Just got a new imac with 10.6. Our folder system has a lot of folders that the name starts with a space. To get around I used to just start typing the name of the folder starting with a space instead of scrolling through our long file list. Not the best system but we have thousands of folders with linked files and we are not going to change the names. Is there a way to turn off or disable quicklook so that I can use the space bar then type to find the folder?
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How to turn off / disable quicklook
- Thread starter uvsj
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As far as I know it's not possible to disable Quicklook.
As a suggestion, you might try using command-space instead and typing your folder name into Spotlight. I know that's not exactly what you want, but it should work OK.
As a suggestion, you might try using command-space instead and typing your folder name into Spotlight. I know that's not exactly what you want, but it should work OK.
This one (attached). My right-click menu shows "Customize Toolbar" not "Customize Keyboard."
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You're right!! What on earth made me type "Keyboard" when it should have been "Toolbar"?
Can just command+drag the icon off the Finder toolbar. But this doesn't disable Quick Look.
Ok, well, that won't disable it. I thought it was a reference to an application icon, not a tool icon. (or is the latter supposed to be "ikon"?)
Mac was designed to use Spotlight, it works better in my opinion. Why try to navigate 10 folders deep when you can hit command + space, start typing and your files are right in front of you. You are just used to having things the way they did in another OS, I as a Mac user get pissed when I use my work laptop on windows and it is more difficult to navigate. It's not even that I am used to a Mac, I just started 6 months ago. I used Windows for over 10 years and Linux for 5, to each his own.
Why?
There is a function in Mac OS that previews files so that you can kinda see what a document looks like before you open it.
With older versions of Office, this function makes Excel think someone has the file open, and subsequently opens the file as read only.
I have in the past disable this and it lasted for a long time, but the recent updates re-enabled this feature due to it being… updated.
Well it still doesn’t work, so it needs to be disabled again.
This is the folder thats messing us up:
/System/Library/QuickLook/Office.qlgenerator
Problem is, folders in the location are protected by MacOS so you have to temporarily disable that protection so you can disable the stupid plugin.
In order to switch off the System Integrity Protection, you firstly need to boot your Mac from the built in recovery partition, to do this follow the steps below;
• Power off your Mac
• Press and hold CMD + R on your Mac keyboard
• From the Utilities menu, select Terminal
• Copy and paste or type in the following:
csrutil disable
reboot
Then enable root user, and using the terminal, copy these commands one by one:
su root (type root password)
Then from any directory, run this command
mv /System/Library/QuickLook/Office.qlgenerator /System/Library/QuickLook/Office.backup
Go back in to recovery mode as described above, and re-enable the system protection;
• Power off your Mac
• Press and hold CMD + R on your Mac keyboard
• From the Utilities menu, select Terminal
• Copy and paste or type in the following:
csrutil enable
reboot
M. Locke
Is there any way to remove QuickLook's preview function for webdocs / webpages? The only advice I found was to delete the web.qlgenerator, and while it works, it also prevents the Mail program and the iTunes Store from loading anything (empty sites / message bodies).
Hi @lostinlodos, isn't @StarmanSkywalker complaining that deleting Web.qlgenerator prevents Mail and iTunes from working? If that's true, it could be impossible to remove Web.qlgenerator without breaking macOS apps.
@StarmanSkywalker, as I don't have such a file, could you post the UTI (Uniform Type Identifier) of a .webdoc file? To do so, open Terminal, write the command 'mdls', hit space, drag'n'drop a .webdoc file on the Terminal window, hit enter and copy paste the line starting with 'kMDItemContentType' for us.
@StarmanSkywalker, as I don't have such a file, could you post the UTI (Uniform Type Identifier) of a .webdoc file? To do so, open Terminal, write the command 'mdls', hit space, drag'n'drop a .webdoc file on the Terminal window, hit enter and copy paste the line starting with 'kMDItemContentType' for us.
I haven’t tried iTunes because I have an iPhone and Apple Music. I rarely open iTunes on my iMac.
So I’ll need to verify that but I haven’t run into any major issue with Mail. Looks like we’re Playing with the web interface here. If mail comes in as raw html I can potentially see a problem; but most people don’t mess with settings.
I CAN cause rtf and older html mail to load blank but it takes some tweaking if settings in the terminal to get to that. Generally rich html mail loads just fine.
Granted you should always make a backup before you start playing with settings via the terminal but my suggestion is make a full backup and then try it.
That said I’ll run a backup again later this week and try this in a fresh install and see what happens.
And report back in a few days.
So I’ll need to verify that but I haven’t run into any major issue with Mail. Looks like we’re Playing with the web interface here. If mail comes in as raw html I can potentially see a problem; but most people don’t mess with settings.
I CAN cause rtf and older html mail to load blank but it takes some tweaking if settings in the terminal to get to that. Generally rich html mail loads just fine.
Granted you should always make a backup before you start playing with settings via the terminal but my suggestion is make a full backup and then try it.
That said I’ll run a backup again later this week and try this in a fresh install and see what happens.
And report back in a few days.
I've applied Matt Locke's strategy and indeed Movie.qlgenerator has become a folder named Movie.backup with inside it the content of Movie.qlgenerator, but the change has no effect, quick looks of movie files are still generated. Any idea of what to do?
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Probably another qlgenerator is responsible for the preview, now. To find out, which one it is, open Terminal, enter the following command and review the new text file on your desktop to find the proper file type with the corresponding qlgenerator.
Bash:
qlmanage -m > ~/Desktop/QuickLookReport.txtThanks. Actually i removed all ql.generators from the QuickLook folder, all Quicklook agents in LaunchAgents folder but Quicklook still won't disable for MP4s…
So I put everything back in its original place.
Actually, if you have a look in the generated report, you'll see that every single application that is installed on your Mac can have a QuickLook folder that contributes to the global and user specific QuickLook plug-ins, too.
To remove such an app provided qlgenerator, search inside the application package (right or control click on the app icon, then select Show Package Contents). Remove the whole QuickLook folder from the Library folder inside the app package (that simply is a special folder, too). MacOS values the QuickLook folders inside apps with the highest priority for generating the preview, then the user specific folders, the global library and finally system library folder with lowest priority.
The only app provided qlgenerator was inside GarageBand. I removed it and Quicklook is still generating video playing… I think the Quicklook function for mp4s is applied by some other thing, maybe contained inside the QuickTime Player folder.
Yes, it could be. If you're removing QuickLook generators, there's also a cache for previews that isn't deleted automatically. To force removing the cache and reloading the list of qlgenerators that are serving a specific file format, type into Terminal:
Bash:
qlmanage -rqlmanage -m from two posts ago to see what generator actually serves the movie files. Maybe you'll need to repeat these steps until there's no more QuickLook preview.man qlmanage and qlmanage -h give you all available information about using the command.