Looq: Preview Files

Lauren at Parcse looked at macOS Quick Look—the thing you use a hundred times a day without thinking about it—and said "this is garbage." So she built Looq, a Quick Look plugin that actually makes file previews useful. And honestly, after using it, you'll wonder how you survived without it.

Looq previews Markdown with full GFM rendering, KaTeX math equations, and Mermaid diagrams right in the preview window. It handles code with syntax highlighting for 190+ languages, supports SQLite and CSV tables with resizable columns and color-coded diffs, and browses ZIP and TAR archives with a directory tree. It even remembers your scroll position. The best part? Zero telemetry. No analytics, no tracking, no accounts. The only network activity is fetching remote images referenced in Markdown. That's the kind of privacy-first engineering we need more of.

It's a $14.99 one-time purchase—pay once, own it forever—or $29.99 for Family (6 Macs). There's a 7-day free trial to test it out. If you spend any time in Finder working with code, data files, or Markdown docs, Looq is that rare tool that makes your workflow instantly better without any learning curve. Just hit space on any file and it just works.