By far, the feature I most sorely miss in Linux compared to macOS is Quick Look. Press the space bar, see file contents. Use the arrow keys, view different files. Simple, quick, and WAY faster than opening an entire app every single time I want to check the contents of a file. I also miss the column view in conjunction with arrow keys (I’m VERY keyboard-centric, I liked being able to navigate everything with only a keyboard), but that’s less important, and probably has an easy analogue.
Most of the discussions about this that I found are older than I am (hyperbole), and I found a bunch of dead projects last updated years ago. I also found that GNOME apparently has a feature like Quick Look, but that would involve using GNOME.
I’m running Debian 12 with Plasma 5 (Does Plasma 6 have anything?) Is there any way to restore this functionality? I intend for this to be more of a master thread that anyone can visit to get help on the matter, as I’m sure I’m not the only Linux user who loves Quick Look.
Any suggestions or just talk is very appreciated.
I adopted ranger as my file manager and there is a way to enable preview that works for text files, PDFs, and images (plugin). It’s not Quick Look, but you might not hate it.
I like it primarily for reasons of using the keyboard to navigate, search, copy, move, delete, and open files. It helped me miss Alfred less.
Someone else has mentioned nnn, which has similar aims.
I recently found out that Nemo has this feature as well (the default file manager for cinnamon)
nnn has this. If you have the right helper installed, it’ll even show you pictures and movies.
This one’s really worth looking in to. I might try it out. Thanks!
Followup: This is the greatest file manager of All Time.
Nautilus kinda has it, don’t know how it works though
There’s a Dolphin plugin for this: https://github.com/Nyre221/dolphin-quick-view
This seems to almost work. I’ll have to work on it later. Thanks!
Isn’t the F11 preview similar?
Kind of, but it only displays the icon of a file. macOS opens an entire intractable view that can be instantly opened and closed with the space bar. It can even do most video and audio files.
Even 3D objects
Especially 3D objects
Is there any way to restore this functionality?
Yes, you can implement it yourself.
Look, if it becomes enough of an issue for me, I’ll learn how to create software.
