Daniel Hruska Updated. Quick Preview is one of my most used and favorite OS X features ever. By pressing the spacebar, I get an instant preview of the contents of the file, whether it's an image, video, song, PDF, text document, or third-party application files, which additionally instantly displays files otherwise unknown to OS X.
Since this is really just a preview, you can't copy text from text files. This is a real shame, as I use Quick Preview quite often for TXT, MD and PDF files. No less often, I need to copy part of the text from them, but I am already forced to open the file. Well, at least it was until I discovered a simple tutorial purely by accident.
Warning: Enabling copy text can cause problems when displaying an image, especially if you use Quick Preview of the same file twice in a row. Any changes to the Quick View settings can be undone. It's up to you whether you turn on copy permission.
1. Open Terminal.
2. Enter the command defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection -bool TRUE and confirm with Enter.
3. Enter the command killall Finder and confirm again.
4. Close Terminal.
You can now copy text from most common document types, including Microsoft Word, but unfortunately not from Apple Pages in Quick Preview. Despite this small imperfection, it is a significant facilitation of everyday work.
If you are experiencing problems displaying images, the Quick Preview settings can be returned to their original state.
1. Open Terminal.
2. Enter the command defaults write com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection -bool FALSE and confirm with Enter.
3. Enter the command killall Finder and confirm. Now everything is in its original state.
Great - thanks!
It's been working for me for about two years - since MacOS 10.9 for sure - but I certainly haven't written anything similar in the Terminal. But it doesn't always work - you can't copy from some PDFs via preview or Preview. I have to open Acrobat and I can copy it from there.
Some time ago (about a year) this setting caused problems with the quick preview of images. When it was active, quite often just a blank window appeared instead of an image. Turning off the copy option fixed the problem. I have no idea if it's already fixed, I haven't tried it in a while, but I'm pointing it out just in case.
Some time ago (about a year) this setting caused problems with the quick preview of images. When it was active, quite often just a blank window appeared instead of an image. Turning off the copy option fixed the problem. I have no idea if it's already fixed, I haven't tried it in a while, but I'm pointing it out just in case.
I confirm, this was also the reason for me to stop using copy from preview.
I know the trick from the drive-thru, I use it, it's a must have. Strange, but I don't have a problem with image previews.