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Doing Quick Look on .txt files is very convenient (select in Finder and press space).

Is there a way to enable Quick Look for other text files which don't have the .txt extension (e.g., .strings files)?

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2 Answers 2

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People can develop plugins to allow Quick Look to support more file types. You can find Apple's Quick Look documentation here.

Luckily though Timac (aka Alexandre Colucci) has already created one. You can find Timac's Quick Look plugin for strings files here.

Just download the compiled plugin, copy it to your /Library/QuickLook folder and run the qlmanage -r command in the Terminal to refresh the Quick Look plugin cache and you should now be able to view previews of files with ".strings" extensions. He even made his plugin capable enough to read .strings files that aren't plain text; some .strings files are in a binary format.

He also supplies the source on his blog, at the same link above, which should help point you in the right direction if you wanted to create a plugin for other similar files that you want Quick Look to recognise.

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  • It would be cool if there was a fork that attempted to display the contents of any file that isn't photo or video in the preview window.
    – David Schumann
    Commented Nov 3, 2021 at 9:33
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QLStephen is a more general solution that works for all kinds of text files.

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  • This is the best! Works for all text files.
    – Marcin Magnus
    Commented Aug 31, 2017 at 17:42
  • It helped, but with files like config it still does not show the content. I have 1.4.3.
    – Pysis
    Commented Oct 7, 2019 at 20:14
  • This hasn't worked for years...
    – PatrickT
    Commented Apr 22, 2021 at 8:10
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    @PatrickT Working for me on Monterey (but I needed to allow the developer in Gatekeeper)
    – AnthoPak
    Commented Apr 29, 2022 at 16:54
  • @PatrickT just got it to work on Catalina. On the website follow the link to GitHub with a more recent version and directions on how allow it in GateKeeper.
    – traisjames
    Commented Nov 25, 2022 at 8:23

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