Tips and Tricks: Enable Folder Previews in Snow Leopard

December 3, 2009 in Tips & Tricks by Bob Faulhaber

Do you use the Quicklook feature in Snow Leopard? Did you know that you can get a visual preview of the files in a particular folder without opening the folder? It’s easy with a simple Terminal command.

Quicklook in Snow Leopard is a nice feature that allows you to preview files without having to open the associated application. If you use Quicklook on a folder you’ll get the number of items in that folder, along with the total size of those items, but there’s a neat trick that will let you “peer” into the folder and see the files that are there.

To get started, open Terminal

Type the following command:

defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableXRayFolders 1;

Restart Finder and give it a try on a folder.

FolderQuickLook

Quicklook will now give you an animated preview of the contents of the folder.

It’s a nice way to let you personalize your computer, as for functionality, that’s your call.

If you want to disable, just type the above command and change the 1 to 0 and the feature will be disabled after you restart Finder.

What other Finder tips & tricks have you discovered? Let us know by leaving a comment and you could win an iTunes Gift Card.