You probably know that there is a built-in file preview feature in Windows 10 File Explorer. To preview or to see the content of a file without opening it with a program, you need to enable the preview pane using the Alt + P hotkey and then select a supported a file in File Explorer to view to preview the file in the preview pane.
The built-in file preview is a wonderful feature and can save your precious time, especially when you are not using the thumbnail view in File Explorer.
The only problem with the built-in file preview feature is that it takes considerable amount of screen space. Although you can quickly turn on or off the preview pane using Alt + P hotkey, enabling the preview pane just to preview a file doesn’t make sense. Would not it be good if we could preview files in File Explorer without actually enabling the preview pane?
QuickLook app to quickly preview files in Windows 10
QuickLook is a free app available on Windows Store to preview files in Windows 10 File Explorer quickly. The main difference between QuickLook and built-in File Explorer preview feature is that QuickLook doesn’t add or require a dedicated preview pane.
To preview document or picture, you just need to select the file and then press the Spacebar key on the keyboard. The file preview will appear on the screen. To close the preview, simply press the spacebar key again or press Esc key.
Preview audio, video and picture in Windows 10
QuickLook app supports several file types, including popular image, document, audio and video formats.
After installing the QuickLook app from the Store, you just need to run the QuickLook app to be able to preview files in File Explorer.
As you can see in pictures, when you are previewing a file, you can open the file with its associated app or program. For instance, if you are previewing an image file and the default image viewer is Photos app, the QuickLook shows Open with Photos option at the top-right of the preview. Alternatively, if you love doing that with your keyboard, simply press the Enter key when previewing a file to close the preview and open the file with the default app.
With default settings, QuickLook loads with Windows 10, but you can change that by right-clicking on QuickLook icon in the system tray and then clicking Run at startup option.
Visit the following Windows Store link to install the QuickLook app on your Windows 10 PC.
Download QuickLook (Windows Store link)
Aural-Virus says
For some reason quicklook fails to open/play more than a couple (more often just 1) audio file/s – it may play the first selected but for whatever reason it’s incapable of opening a subsequent file, simply not responding at all.
I’m sure i recall in windows 7, windows media player, when installed, would enable a far more stable preview option actually within the preview pane sidebar, not a slow to respond (in comparison) pop up window as quicklook unfortunately does – slow as in if trying to preview (audition) multiple small audio clips (say a folder of 100’s of samples for a project) having to select and space bar play each file becomes extremely monotonous in comparison to being able to simply audition each file by using the arrow down key for the file to then auto play until the down key is pressed again moving to the next file in the list.
So with quicklook being slow/unpredictable, the old win 7 preview apparently removed/no longer possible(?) I’ve resorted to looking at alternate Explorer applications.
Total Commander being a well known application which does have an audio preview plugin option but it has the similar issues as quicklook, slow(er), even more cumbersome pop up basically an audio player the size of xmp/mpch etc – far from ideal, I just as well add a contextual send to menu and right click each file and play them in xmp or mpch (as I have been doing unfortunately (or using Boom but it’s impracticle to audition files then find them in explorer – the benefit of playing them in explorer is the ability to highlight and copy the selected files to a seperate “works” folder, having to remember 25 audio snippets titled audio1, audio2 or sfx1, sfx2 – not ideal, doesn’t make for a smooth efficient method.
Another promising looking explorer alike program is FMan, but appears to have no preview option (I maybe wrong, just found it) but one Explorer alt simply titled “Files” has the ability to preview audio quickly and seemingly stable, ironically enough it uses quicklooks “engine” as a 3rd party addition, but doesn’t have the pop up issue, instead the discrete player appears in the ui’s window where it would in explorer.
The only disadvantage of “Files” it doesn’t appear to have the dual window option as Total Commander / FMan which makes transferring selected groups to a “works” folder a painless process but not essential if the chosen files can be highlighted and copied to a preexisting folder. A said in “Files” the audio file preview option works well but it’s still not ideal – hence why I’ve continued the search and found this page and thought I’d point out the shortfalls of quicklook that I have experienced (and in the hopes someone may message me with the perfect solution.
My search was to find a way to re-enable windows media player/preview/win 7 option (maybe windows 11 will have ALL the good things win 10 should have) …. please microsoft just copy the good bits of osx and stop being stubborn. If you cant beat ’em, plagiarise them….
Lastly should anyone find any use at all from this semi-rant, 1 other option I think I mentioned it above is the cool audio player “BOOM” an audio file player that roughly utilises windows folder tree layout and has no frills other than play, stop & volume.
Aural-Virus says
Quicklook is MEH
Has anyone made a UI-less contextual menu audio file player that ideally ties in with win 10’s file info pop up window (showing the song is playing, the id tags fields filled and what format but doesn’t remain on screen).
this ui-less player would ideally pulls codecs from anyone of the codec packs (mpch/vlc/k-lite) depending on which is installed and thus be miniscule.
Damn i wish i knew how to script.
I expect a script could be ran in something like File Menu tools but I have all the knowledge that it can be done just the important part of HOW.
best i’ve managed is to use the “send to” fields and added commands that “sends” a file that opens up XMP (or any other app, VU player/Vinyl/Winyl etc or sends to any spectrograph app like Spex, auCDtect etc or a codec conversion tool) but it’s not ideal, I wish to quickly audition a few seconds of a tune – see it’s tag fields & then when the file is closed so to is the “player”, even if I open up another file moments later.
Boom is great but requires navigation.
Quicklook is buggy and just crashes and hen refuses to open after 3 or 4 plays and if you navigate away from the files window it starts to play another song or opens a text or – its cr4p.
For some reason Windows Media Player no longer previews as it did in Win 7.
Why the heck cant microsoft add a properly developed PREVIEW option rather than a hlaf assed effort? In short, 1 more thing I miss from OSX. (I dont miss the hardware it runs on and a hackentosh would remove me from the pc environment i have created for the purpose that needs 1 refining option, the ability to quickly audition a song…… there has to be something out there…
Chris says
I just want to preview videos in the preview pane. In win 7 I could play any video in the preview pane. In my new PC, win 10, software update applied just last night (although this hasn’t worked since new), there are no buttons or controls for playing .mov files – and I can see from an online forum that this issue was raised with Microsoft in Jan 2018. Three and a half years to not fix basic functionality that worked before – in the freshly built windows environment is appalling – but that’s microsoft and we don’t have many other options.
Jeffrey J Haugh says
I see the utility of this feature but often I don’t want to hear the audio on my PowerPoint slides when I select them. Is there a way to turn the audio preview off but still see the image?
Mira says
Great article! Thanks! Very helpful!