Quick Look Showdown: Peek, Looq, and Unfold

Quick Look extensions have evolved over time. Once the category seemed to be made up of legacy junk: kernel-adjacent hacks that broke every time Apple shipped a point release, the kind of thing you install once, forget about, and eventually blame for a random Finder freeze. That reputation was earned. For years the ecosystem really was a pile of abandoned generators held together by community goodwill.

Then, starting with Peek in 2021, the category was reborn on native QLPreviewingController extensions, sandboxed, App Store-distributed, and stable across OS upgrades in a way the old plugin era never was. Press Space on a file Quick Look doesn't understand, and there's now a real decision to make about which extension handles it. Aside from Peek, two apps released in 2026 are also competing for your attention: Looq and Unfold.

Quick Look extensions built on native APIs are meaningfully more stable across OS upgrades than the legacy plugin era, and the ability to skip the old "extract, view, delete" archive-clutter cycle is worth the price of admission on its own. On the development side, the appeal is inspecting code from Finder mid-workflow without breaking a terminal session. One aggravation is the sandboxing limit that prevents dragging files directly out of a Quick Look overlay onto the desktop. Part of the appeal for me is my preference for single-purpose extensions over bundling Quick Look enhancements into a bigger, always-running utility. If your needs are light (you just want code to have color), take a look at Syntax Highlight, a free, open source alternative featuring code highlighting only, built on the same native extension architecture as the paid options, no rendering flourishes.

Peek - Good But Dated

Peek showed up to solve a specific, well-remembered grievance: Apple killed QLEnableTextSelection back in Sierra, and for six years there was no clean way to select or copy text out of a Quick Look preview. Peek fixed that, added Markdown rendering, syntax highlighting across roughly 200 languages, scroll-position memory, and 70-plus themes, and became the default recommendation for a legitimate reason: it worked, it covered 530-plus file extensions, and it did it without the sketchy Input Monitoring access early competitors needed.

I won't call it abandonware... but is it? Peek's App Store listing shows version 2.6.4 as its most recent entry, dated April 2022, and the copyright footer on the developer's own site still reads "© 2021-2022." That doesn't mean it's broken today, but it's worth knowing before considering it the de facto favorite just because it's familiar.

More to the point for this comparison: Peek was built to make Quick Look better at showing you text. It was never built to show you structured data. There's no SQLite browsing, no diff/patch rendering, and no archive or package-metadata inspection anywhere in its feature set. That's exactly the gap Looq and Unfold showed up to fill.

Peek vs. Looq vs. Unfold

What all three have in common:

• Native, sandboxed Quick Look extensions, no kernel extensions or legacy plugin architecture.
• Markdown rendering with a generated table of contents.
• Syntax-highlighted source code preview.
• One-time purchase pricing, no subscription (Peek and Looq $7.99–$10 depending on storefront; Unfold $10).
• Zero data collection, per each app's own App Store privacy disclosure.

What's unique to Peek:

• The deepest raw file-type coverage of the three: 530-plus extensions, including obscure config and legacy source formats the other two don't bother with.
• Search, jump-to-line, and jump-to-page inside the preview itself: real keyboard navigation, not just rendering.
• 70-plus syntax themes plus a custom CSS stylesheet option.
• The only one of the three that predates the current "developer-file QuickLook" wave by four years, with the review history to show it.

What's unique to Looq:

• SQLite database browsing with pagination, column types, and sortable tables — nothing else here touches this.
• Diff/patch rendering with color-coded, dual line numbers.
• Live-reloading previews: edit and save a Markdown or Mermaid file while Quick Look is open, and the preview updates without you pressing Space again.
• Metadata inspection for .app, .ipa, .pkg, .dmg, .iso, and provisioning profiles: code signing, entitlements, and notarization status, right from the preview.
• A built-in diagnostics tool that detects and repairs conflicting Quick Look extensions.
• A menu-bar recent-files view and a CLI companion tool.

What's unique to Unfold:

• Broader archive format support: RAR and 7z on top of ZIP/TAR/GZ/BZ2, which Looq and Peek don't cover.
• Ebook and comic preview: EPUB, FB2, CBR, CBZ.
• Three distinct folder-preview layouts (Native, Grid, List).
• The lowest macOS floor of the three going the other direction: it actually requires the newest OS, 15.6 (Sequoia) or later, versus Looq's 15.0 and Peek's 10.15.

Which one is right for you?

Peek. Why you'd use it: the deepest file-type coverage of the three, real in-preview navigation (search, jump-to-line), and four years of being the thing everyone already recommends. Counterpoint: it hasn't visibly shipped an update since 2022, and it was never built to handle structured data — no SQLite, no diffs, no archive or package inspection. If your files are mostly text and code, it's still fine. If they're not, it can't help you.

Looq. Why you'd use it: you're a developer, sysadmin, or technical writer who wants Quick Look to actually understand what it's showing you — SQLite schemas without opening DB Browser, diffs without a git client, signed .pkg contents without installing first. Counterpoint: if you only need Markdown or only need code color, Looq is more app than you need, and QLMarkdown or Syntax Highlight get you there for free.

Unfold. Why you'd use it: you deal in RAR/7z archives, or you want ebook and comic previews, neither of which Looq or Peek offer, at the same $10 as Looq. Counterpoint: no SQLite, no diff viewer, no package-signing inspection. If your work involves databases or shipping installers, Unfold is the one of the three that can't help.

Special Purpose Quick Look Plugins

• Suspicious Package is free (mothersruin.com). Does one thing, installer package inspection, better than Looq's broader metadata preview does it, because it's all the app is for.
• QLMarkdown is free and open source (github.com/sbarex/QLMarkdown). Markdown and LaTeX only, nothing else. The move if Markdown rendering is the only gap in your Quick Look setup. Its Homebrew cask is deprecated as of September 2026; manual installs from GitHub releases still work.
• Syntax Highlight is free and open source (github.com/sbarex/SourceCodeSyntaxHighlight). Code highlighting only, built on the same native extension architecture as the paid options, no rendering flourishes.
• BetterZip is $35 (macitbetter.com). Not a Quick Look extension first; it's a full archive manager that happens to ship one. If you're already paying for BetterZip to handle RAR/7z/encrypted archives, its Quick Look generator already does the archive-preview job Unfold and Looq are also doing.