fonts and 3D models get Apple’s own preview inside spacebar. Anything else gets its Finder thumbnail and Open with.
What Space Opens
With the optional Space helper on, Space opens every file in the Space window. It asks for Accessibility, watches for Space in Finder and reads which file is selected. It never opens a file and never records what you type.
Apps, packages and .rtfd documents stay with Apple’s Quick Look. ⌘Y still opens Apple’s, and so does Space while secure input is on. Without the helper:
Space opens spacebar
- Folders
- Markdown
- Code and scripts
- JSON
- YAML, TOML, XML
- Property lists
- Archives
- Disk images
- Logs
- No extension
macOS keeps Space
- Plain text
- Rich text
- HTML
- CSV
- PDFs
- Images
- Most audio and video
- Word and Office
Pick these in the folder’s sidebar. Every one opens there.
How Each File Shows
Code, config, text, JSON, CSV and XML fix in place with a click (JSON, CSV and XML in Raw). 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.
| File | Shown as | Space in Finder opens spacebar | With the helper |
|---|---|---|---|
Markdown (.md, .markdown, .mdown, .mkd, .mkdn) | Rendered, with inline editing and task toggles | Yes | Yes |
Code and scripts (.js, .ts, .tsx, .py, .rb, .go, .rs, .swift, .sh, .c, .java, .kt, .css, .sql, Makefile and more) | Highlighted, with line numbers; Dockerfile, nginx, Scala and Terraform too | Yes, except .ts, which macOS takes for video, and .tsx on a Mac without Xcode | Yes |
Config (.yaml, .toml, .xml, .ini) | Highlighted; XML indented, with Raw for the file as is | Yes | Yes |
Other config and scripts (.conf, .env, .ps1, .bat) | As is, with line numbers | Yes | Yes |
Property lists (.plist) | Highlighted XML, indented; binary ones as XML, read only | Yes | Yes |
JSON (.json, .jsonc, .json5) | A tree, with Expand All and Collapse All, up to 16 MB; Raw shows the text | Yes | Yes |
Jupyter notebooks (.ipynb) | Its cells: Markdown, highlighted code, text and image outputs; Raw for its JSON | Yes | Yes |
Archives (.zip, .tar, .tgz, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tbz, .tar.xz, .txz, .7z, .rar, .zst, .tzst) | A tree with sizes and dates, not extracted. Click a file inside to view it, read-only, never written to disk | Yes | Yes |
Disk images (.dmg) | An info card with its format and encryption, read without mounting | Yes | Yes |
Logs (.log) and files with no extension (CHANGELOG, LICENSE, dotfiles) | As is, with line numbers; a log over 2 MB shows its newest 2 MB, errors and warnings tinted | Yes | Yes |
| TSV | A sortable table, first row as the header | Yes | Yes |
| CSV | A sortable table, first row as the header | From the sidebar | Yes |
Plain text (.txt) | As is, with line numbers; UTF-16 and legacy encodings detected and kept | From the sidebar | Yes |
Rich text (.rtf, .rtfd) | Drawn by macOS, with its fonts, colors, tables and pictures; ⌘F finds in it | From the sidebar | Yes for .rtf; .rtfd stays with Apple’s Quick Look |
HTML (.html, .htm) | Rendered; downloaded pages get no scripts and no web loads | From the sidebar | Yes, with scripts off |
| Drawn by PDFKit, pages in one scroll, with a page count (“41 / 228”) and ⌘F | From the sidebar | Yes | |
Images (.png, .jpg, .gif, .webp, .bmp, .ico, .svg) | Fitted, with dimensions and size; pinch or ⌘+ ⌘− ⌘0 to zoom; SVG as an image | From the sidebar | Yes |
HEIC, AVIF, TIFF, camera RAW (.dng, .cr2, .cr3, .nef, .arw, .orf, .raf, .rw2), Photoshop (.psd), OpenEXR, TGA, JPEG 2000, .icns | Decoded by macOS’s ImageIO, turned as the camera recorded it, with the same zoom | From the sidebar | Yes |
Video (.mp4, .m4v, .mov, .3gp, .mpg, .mpeg, .m2v) | The native player, paused on the first frame | From the sidebar | Yes |
Audio (.mp3, .m4a, .m4b, .aac, .wav, .aif, .aiff, .flac, .caf, .amr) | The same player, under its artwork or icon | From the sidebar | Yes |
Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, fonts, 3D models (.usdz, .obj, .stl, .glb), certificates, calendars (.ics) and e-books (.epub) | Apple’s own preview, inside spacebar’s window; iWork packages stay with Apple’s Quick Look | From the sidebar | Yes, in Apple’s preview |
Installers and binaries (.pkg, .mpkg, .exe, .dylib) | An info card: thumbnail, kind, size and date | From the sidebar | Yes, the info card |
| Apps and other packages | An info card, with Reveal in Finder for apps | No | No, Apple’s Quick Look keeps them |
| Anything else | Finder’s thumbnail, kind, size and date, with Open with | Yes, when macOS has no type for it | Yes |
A folder of at least six files, 60% or more of them pictures and video, opens on a thumbnail grid. .diff and .patch files tint added lines green and removed lines red.
Limits
- Text over 2 MB shows its first 2 MB, and a log its newest 2 MB.
- A CSV or TSV table shows up to 50,000 rows and 200 columns, from a file up to 16 MB. Over 2 MB, it isn’t editable.
- Files over 2 MB, binary plists, and files that run on their own (
.zshrc,.gitconfig, git hooks, LaunchAgents) are never editable. - WebM, Matroska, Ogg, Opus and AVI, which macOS can’t play, get the info card.
- A link that loops or leads nowhere is grayed out in the sidebar.
- An archive lists its first 5,000 entries.
- Images over 50 MB, and PDFs, video and audio over 512 MB, get the info card.
- Another app that claims a type may win Space for it. See Help.
Install It
Or paste this in Terminal
curl -fsSL https://spacebar.patebryant.com/install.sh | sh
The script downloads the latest notarized release from GitHub, checks its SHA-256 and installs to ~/Applications, no sudo. Read the script.
Source: the app’s README (opens in a new tab) for spacebar 0.4, and quicklook-types.txt (opens in a new tab) for the types Space opens without the helper.