A Quick Look Replacement For Every File

Keep Apple’s Quick Look on ⌘Y, and let Space open spacebar for any file in Finder

Uses the optional Space helper
⌘Y still opens Apple’s Quick Look
Free and open source
macOS 13+

You press Space on…	Apple’s Quick Look	spacebar
a folder	Its icon	The whole folder, in a sidebar
`README.md`	Raw Markdown symbols	Rendered, with Mermaid and math. Click to edit
a config .yaml, .toml, .json	Plain text at best	Highlighted; JSON as a tree. Click to fix
a PDF, a RAW photo, a CSV .pdf, .cr3, .csv	One file at a time	With the Space helper: spacebar, the folder beside it. Without it: from the sidebar
Word, Excel, Keynote .docx, .xlsx, .key	One file at a time	With the Space helper: Apple’s preview, inside spacebar

Apple’s column is macOS 13 to 15 with no other Quick Look extensions. The last two rows need the optional Space helper, which asks for Accessibility.

orbitTry it: press space

Select a file and press space to preview it; space or esc closes it. On a phone, tap a file twice.

Try it: the demo folder in a Finder list. With the Space helper on, Space opens the file in spacebar’s own preview page, running in your browser.

spacebar replaces Quick Look without removing it: Apple’s stays on ⌘Y. With the Space helper on, Space on any file in Finder opens a spacebar window instead, the folder in a sidebar. It stays open, like a Finder window.

Turn on Use spacebar for every file. The optional Space helper needs Accessibility (as spacebar Helper) and runs at login; turn it off and Space is Quick Look’s again. Apps, packages and .rtfd documents stay with Apple’s Quick Look, ⌘Y still opens Apple’s, and while a password field or another app has secure input on, Space opens Apple’s Quick Look. More on the helper.

Preview Any File In One Window

PDFsDrawn by PDFKit, fitted to the width, pages in one scroll
PhotosHEIC, AVIF, TIFF, RAW and PSD, with pinch zoom
CSV and TSVA sortable table of up to 50,000 rows
Video and audioIn the native player
Text, code and configText in UTF-8 or a legacy encoding, rich text, HTML with scripts off, JSON as a tree
ArchivesListed without extracting
Office and iWorkApple’s preview in spacebar’s window; fonts, 3D, certificates and e-books too
Installers and binaries.pkg, .exe, .dylib: an info card

Select several files and the sidebar holds just those. Package iWork documents go to Apple. Full table: Every file type. What Apple’s Quick Look shows on its own: Space bar preview on Mac.

Without The Space Helper

spacebar is a Quick Look extension for Markdown, folders, code, config, plists, logs, archives, .dmg and files with no extension. macOS keeps text, HTML, CSV, PDF, images, video and audio for its own preview; they open from spacebar’s sidebar. See Quick Look a whole folder.

Find, Copy And Fix A Typo

⌘F FindMarkdown, code, text, JSON and CSV, searched whole, up to 10,000 matches counted.
⌘C CopyThe text; in the Space window, the file too, as Finder does.
RawMarkdown source, a table’s CSV, JSON’s text.
Fix in placeClick a line of code, config or text. Never files over 2 MB, shell startup files or git hooks.

Speed And Privacy

No analytics, telemetry or accounts, and files are drawn by a sandboxed viewer. How fast Space opens a file, and what the helper can and can’t see: The Space helper.

What It Isn’t

It aims to be the best Quick Look, not an IDE: no project view, build or terminal. Open hands a file to the app you pick for its type. Compare Quick Look apps.

Install It

Download for Mac

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.