QuickLook blanks when displaying some images

Question

When using QuickLook to quickly look through multiple images (pressing space and then using the arrow keys to navigate), some images will not get displayed by QuickLook when hitting them up a second time (going back for example).

A GIF does a much better job than me showcasing the issue. So here's me previewing a few random images:

I have tried deleting

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.QuickLookDaemon.plist ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.QuickLookDaemon/Cache.db ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.QuickLookDaemon32/Cache.db ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.quicklook.ui.helper

and restarting, unfortunately to no avail.

Repairing permissions and restarting the Finder in 32-bit mode, as suggested by others, don't appear to have any effect on this issue either.

This happens with all kinds of images, no matter their source or format.

Answer 1

This "blank Quicklook image" Bug is caused by the activation of the undocumented TextSelection-Feature. As soon as I deleted that feature with this terminal command the blank images were never seen again ;-)

defaults delete com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection; killall Finder;

If this delete-command doesn't work for you, you could try to disable the feature with

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection -boolean NO; killall Finder;

Answer 2

A temporary solution is to press ALT (twice) when presented with a grey image.

Answer 3

I'm using Yosemite. Tried all those approaches above, but they didn't last for long. But I did find one approach that DID work. Hold down the Option key before pressing Quick Look (the icon will change). The pictures will go to full screen. Then it won't fail to display. Press Esc to quit.

Answer 4

I wasn't able to simply delete the file to fix the problem. I had to go into my back up account and make a copy of the file from ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist and then move it into my user account. I'm sure you could do the same thing with your Guest User account, too.

For me, the problem was caused by making the text in QuickLook copyable. I noticed when I turned on defaults write -g QLEnableTextSelection -bool true that the blank Quicklook bug was coming up as talked about in this thread. When I turned it off, (defaults write -g QLEnableTextSelection -bool false) the problem went away.

Answer 5

I have found the solution. I have Yosemite and none of this terminal line solutions worked for me, neither using Onyx.

Looks like Yosemite added native quicklook support for animated gifs. Just go to your library and delete the quicklook file you installed. Read N15h0 on answer 15 to get the procedure right.(on the bottom)

http://www.quicklookplugins.com/2009/10/01/animated-gif/

Answer 6

This might be some kind of rendering bug due to switching between images 'too fast' for the Mac to handle. In theory it could be due to the filesize and/or image dimensions that makes it a bit harder to render the images fast enough when scrolling through them quickly. Although they should be cached for a little while after viewing them so I wouldn't think this is the case.

I read here that there has been an occuring problem with Mavericks and QuickLook since the start and apparently it's not fixed yet. Hopefully some of the tips listed in that link is somewhat helpful for you. I'll google some more and edit this comment if I find something else of interest.