Quick Look QL

What it does

A macOS Quick Look extension that gives you rich previews of developer-friendly file formats right in Finder. Press Space on a Markdown file and see it rendered. Press Space on a source file and see syntax highlighting. No app to open, no waiting.

Supported formats

• Markdown — Rendered with full formatting, tables, and code blocks
• Source code — Syntax-highlighted preview for dozens of languages
• Subtitles — SRT, VTT and SBV files displayed cleanly

How it works

Install the app, enable the extension in System Settings, and you're done. Quick Look picks it up automatically — just press Space on any supported file in Finder or any Open/Save dialog.

Requirements

macOS 13 Ventura or later.

Privacy

Quick Look QL runs entirely locally. It reads files only when macOS asks it to generate a preview, and it makes no network requests — no analytics, no data collection. The extension does hold the sandbox’s network-client entitlement, which macOS requires before it will render a WebKit view at all; it is never used to reach the network. To show images that a Markdown file references by relative path, it also holds read-only access to files in your home folder. It reads only the images a previewed document points at, and never writes.

Support

Found a file type that doesn't preview correctly? Email me at [email protected].