This Free Mac Utility Adds Folder Previews for Quick Browsing
Quick Look is one of my favorite Mac features, so much so that I always use a third-party app and enable it on my Windows PCs as well . It allows you to view files on your Mac without opening them. You can select any file in the Finder and press the Spacebar to view it. This means I can press one button to quickly view videos, listen to audio files, view images, or read documents. While this feature is great, I’ve always been annoyed by the fact that it doesn’t work well with folders—until now.
By default, Quick Look will tell you how many files are in a folder, but it won’t actually tell you what files are in it. Luckily, the new free Folder Preview utility closes this gap. Folder Preview extends all of Quick Look’s functionality to folders. You select a folder, press the spacebar, and the folder preview will allow you to see all the files and folders inside it without having to open it. Setup takes less than a minute, and from then on it does its job silently. It also doesn’t ask for any permissions other than being added as a Finder extension, which is always nice to see.
After installing the folder preview, the application will prompt you to add it as a system extension. Go to System Preferences on your Mac and select General > Sign-in Items & Extensions . Scroll down the page and tap the i button next to Quick View. Enable folder preview on this page to complete the app setup. Now, selecting any folder in the Finder and pressing the spacebar (or the app’s own default keyboard shortcut, Command-Y ), will display its contents.
You can also set Folder Preview to show hidden files by going to its settings. Simply open the app and go to Settings in the left panel. I left this option disabled because I rarely want to see hidden system files on my Mac, but you can choose another option if necessary. You can also ask the app to automatically expand folders during preview. If you have a folder within a folder, this option will show you the contents of up to five levels of subfolders. Finally, you can also choose larger icon sizes in the folder preview.