Comments on: Quick Look APIs

By: Jason Harris

Jason Harris — Thu, 06 May 2010 14:17:55 +0000

Things have changed in SnowLeopard and this Quicklook approach and the one used in GitX is no longer working….

By: Mikko

Mikko — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 08:14:12 +0000

Is it possible to launch quick look from a command line tool using this approach? I am aware of the qlmanage tool, but it provides only a subset of features from what launching quick look from Finder does.

By: Twitter Trackbacks for CiarÃ¡n Walshâs Blog » Quick Look APIs [ciaranwal.sh] on Topsy.com

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:01:04 +0000

[...] CiarÃ¡n Walshâs Blog » Quick Look APIs ciaranwal.sh/2007/12/07/quick-look-apis – view page – cached I recently did some extensive reverse-engineering of Quick Look to investigate the API, mainly to track down how to get the cool zooming effect when Quick-Looking a file in Finder. It turns out it’s pretty simple to use Quick Look from your own code. — From the page [...]

By: .max

.max — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 13:31:14 +0000

Thank you for the post. I’ve used this approach to customize Quick Look behavior a little further for what I need. By the way Quick Look UI appears to be a part of public Quartz framework in Snow Leopard. Which is good. Kinda. Most private APIs are deprecated though and it might get tricky to use Quick Look in both Leopard and Snow Leopard.

By: krasnojask

krasnojask — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:17:59 +0000

thanks a lot for your reverse engineering efforts!

By: Tom

Tom — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:35:23 +0000

This is great . .. Amy hints on navigating the file previewed for example a powerpoint file as a slide show in front row

By: Mo

Mo — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:35:27 +0000

Hi Ciarán,

Your reverse-engineering efforts helped me to throw together DropLook—a little applet that previews, via QuickLook, whatever file (or files) you drop onto it in windows with standard decorations and previews.

So, many thanks—you've assisted in me getting around to doing a smattering of Cocoa and I've worked around one of my biggest bugbears with QuickLook (the fact the windows vanish when you switch to another app).

By: DropLook • Gated Logic • nevali.net

DropLook • Gated Logic • nevali.net — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:23:21 +0000

[...] Griekspoor of mekentosj fame pointed me in the direction of Ciarán Walsh’s reverse-engineering of the QuickLook private framework, and I decided to get [...]

By: Carbcoa

Carbcoa — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:24:42 +0000

Just curious. Why are your implementation files Obj C++?

I changed them to Obj-C and it they compile just fine. I just had to enable C99 to compile one of your for loops. I didn't see any C++ in any of your code either.

By: Norbert M. Doerner

Norbert M. Doerner — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:06:47 +0000

Thank you so much for this really good introduction!

One question, though:

When the QuickLook window is the active one, and a single item is selected, in Finder, I can use the arrow keys to navigate through the current view. In your sample (and also in my own implementation), that only works if the original view is clicked onto (thus made active again).

How could I set up the responder chain or the delegate, so that it would forward me keyDowns to my own view?

(I have tried to add my own keyDown method to the delegate for QuickLook, but that was never called...)

Thanks again!!