Peek Adds Markdown, Code Highlighting, and More File Types to Your Mac’s Quick Look

Quick View is one of the best features of macOS: simply press the spacebar while browsing files to instantly view the one you currently have selected. This is great when you’re viewing images, videos, and documents, but may be less than ideal for text files—code isn’t colored and markdown isn’t displayed, and some other file types aren’t even supported. .

Enter Peakan independent $8 app that adds support for over 600 file types in Quick Look and also adds new features. It adds code coloring, as well as custom themes and rendering for Markdown. It also adds features that Quick Look wouldn’t otherwise offer, including functional search and the ability to copy text.

To get started, install the app and start using Quick Look as usual. Preview the markdown file and it will be displayed along with the table of contents. View the code file and it will be highlighted in color.

Some of the best features are not so obvious. First, you can now select text and copy it directly from Quick View, something that wasn’t possible before. You can now use the keyboard shortcut “Command-F” to search inside the document preview.

Your Mac won’t give Peek full control

Please note that these features are only added to files if Peek provides preview. Apple doesn’t allow third-party apps to use preview functionality for certain file types, including PDF, TXT, and Office documents. You can tell if Peek provides a file preview by looking for a pair of eye emojis at the end of the file name at the top of the window. (Please note that PDF files are not supported, but ePDF files are supported.)

There are a number of other options worth checking in the settings, which you can find when you launch the app. You can choose a color scheme for code highlighting, customize how markdown rendering works, and customize the rendering of Postscript and ePDF files.

Peek is in many ways the best Quick Look extension, especially if you work with text files a lot.