How to install a plugin in QuickLook on macOS
QuickLook is an awesome macOS feature that lets you preview files. If you have lots of files to go through, you’ll find it to be exceptionally helpful. It supports a large number of file formats, and for formats it doesn’t support, you can install a plugin. You will, of course, have to find a plugin for the type of file you want to preview in QuickLook. As for the plugin itself, it’s not going to be an installable package or DMG file that you can run. Here’s how you install a plugin in QuickLook.
Install plugin in QuickLook
A QuickLook plugin has the .qlgenerator extension. The plugin file you have might have downloaded as a zipped file. In that case, you can extract it with the built-in Archive utility on macOS.
Once extracted, you need to decide how you want to install the plugin i.e., system-wide, or just for the current user. The process isn’t complicated for either one so take that into account. In order to install a plugin in QuickLook, you have to move it to the QuickLook folder. This folder is located in the Library folder. Move the file to one of the following locations, based on how you want to install it.
System-wide
/Library/QuickLook/
User-specific
~/Library/QuickLook/
You may have to authenticate with either the admin or the user password before you can paste the file.
Once you’ve pasted the file, you have to do one of two things; you can either log out of the system and log back in to apply the change, or you can run a simple command in Terminal and skip the log out/in step.
If you want to run the Terminal command, go ahead and open the app and run the command below. It will complete within in a few seconds. Once the command has run, you will be able to use QuickLook and the plugin you installed.
qlmanage -r
Remove plugin from QuickLook
Removing the plugin from your Mac is as simple as installing it. All you need to know is where you copied the plugin file to i.e., which Library folder, the system-wide foldre or a user-specific one.
Once you know which folder the plugin file is in, you can delete it. When deleting the file, you may have to authenticate the change with the admin or user password. After the file has been deleted, you will either have to log out and log back into your system to apply the change, or you can run the same Terminal command given in the previous section and skip the log out/in step.
