Must have quicklook plugins for Developers

Supercharge Finder on your Mac!

I absolutely love the quicklook feature on macOS, which let’s you smash the space button on any file in Finder and see a quick preview without opening it. This is amazing for videos, text files, and even quickly skimming through documents. However, QuickLook doesn’t support all file formats by default.

For example, as a developer, you might work with .md Markdown files, or .json files frequently, which quicklook doesn’t support by default. Worry not, there are some awesome QuickLook plugins that’s have been developed by the community, and will quickly become an essential part of your workflow!

A quick note on how to install these plugins: Most of the download links will give you a .qlgenerator file. To install these plugins, copy this file to ~/Library/QuickLook/ directory on your mac. After that, just restart the QuickLook manager by opening Terminal and running qlmanage -r. That’s it, all done!

qlmarkdown: Markdown QuickLook plugin:

This awesome plugin, as the name suggests, lets you preview markdown files in quicklook! Really handy if you want to look at a project README or documentation.

You can download it here.

quick look JSON

As the name suggests, this lets you quickly preview JSON files in quicklook!

You can download it here.

QLColorCode: Preview code files

This awesome plugin lets your preview code files with syntax highlighting! Super handy!

You can download it here.

These are the quicklook plugins that make my life easier on a daily basis! Interestingly, while writing this post, I discovered this awesome repository which has more amazing plugins: quick-look-plugins. The one that can preview zip files is a godsend! Happy coding!