View the Contents of a Folder in Quick Look

One frustrating aspect of Quick Look is that you cannot see the contents of a folder with it when browsing through files. The information produced when “Quick Looking” a folder is no where near as useful as when viewing most files. However, an amazingly useful plug-in that solves this problem exists.Simply download the plug-in and place it in a folder titled “QuickLook” placed in “~/Library”, relaunch Finder, and “Quick Looking” folders will now display the contents of the folder instead of a couple of less useful statistics.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Leopard, OS X, Quick Look

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Written by Omer Zach on November 30, 2007 at 8:41 pm - View the Contents of a Folder in Quick Look has 15 comments - Categorized in Easy Tips, Leopard Tips, OS X Tips

15 Responses to “View the Contents of a Folder in Quick Look”

1. 
   s
   I tried this but it didn't work. Put the folder in "Quicklook" in the Library folder on my hard drive and tried it out, but nothing happened. Quick look worked as usual and didn't show the folder contents. December 2nd, 2007 at 4:11 pm
   
   
2. 
   Omer Zach
   Hey, try relaunching Finder (hold Option, then click on the Finder icon in the dock and select "Relaunch"). If that doesn't work, check to see that the folder is called exactly "QuickLook" and doesn't have any spaces anywhere. Hope that helps! December 2nd, 2007 at 9:09 pm
   
   
3. 
   Wayne
   I was wondering if this was just me, when I use this and say quicklook a picture folder, it shows the pictures as a .jpeg icon but not thumbnails of the picture themselves. Is there a way to change that? Just curious December 3rd, 2007 at 2:04 am
   
   
4. 
   JOS
   You must extract the files in the folder. Copy the files, and paste them in Quicklook folder. DONT COPY THE ENTIRE FOLDER. And then, relaunch FINDER!! and enjoy it!!! December 3rd, 2007 at 1:23 pm
   
   
5. 
   dobes
   This worked great for me. Just be sure not to put the entire folder into QuickLook, but only the icon. This is a great idea - it was annoying to get only the folder information in QuickLook. Thanks so much! December 4th, 2007 at 5:02 am
   
   
6. 
   Wayne
   Hey.. sorry guys I'm not sure if I'm doing it right. If you could be a little more detailed with instructions it would be really awesome. I'm actually kind of new to macs. =] Thank you!! December 4th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
   
   
7. 
   Dip
   So what is quicklook and how do I find it? does it come with mac or packaged w other software? December 5th, 2007 at 12:20 am
   
   
8. 
   Omer Zach
   Dip, Quick Look is part of the operating system in Leopard. It is really an excellent feature that basically makes it so that you can view almost any file (Word, PowerPoint, Pages, Excel, Keynote, PDF, etc.) without launching the application the file is formatted for. Honestly, Leopard is almost worth buying just for Quick Look. December 6th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
   
   
9. 
   Ahmed
   Great stuff Omer; this plug in works like a charm! December 9th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
   
   
10. 
    Trackback
    Watch Flash Video Files with Quick Look - MacTips: OS X Tips & Tricks

    [...] seemed to like the recent posts about the plug-ins that allow viewing the contents folders and .zip archives within Quick Look, so here is another similar [...]

    December 10th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
    
    
11. 
    Trackback
    QuickLook anche per le Directory « doc.Jek

    [...] risolto questo il problema grazie a questo link trovato su mactips.org. Il risultato finale è il [...]

    December 12th, 2007 at 6:55 am
    
    
12. 
    Trackback
    Quick Look Inside Folders [Featured Mac Download] · TechBlogger

    [...] (Don’t forget you can also quick look multiple files at once as well, no plug-in required.) View the Contents of a Folder in Quick Look [MacTips: OS X [...]

    December 13th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
    
    
13. 
    Trackback
    links for 2007-12-16 | Geeky Things

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    December 16th, 2007 at 10:27 am
    
    
14. 
    iamshimone
    FYI - there is a new version of the plugin: http://homepage.mac.com/xdd/software/folder/download/Folder.qlgenerator03.zip
    
    See here: http://homepage.mac.com/xdd/software/folder/ December 18th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
    
    
15. 
    Trackback
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    December 23rd, 2007 at 4:20 pm
    
    

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