Looq: Preview Files
A better Quick Look: code, Markdown, Mermaid, SQLite & more
77 followers
A better Quick Look: code, Markdown, Mermaid, SQLite & more
77 followers
Preview Markdown with KaTeX and Mermaid, highlight 200+ languages, view TSV and SQLite tables, browse archives and folders. All from Quick Look.
Looq: Preview Files
Hey everyone! I'm the developer behind Looq.
I built Looq because Quick Look on macOS handles images and PDFs great, but falls flat for everything else developers touch daily. Press Space on a Markdown file, a .swift file, or a SQLite database — you get raw text or a blank panel. I kept opening full editors just to glance at a file, and it added up.
Looq is a single Quick Look extension that previews:
Markdown — full GFM, KaTeX math, Mermaid diagrams, GitHub Alerts, auto TOC
Source code — syntax highlighting for 190+ languages, auto-formatting for minified JSON/CSS/XML
Data files — CSV and SQLite as native sortable tables with column headers and type info
Archives — browse ZIP/TAR contents without extracting
Diff/Patch — color-coded with dual line numbers
Metadata Preview — Code signing, entitlements, and notarization for .app, .ipa, .pkg, .dmg, .iso, .torrent, and more
More features coming soon.
Everything runs locally on your Mac. 7-day free trial, one-time payment.
The Mermaid diagram preview sold me instantly. I write a lot of docs in Markdown and always have to open a separate editor just to check if the diagrams render correctly. Does it support live-reloading, like if I edit and save a file while Quick Look is open?
Looq: Preview Files
@parcse Good to know, thanks! Looking forward to live rendering. Mermaid diagrams change a lot while writing so that would save a lot of Space-pressing.
Looq: Preview Files
SQLite table preview in Quick Look is something I didn't know I needed. I constantly open DB Browser just to check a quick schema. Does it handle large databases or is there a file size limit where it becomes impractical?
Looq: Preview Files
@greythegyutae Give it a shot! There's a file size cap right now to keep previews snappy, but I'm looking into handling larger files down the road.
Where can I get a list of all the languages you support?
Looq: Preview Files
@elcicneha We don't list formats on the site, but the latest version includes a diagnostic tool that shows what's supported. It covers everything the built-in tools handle and adapts to what's on your machine. It felt more useful than a list of formats you can't actually use. Curious what you think.
ProdShort
Nice idea !! extending Quick Look for dev files makes a lot of sense. @parcse
Would be cool to see support for log files or very large files too : is that something you're planning to add?
Looq: Preview Files
Quick Look is one of those tools that works just well enough to make you forget how often it fails you. The moment you hit code, data, or a markdown file, you're back to opening a full editor just to skim. That context switch is small individually and quietly exhausting at scale.
What Looq gets right is that it doesn't just add file types; it treats each format with actual context. Sortable CSV tables and KaTeX rendering in Markdown: these aren't preview features; they're comprehension features. That's a meaningful distinction.
The positioning angle worth testing: speed of insight lands harder than breadth of support. One is a spec; the other is a feeling developers recognize immediately. Leading with that could shift Looq from useful utility to something that feels genuinely indispensable.
Curious whether that framing is already shaping how you think about the roadmap.
Looq: Preview Files
@copywizard Really appreciate the thoughtful breakdown. The "comprehension vs preview" split is exactly right, reflecting my vision of the roadmap. Some of this is already in place: SQLite now has tab sheets for browsing data, and the recent update adds live Markdown re-rendering without flashing or reopening.
Quick Look for developers is fragmented. I want a single layer that handles something important properly. It's still early, and there's much more to do.
@parcse
The direction Looq is moving already hints at something most dev tools miss entirely. Live Markdown rendering and structured SQLite views aren't just preview upgrades. They're the beginning of a shift from seeing files to understanding them instantly. That's a different value proposition.
Quick Look has always been passive. You open it, you glance, and you move on. Looq starts to feel active, like the file is meeting you halfway. That distinction is subtle in a demo and obvious in daily use, which is usually where the best tools earn their place.
The opportunity is making that idea more explicit earlier, especially the first impression on the homepage. Right now the product is ahead of the story it's telling about itself. And how are you currently thinking about positioning it on the homepage?
Looq: Preview Files
@copywizard Thanks for the thoughtful take on positioning! right now I'm heads down on the product side, still plenty to get right. Messaging and the homepage will be addressed once the foundation is where I want it. I love the "passive vs active" angle, that'll stick with me.
@parcse Getting the product right first is the harder problem anyway. The messaging tends to follow once the experience is solid enough to describe honestly.
What's interesting is the active understanding layer is already there in how Looq behaves. It's more a matter of when you decide to surface it than whether the foundation exists. Once that becomes the lead, a lot of the positioning will likely click into place faster than expected.
Looq feels like one of those tools that quietly becomes part of the default environment before anyone formally decides to adopt it. When you do get to the homepage, side of things would be worth thinking hard about making that shift obvious from the very first line.
Looq: Preview Files