I expect most Mac users rely on Quick Look even though they may not know much about it. Quick Look is a technology that lets you view the contents of most documents in the finder on a Mac by pressing the spacebar. Once understood it becomes indispensable. So much so that in recent work where I need to use Windows 11 I find myself unable to be as productive when doing the exact same task just because this feature isn't part of Windows Explorer. So lets look at how to make that better.
TL:DR There is a somewhat clunky preview pane in Windows Explorer. But there is an app which provides equivalent or even better functionality, and it is free too!
Built in preview pane
If you don't want to install more software or are prevented by an administrative policy then all is not lost. You can enable a preview pane in Windows Explorer. It is a little clunky which perhaps explains why it is not enabled by default. But it does the job.
QuickLook - from the Microsoft Store
Released in 2017, ten years after Quick Look arrived in macOS, QuickLook enables a very quick preview of file contents by pressing the Spacebar. It has thousands of good ratings and a few five star reviews. Lets try it.
Once installed press the spacebar to see an image in Windows Explorer. It doesn't quite have the navigation functionality that macOS has but this is great! Just what i needed to make Windows 11 more useful.
About Quick Look for macOS
Quick Look has been around a long time now. Since before macOS was macOS and when it was Mac OS X. I can't imagine the doldrums that Microsoft's product planners have been in since then not to have picked it up and thought - hey that is perfect - lets do that.
"Quick Look is a quick preview feature developed by Apple Inc. which was introduced in its operating system Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. The feature was announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference on Jun. 11, 2007."
