BetterZip Quick Look Generator

Submitted by Robert on Fri, 2007-11-30 16:29
These two buttons on the right (->) refer to my flagship product BetterZip. (Just in case you wonder.) The BetterZip Quick Look Generator on the other hand is free and can be downloaded here.

Don't you wish Leopard's Quick Look would let you inspect the contents of compressed archives? Well, I do, so I took a little code from BetterZip, a template from Apple's Xcode, added a little code here and there, and after simmering this soup for three days the BetterZip Quick Look Generator is ready for a public tasting. Hot!

The currently supported archive formats are: ZIP, TAR, GZip, BZip2, ARJ, LZH, ISO, CHM, CAB, CPIO, RAR, 7-Zip, DEB, RPM, StuffIt's SIT, DiskDoubler, BinHex, and MacBinary.

Download it here, unpack, and after carefully studying the License Agreement for the next two weeks, copy the BetterZipQL.qlgenerator bundle to your /Library/QuickLook folder (if you want to install it for all users on your Mac) or to the ~/Library/QuickLook folder, this is the Library/QuickLook folder inside your user folder. You may need to create the QuickLook folder inside ~/Library first.

The Quick Look framework will need a little time before it realizes that a new generator has been added. If you are impatient and not afraid of using the terminal, you can execute this command to make the Quick Look framework reset immediately: qlmanage -r

Last and best of it all: It's free!

Comments

Submitted by Paranoid Android (not verified) on Mon, 2007-12-10 21:18.

Really strange! Unrarx decompresses the files with a single click, so no encryption! None of my rar files work :-( Zip files are ok.

Submitted by Robert on Mon, 2007-12-10 21:43.

Android: Maybe your system has no configured UTI for rar files. Try executing this command in the terminal (replace /Users/robert/Desktop/testfile.rar with your rar file):

qlmanage -p /Users/robert/Desktop/testfile.rar

What does it say in the last few lines? If it says something like Content type UTI: dyn.some-random-code that is the case. I will have a fix for that soon.

Submitted by M.Bischoff (not verified) on Tue, 2007-12-11 16:14.

I knew my money would be well spent with BetterZip. Thanks for this incredible plug-in! And for free, wow!

Submitted by paolo (not verified) on Wed, 2007-12-12 01:07.

Installed the plugin in /Library/QuickLook, then run "qlmanage -r" but still quicklook does not show the content of zipfiles.
If I try "qlmanage -p somezipfile.zip" it does show correctly the content of the zipfile.
Even tried rebooting...

What might be wrong in my setup?

Paolo

Submitted by paolo (not verified) on Wed, 2007-12-12 01:59.

Forget about the comment above.
Got it working... sorry, should not do those things so late...

Submitted by Paranoid Android (not verified) on Fri, 2007-12-14 02:09.

Well done!

Submitted by Timmo (not verified) on Mon, 2007-12-17 23:00.

Great software!!!

It would be even greater to be able to look into files of the compressed.
E.g. reading the java source code of files in a .jar (zip) file.

Regards from Berlin,
Timmo

Submitted by Robert on Tue, 2007-12-18 13:13.

Timmo: Yeah, but I guess that's where the QL Generator ends and BetterZip (which can do exactly that) starts. Not only from a business point of view, but also a technical. QL generators can output only text, PDF, or HTML. There is no way of extracting and previewing files inside the archive, because after creating the listing the QL generator has no control over the contents.

Update: Of course, you can also create image, sound, and video output from QL plug-ins, but these are not relevant for archives.

Submitted by Kai Braunbeck (not verified) on Fri, 2008-02-08 06:09.

Thank you very much for this sir.
It's a great program and very useful. Kudos for making it! Also many thanks for giving it to us free. Great program.

Submitted by Robert on Fri, 2008-02-08 10:44.

Kai: I am glad you like it.

Submitted by Levi Figueira (not verified) on Wed, 2008-02-13 18:00.

Thanks for this awesome plugin!

And add me on the request list for the static header! ;) hehe

Submitted by cool (not verified) on Thu, 2008-02-14 09:27.

Cool stuff and great work :)

Since I'd prefer to see the rendered HTML pages (separate CHM QL plugin) and not the contents of these files, could you tell me how to disable the CHM preview?

Submitted by Robert on Thu, 2008-02-14 12:34.

Levi: It will be in the next version, but this will take a little more time, since I am very busy working on BetterZip at the moment. Please, be patient. ;-)

cool: Please, see this post for instructions.

Submitted by someone (not verified) on Thu, 2008-03-27 20:51.

How can I see ".ear" files? these are Java JAR files that are used for J2EE deployments... I just did a test, and if I rename a .ear file into a .war file, it is displayed correctly!

How can I add the .ear extension?

thanks!

Submitted by Robert on Thu, 2008-03-27 21:14.

someone: That's strange, the BetterZip QL generator should handle ear files just fine. It's defined exactly in the same way as jar, war, and bunch of other java extensions. But now that you say it, I see that it's not working here either. I'll fix the problem with the next version.

Submitted by emilio (not verified) on Fri, 2008-03-28 21:09.

Wow... that is a really quick response... it must be just a really quick fix right? I'll be checking your site for the update...

Thanks!

-emilio

Submitted by Thomas Schlosser (not verified) on Sun, 2008-04-13 14:15.

Great tool. Thanks.

But it seems to "steal" another plugin the chance to open a document. In my case I have "quickchm" to handle CHM files, but these files ar quicklooked by better-zip always. What can I do?
Does it make a difference in priority to use the global Library vs. the user's Libray folder?

Thanks for suggestions!
Thomas

Submitted by Thomas Schlosser (not verified) on Sun, 2008-04-13 14:17.

..oops, that issue was already raised. I will wait, too. Thx
Thomas

Submitted by elmuymac (not verified) on Sun, 2008-08-17 12:42.

impressive, amazing and wonderful
THK!

Submitted by Philip Southam (not verified) on Wed, 2009-02-18 00:51.

In order for me to get it work properly with tar.bz2 files on my set up (OS X 10.5.6), I had to insert an additional string element after line 50 in Info.plist containing the value public.bzip2-archive

Submitted by Robert on Wed, 2009-02-18 11:04.

Thanks for the info.

Submitted by now4real954 (not verified) on Tue, 2009-03-31 08:02.

OMFG...this is great...I had no idea something like this was available...you are a ROCK STAR DUDE...

thank you for making this...it was an accident that I found your script...and it's amazing...I have always adored quicklook but was dumbfounded by the fact that so few things could be QL'd...and I love it...

especially with zip files...you never know what you are getting until you unzip them

now I know before doing that...and can decide to open or not...thank you so much

again you are a ROCK STAR

Submitted by jonnyb (not verified) on Fri, 2009-04-03 13:10.

Woo! Very nice, thanks.
Does this come with BetterZip and i missed it?
Either way, found it now thanks (and thanks for BZ!)

Submitted by Ben (not verified) on Thu, 2009-11-19 01:14.

Great job - thanks for sharing with the community.

@hk
Robert gives away a fully functional, very useful piece of work and cannot even promote his other work which you -arrogantly- call spam infested? Get real man!

Submitted by Robert on Thu, 2009-11-19 11:39.

Thanks, Ben!

Submitted by Dan (not verified) on Wed, 2009-12-30 03:36.

Perhaps making it clearer that the $20 app on the side and the Quick Look plugin are two separate things would help people from making that mistake. I too almost left when I saw the price tag, but then saw the small "free" text in the description. Just a suggestion :D

Submitted by Nick Centi (not verified) on Sun, 2010-01-17 16:20.

Wow! Thanks! It is free.