spacebarPreview HEIC, RAW And PSD Files With Space
spacebar decodes photos with macOS’s own ImageIO and shows them with the rest of the folder beside them
With the Space helper on, Space on a HEIC, camera RAW or Photoshop file opens it in spacebar, drawn natively with pinch zoom, its folder in the sidebar.
Which Image Files Open
- HEIC, AVIF, TIFFDrawn natively by ImageIO
- Camera RAW
.dng.cr2.cr3.nef.arw.orf.raf.rw2 - Photoshop and more
.psd, OpenEXR, TGA, JPEG 2000,.icns - Web imagesPNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP, BMP, ICO, and SVG as an image
The first three are decoded by macOS’s ImageIO, turned as the camera recorded them. Images fit the window; over 50 MB, an info card.
Zoom And Pan
| Pinch | Zoom about the pointer |
|---|---|
| Two fingers or a drag | Move the image |
| Double-click | Fitted or actual size (or a two-finger double tap) |
| ⌘+ ⌘− ⌘0 | Zoom in, out, fit |
Space On A Photo
Needs the Space helper
macOS never hands images to another app’s Quick Look extension. Turn on Use spacebar for every file and the optional Space helper opens them in spacebar; it needs Accessibility (as spacebar Helper) and runs at login. Without it, press Space on the folder and pick the file in the sidebar: Quick Look a whole folder.
A Grid For Folders Of Pictures
- Opens on a gridSix or more files, 60% images or video: a grid of thumbnails.
- Arrows in two directionsReturn opens a picture; ← or ⌫ goes back.
- Grid or listSwitch at the top right; it’s remembered.
- Fast with thousandsOnly visible tiles are drawn, never cached to disk.
HEIC, AVIF and TIFF inside a zip open in place, drawn natively, without extracting.
Private And Sandboxed
Photos are decoded in spacebar’s sandbox, with no telemetry. With the helper, ⌘C copies the file, as Finder’s does. The same window shows PDFs, CSV, code and Markdown: a Quick Look replacement. Compare Quick Look apps.
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.