DISABLE Quick Look
 

I'm curious as to how one might disable Quick Look?
I tried removing /System/Library/Frameworks/Quicklook.framework/ but that just caused Finder to restart endlessly. Also acceptable would be a way to select which extensions or file types that Quick Look can "see into". Like, say I don't want Quick Look to be able to preview AVI's, but JPEG's are fine. (For example.)

Please read the following before replying:

"Why would you want to get rid of Quick Look?" Because I just do. :D
"But I checked! It hardly uses any resources!" Don't care. :D
"It's so convenient!" Maybe to you; congratulations! :D

So you have no real reason to disable the feature and you're snotty about it.

Does that about cover it?

Here is the easiest way to disable quicklook:

Step 1: Boot from a Tiger DVD.
Step 2: Launch Disk Utility and erase the drive.
Step 3: Install Tiger.

Heh heh! No, I'm just tired of forums where I ask something like, "How do I fix X?" and get replies like "Don't fix X, just use Y." It translates to me (and I have to figure I am not alone) as: "I don't know." Well, I am asking because I already don't know, I have the I-don't-know department covered.

Do I really need a reason to customize my computer how I see fit? Organize my data the way I like it? I just have to take Leopard or leave it, those are the only two options? Should I write a script that replies "Reinstall Tiger" to any thread about Leopard and be in the cool crowd?

In View options, turn off Show icon preview
In the Finder, don't press Spacebar.
How much more disabled do you want?

I did already remove the icon — even if I was a big QL fan, I doubt I would use that button. But I already know I can just simply not use it...

Doesn't quicklookd still run? Doesn't it still generate thumbnails for AVI's, etc? When you hit Cmd+I for info, I believe it's quicklookd generating the thumbnail. (I do not claim to know that for a surety though — I don't know how to look at the sub-threads in a process, so it might be something else in Finder?) Seems like a waste if someone doesn't need or want the thumbnail, doesn't want an extra daemon runnin' in Finder. So even if I neglect to press spacebar in Finder, if I want info on a file, it'll run. I guess you might say I want it disabled, disabled.

When I removed the QuickLook.framework, Finder (so far as I could tell) acted fine until I did hit space bar. So maybe if I could delete that (making a backup first of course) and un-bind spacebar so that nothing could ever trigger quicklookd anyway, that might work. If it is what's generating thumbnails for the File Info windows, I am not sure what to do. But any ideas on the keybinding? There was that cool hint on how to change the silly Cmd+Shift+F in iTunes to be the more sensible Cmd+F for search/find. Could a similar thing be done for Quick Look in Finder?

Since this disabling of QuickLook seems to be just a whim, I moved this thread to the "Tweaking" section of the forums.

i still done see any point to why you want to get rid of it, you should of just stuck to tiger because ql is one of the major features and you probably wont be able to get rid of it with out screwing up the finder, and i mean seriously screwing up as you have already found out.

Did you have some amazing use for the spacebar that has been taken away from you because of quick look? Or, and this is why i think you want to get rid of quick look, (forgive me if im wrong) but do you have some stuff you dont want other people to see... :D

i don't have an answer for the original post, but i wanted to chime in to say "i feel ya" in regards to people's weird attitude about this sort of thing- i don't know why some get so bothered by you inquiring about reverting some aspects of functionality. i understand people's different positions on the subject, and i have been annoyed by curmudgeons who insisted on having things "the old way" in software updates, but it seems sort of rude to tell someone to go back to 10.4 just because they want to disable a new feature in 10.5. there might be dozens of new features he likes in 10.5 that he doesn't want to sacrifice and there is no harm in asking. for example, the stacks feature annoyed a lot of people for reasons that might seem terribly petty to most users, but it appears they might actually be responding to this for 10.5.2.

btw, i love QL! i'll have yours!

Well, I don't mind the move, but it's less of a whim and more of an optimization, to me.

Think about it. It's a daemon, always running, consuming resources; I think of it as more or less equivalent to Preview.app always running. Why would I want that? I honestly don't use Quick Look; I don't need to. So why wouldn't I want to reclaim the limited resources of my hardware?

A Good Reason to Disable QuickLook
 

... because on the MacBook Pro due to the latest "unresponsive" upgrade fixes to 10.5.1, quicklookd is crashing and causing the spinning beach ball of death (for up to 30 seconds) as it attempts to grind through and make previews of too many files on your Desktop.

Turning off quicklookd makes the problem go away....

A reason to disable QuickLook on spacebar
 

I don´t see why so many waste time to insult someone who wants to do something to improve his OS X experience?

Here´s a good reason to disable the spacebar / QuickLook function, or at least to be able to move it to another key. I use the spacebar all the time to get to the top item of a folder viewed as a list. Now I have to hit A which of course works almost all the time, but it´s smaller and I would love to be able to use the spacebar instead just because of "easy of use", you know, the thing that we love about our Macs. Maybe we have too many switchers here who don´t see the point in having a computer that helps us get the job done faster instead of getting in our way in different ways? I´ve upgraded 2 of my Macs and sure, Leopard has cool things, but in some ways it´s like going backwards and losing smart functions.

and Yes, I do have a good answer to what those things are. I just posted them on Apple.com/feedback, but I guess it´s like when I posted about the iTunes window bug that let you drag it behind the dock if you dragged the corner in small steps, now fixed in 7.6 but it´s been many versions since I started to post about it..

Just delete the generators in the Library > Quick look folder. I think there's also some generators in the system > Library > quick look folder as well.

why ask why
 

You started getting a pain in your shoulder when you raised your right arm so you saw a doctor. "Doc, it hurts when I do this." And he replied, "Well then, don't do that."

Not a good answer, not the sort of response you were looking for I'm sure. In my case, I use spacebar in Finder to go to the top of a list quickly. For someone that uses a lot of keyboard shortcuts, having to reach for the mouse when I shouldn't is unacceptable. Now quicklook opens anytime I hit space to go to the top of the list.

I googled around and there are numerous other people with the exact same complaint, that they use space to go to the top of the list.

The only solution I've found so far is to hold a modifier key like shift when hitting space. This gets back to the "don't DO that" approach though. What I want is for the computer to continue working the way it did last week, and when I learned to use it that way. Telling me I have to learn a new way to do something simply because someone wants to change something on a whim is aggrivating. If you're going to modify the way something works, give me an option to NOT modify it.

We see they have added the ability to disable the "nag me every time I add a file extension" and "cloak my menubar because I have a patterned desktop picture" in 10.5.2, they apparently overlooked quicklook in Finder.

For me, quick look is just Part 2 in the Expose line. It irks me to no end to work on someone's computer where they have all four corners set as hot corners for some expose function. I don't have the best vision, and finding a small mouse on a high res screen can take time so I jet the mouse to a corner to regain sight of it, and having expose open up every time I do that is a very jarring and interrupting experience. Same for quick look in Finder.

trying the good old unix way
 

Hi folks. Today my cpu was getting hot for no reason, and a 'top' showed me quicklookd was eating 120% of cpu (macbook here).
I believe the reason was a download of a short .avi file I was doing with 'wget' from a terminal; having opened that folder with the 'show icon' preview, I think that finder was trying to rebuild the index (to display it as an icon, or whatever) every time the file size changed.

temporal solution: killall -STOP quicklookd. Quicklook now is still a valid process, but cannot allocate any more resources. It's frozen. I've noticed that killing it with -TERM or -KILL would make it restart. More or less like the good ol' logic bombs :)

anyway. Once the download will be done I'll killall -CONT quicklookd and things should be fine.


apologies if that's The Wrong Thing To Say Here but I've got my mac for a couple of days only and I'm still getting accustomated to things that actually work. leaving the console aside is still difficult for me..

disabling quick look for folders in dock
 

Just ran across this today when looking for how to disable quicklook for folders in the dock. I found a nice solution on my own.

I have five folders in my (tiger) dock that I open frequently, and they all have custom icons. (I'm a big visuals person) Leopard removed my custom folder icons in favor of the stack icon thingie, and opens a big bloated black window of folders when I click on it.

Both of these problems are fixed in one fell swoop. Make a folder somewhere in your home, and create aliases to all the folders you want in your dock in that folder. Then drag those aliases into the dock.

They will maintain their custom icon, (with an alias arrow though) and will directly open the folder in Finder when clicked.

This, in combination with the "NoGlass" / 10.5.2 switch to get rid of the 3d dock and my mac is at peace again.

I can see a very good reason for the OP's alternative request, disabling QL for only certain file types.

I've got a few AVI files on my MBP, and I've found that anytime that I'm going through a folder that happens to have AVIs in them, then quicklookd will start up and chew up CPU cycles for a few minutes until it eventually quits.

So, since AVIs can't be viewed in QL anyways, I've been looking for a way to disable it for AVIs *only*. I love QL, and find it incredibly useful for the most part; except for this case.

Any thoughts out there?

I have this problem and I think it is because of quicklookd.. Chews up almost 10 seconds between the generating the thumbnails for files that I used last week. So, I am with the original poster, please just tell me how to disable quicklookd.

5/6/08 10:19:28 AM quicklookd[154] [QL ERROR] 'Creating thumbnail' timed out for '<QLThumbnailRequest /Users/akumar/Documents/_kumar/MBA/Global_Business_IMS5200/Chapter%2003.PPT>'
5/6/08 10:19:40 AM quicklookd[164] [QL ERROR] 'Creating thumbnail' timed out for '<QLThumbnailRequest /Users/akumar/Documents/_kumar/MBA/Global_Business_IMS5200/Chapter%2002.PPT>'
5/6/08 10:19:51 AM quicklookd[165] [QL ERROR] 'Creating thumbnail' timed out for '<QLThumbnailRequest /Users/akumar/Documents/_kumar/MBA/Global_Business_IMS5200/Chapter%2001.PPT>'

dittos on 'creating thumbnail' timeout
 

Ash,

I have the same problem as you. I've been living with the problem but have reached my limit on the poor performance the problem produces.

In my case, I have many such timeouts, approximately 10 seconds apart.

I will be eternally in your debt if you find a solution and report back. I'll update as well if I find anything out.

Disable quicklookd logging, at least ?
 

Damn sick of quicklookd logging its every twitch, making it real hard to read my logs.

Appreciate, like, a terminal command to kill its logging?

One does wonder how many cycles that eats up. None of these little sweeties is free, and they are all busy preparing in advance of what may be wanted ... or maybe not.

Thanks!

I don't see *any* quicklookd entries in system.log

I viewed some jpegs, a .mp4 (movie), and even the content of a zip file (using BetterZipQL).
Must be a problem on your end (a bad .qlgenerator package perhaps?).

-HI-

Ah, thank you ...
 

That's what I'm thinking, and am relieved you see NO entires ... because right now my log is utterly useless, grrr.

It is full of Finder is preparing thumbnail yada yada yada ... and not just with one QL gen ... shall remove and start over.

Perhaps unrelated, but of all things, Console has started hanging ...

I have encountered a problem where larger files being worked on across a network cause QuickLook's preview feature to timeout (as mentioned above). Because QuickLook is still trying to preview the document when the application attempts to open it, the program reports that the file is locked or in use.

I've attempted to do different things to disable QuickLook - some of them (removing QuickLook) can have drastic side effects (Spotlight and Finder crashing continuously). The cleanest fix that I have found so far is to change permissions on the QuickLook Generators folders so that QuickLook cannot load any generators. Here is a shell script that can disable QuickLook generators. The scripts actions can be reversed by doing a "Repair Permissions" using the Disk Utility program.

----------BEGIN SHELL SCRIPT----------

#!/bin/sh
#
# This script will disable QuickLook by disabling all of its generators
# This can be undone by repairing permissions using Disk Utility
#

QL_FRAMEWORKS_GENERATORS=/System/Library/Frameworks/QuickLook.framework/Resources/Generators
QL_SYSTEM_GENERATORS=/System/Library/QuickLook
QL_LIBRARY_GENERATORS=/Library/QuickLook

# Make each generator folder unreadable
sudo chmod -R 0000 $QL_FRAMEWORKS_GENERATORS
sudo chmod -R 0000 $QL_SYSTEM_GENERATORS
sudo chmod -R 0000 $QL_LIBRARY_GENERATORS

# Reload quicklook and all generators
sudo qlmanage -r

----------END SHELL SCRIPT----------

I've since begun just removing generators (to a "Removed" folder I keep in Shared--no one else uses my machine) that I don't want.

Anyone see any harm in that? Maybe because I was on classic for so long, but I've always just gone in a moved files--making invisibles visible, as needed, and repairing permissions right away--rather than fiddle much with shell, because I haven't learned it, and because this works.

Been on X since Jaguar.

as an owner of a slow but trusty 12" powerbook g4,
i'm always grateful for threads like these on various mac (power)user forums.

i recently encoded a handful of avi's and mp4's for a project and quicklook server has been crashing on me left and right, and generally pegging between 30% and 75% of cpu usage. Not what i call 'a nice feature.'

thanks for the tip on more-or-less disabling quick look by choosing 'view' -> 'show view options' and turning off 'show icon preview'. i made that my default on a number of folders and Instantly, quick look server was no longer present as a process in activity monitor and my fan was no longer taking off into orbit.

also thanks for the (semi-unrelated) tip to revert the dock to the kinder, gentler, simpler 'no glass' style.

defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES
killall Dock

here's another one... turn off translucent top menus:

sudo defaults write /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.WindowServer 'EnvironmentVariables' -dict 'CI_NO_BACKGROUND_IMAGE' 1

(takes effect after reboot).

That's great!
In fact, I like the idea of simply moving the undesired "Generators" into another folder [like "Generators (Disabled)" ]. Thus it's effectively disabling QL for certain filetypes (like movies - QL takes way too long to generate previews of movies, but at least now in 10.5.7 it doesn't slow down all of Finder while doing so)
It's silly that the Generators folder is inside that frameworks folder, while custom-added Generators instead go into ~/Library/QuickLook/ - I'd have thought the built-in ones should thus be in /Library/QuickLook or /System/Library/QuickLook/

some very useful QL generators I've downloaded are:
BetterZipQL.qlgenerator (lets you look inside .zips)
Folder.qlgenerator (lets you preview folder heirarchies, don't remember where i got it)

btw I think it's hilarious how the OriginalPoster tried to avoid the "here's a solution: change your mind/ask for something else" responses, eliciting 10 times as many people telling him he shouldn't want to disable QL... If you don't know how to answer the question, just move on!

Thank you.

One of the things I hate about all (tech) forums in the entire world. "How can I do X?" usually gets responses like, "You shouldn't even want to do X. What's wrong with you?"

I hadn't even looked at this thread since January '08, I got too fed up! Nice to see there had been some action here, and heck, even a real solution. I just got a new MacBook, and I am looking to customize it all over again, and started going back through some of the same old bugaboos. I will try removing the generators I don't want / like. Hopefully that will be good enough! Better than doing nothing, right?

For some reason, I don't remember clearly as to why, my old MacBook did not come with iLife installed - at all. Now my new one does have it all, iPhoto and everything. Now I notice a "add to iPhoto" button in QL. Wonder how I get rid of that... wonder if I have to delete, remove, erase and destroy utterly, iPhoto entirely? Hmm.

You can see a list of the generators in use by using the following command:
Move or rename the ones you don't want, and then do:
I think this last one is already here in this thread, I'm not taking credit. The former, I saw in:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread....readID=1551766

Not quite. See... just because someone starts a thread, doesn't mean that what's discussed there is "exclusively for them." Thousands of people will be reading it (and/or finding it via google, etc.), and some of them may not know all the plusses and minuses involved. So it's good when someone at least points out: hey, that's a dumb idea because of x and y and z. Otherwise some less informed readers might just blindly follow along, without ever learning other viewpoints.

It's about balance.

The idea of repairing permissions as a general troubleshooting step seems to be one of the most common examples of a misinformed idea catching on. Fortunately, at least, performing the action is not likely to cause the average user any problems.

Back in the day when a permissions repair took only 25 seconds, it was an easy item to toss out to check it off the list ---- instead of wasting several days in a forum asking 20-questions, and then at the end of all that it sometimes did turn out to be some 3rd-party app that messed up permissions somewhere. [>such as<]

But this is more about system hacks: kill the Dock... kill Spotlight... kill QuickLook, etc.

That's why I referred to repairing permissions as a "misinformed idea" rather than a "dumb idea" (your term for potentially dangerous ideas).

I think I mostly disagree there, and I say mostly because I think it doesn't really apply to what I was saying: alternate viewpoints are a fine thing, but brick wall responses are not. Ask "How can I do X?" and get the response, "Don't do X." - that's not really an elaboration that will aid the OP or anyone else, exclusively or not.

And I'd say all tech-related boards in existence are heavily imbalanced with unhelpful brick wall replies, such as "You shouldn't want to disable QuickLook!" for example.

It's crazy. Ask someone privately and they'd probably at least look into how to do something, but ask on a forum and you're bound to get "What an idiot! Never do that! Customizing OS X is a terrible idea!" :confused:

It is indeed a terrible idea for 99% of the people reading these forums.
Otherwise some people will come back several months or a few system updates later and say "Help - something is wrong with my system. I remember that I made some unsupported modification to the system following some instructions that I found somewhere on the Internet - but now everything is crashing. I think it's related to the system updates. Can you tell me how to fix this?".

If someone asks about something, then the best advice might well be "don't do that: do this instead".
There are countless instances on this forum where someone asks about a very particular thing that they want to achieve, but when the broader picture is seen, the best advice is to offer them an entirely different strategy.

For instance, if someone asks about how to make a fire indoors, then you might enquire why. When you find out that their ultimate goal is to make tea, you might say "don't make a fire: just use an electric or hob kettle."

The OP in this thread gave no reason for wanting QL disabled, and was pre-emptively sarky about the replies he might receive. Since he had no problems caused by QL, saying "Just don't use it" seemed appropriate. If he had said "it's causing me these problems", then I might have offered different help.

Horses for courses.

Maybe..
 

Well, its not really my business why anyone would or wouldn't want to do something. However, I really don't feel like trying this so I leave it up to whoever wants to give a host. I would try something to the effect of...

cd /System/Library/LaunchAgents/
sudo nano com.apple.quickLook.plist
*enter your password here*
then add two lines
<key>Disabled</key>
<true/>
and ctrl+o to save, ctrl+x to exit

Well, I suppose I should include a disclaimer that I'm not sure what effects it would have, though because disabling other system processes works this way, perhaps quickLook may also recognize the <key>disabled</key> boolean.

Anyway, if you try it and it works out let me know. Take care.

I agree with the original poster.

At least give us an option got change the key command.

I also use the Spacebar to quickly get to the top of the list.

And yes, I know that Shift+Spacebar or Opt+Spacebar can now be used as a substitute for that, but I'm with the poster who said, "Why do we have to relearn the Mac with every upgrade?"

And by the way, removing the Generators does not disable Quick Look, it just keeps it from providing a preview. For instance, I took out the PDF Generator, and now instead of showing me what is in the PDF, it just shows me an enlarged PDF icon. I put the Generator back in and now it shows the Preview of the PDF page.

One more reason: security
 

One more reason why some people might want to disable quicklookd: security.

While I'm not currently aware of any disclosed vulnerabilities, it is relatively new code, and parses potentially hostile files without user interaction. If I download a suspicious file, I don't want my operating system parsing it before I have a chance to evaluate it.

With all the Adobe PDF Reader vulnerabilities that have recently come out, little was made of a case where the Windows preview function allowed a vulnerability to trigger without any user interaction at all. http://www.darkreading.com/security/...leID=215801319 This is essentially the same service quicklookd provides for Mac users.

Now, take that one file type and multiply it by all the types that quicklookd can parse, and I would be very surprised if it remains exploit free for very long, especially with Apple's historically arrogant and naive approach to security. http://secunia.com/advisories/29483/

Thanks for the Script. Fixed it.

quicklookd was BREAKING my FAT32 usb key. Couldn't copy files, couldn't rename files etc. Why should I have to reformat on a mac just to get a common file system to work?

console messages.
Basically it seems that a FAT32 usb key and quicklookd don't play nice together. This showed itself by freezing randomly when you tried to save to the usbkey. In retrospect, anything with a quicklookd thumb was ok (saved already to HD, just copied), anything else wasn't and would hang and not timeout, including renames and first saves.

Michael

I don't have any problems with FAT32 USB flash drives and QuickLook. PErhaps there is some other issue at work.

Instead of using the spacebar to select the top item (alphabetically) in a Finder window, the key of choice now is <tab>. If some item is (or items are) already selected in the window, first type <esc> to release the current selection(s), and then hit <tab>.

"Relearning" the Mac (i.e., using tab instead of space) is a small price to pay for the great convenience provided by QuickLook. Ever try to read a binary plist with TextEdit?

In 10.6.X, using Option-Up Arrow will automatically take you to the top item in a Finder window, and Option-Down Arrow will automatically go to the last item in a Finder window. In 10.5.X, this only works if an item is already selected.

If the window is sorted by date, does Option-Up Arrow select the "top" item... or does it select the first alphabetical item (regardless of position)?

IIRC, the old spacebar method was really about selecting something alphabetically. The cool thing about it is that: we can still navigate items in a window alphabetically by tapping on the tab key, even if the items are arranged in some non-alphabetical order. So, it also makes sense to start out by hitting tab at the outset (besides the fact that typing one key is easier than typing two).

Just tried it since I'm always sorted by name. Option-Up Arrow will select the top-most item in the list, not the first item alphabetically. The same is true for any of the sort headings (Label, Kind, Date Created, etc.). Pressing Tab then moves alphabetically among the items.

Renaming the quicklookd program worked for me
 

Open Terminal

cd /System/Library/Frameworks/QuickLook.framework/Resources/quicklookd.app/Contents/MacOS
sudo mv quicklookd quicklookd.disabled

how i shrunk quick look and sped up macosx lion
 

I was having the same issues.... quick look was taking up 565MB of virtual memory according to activity monitor...

I when into finder and turned off icon previews from the view menu...

Went to the desktop and turned off Icon previews (I had a lot of documents, pdfs etc on the desktop)...

as a result quick look shrunk in usage to 50 mbs...

Entire OSX lion is now functioning much better.

Another tip I found handy was when restarting/shutting down, do not check 'reopen windows upon restart' because this will hog up memory instead of clearing everything with the restart.

Hope it helps.

Quick Look quirk ...
 

Not sure why everyone is giving the original poster such a hard time. He is entitled to his opinion and goals.

I too would like to disable Quick Look in OSX 10.8.2 ML because it is has an annoying quirk and I don't find it particularly useful.

I have saved URLs in a desktop folder. (Saved in Snow Leopard.) When I click on the URL and the website launches, I can see and navigate the website no trouble. But then I notice the Finder icon bouncing in the dock and a warning message ... "You can't navigate within Quick Look. Do you want to open this item?"

When I select Open, a duplicate of the website window opens and again I get the bouncing Finder icon in the dock and again if I select Open I get a third website window open.

Quite frankly, it's more annoying than having whatever Quick Look advantage is suppose to offer. I am quite happy having this "upgrade" go away and revert back to just opening a document or website as I did in Snow Leopard.

Any clues how to disable Quick Look or resolve this issue?
Thanks in advance.

I'm not sure that is the expected behaviour. I would investigate this more before assuming it's an unwelcome feature and trying to disable a major core component of the Finder.
Firstly, check the behaviour in a brand new user account. Does the same thing happen?
Also, look at log messages in the Console and see if anything relevant is being written.
When you say "in a Desktop folder", what do you mean exactly? Do you mean in a subfolder of the Desktop location? Do you get the same behaviour if the folder is in any other location? The Desktop is a special case, and it's generally best not to store too many files and folders there.

I read somewhere else that Firefox-created URLs may exhibit the weird behavior, but that Safari-created URLs don't.

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/945564

benwiggy ... thank you for your response.
1) I setup and logged in as a guest. (URLs I said were "desktop" are actually saved in an external hard drive folder.)
2) Double clicked on the Ex-Hard Drive folder as a guest and the URL booted up in Safari with the same thing happened. Bouncing Finder and the same error message.
3) Back as Admin, I tried coping the whole folder and dragging the URLs to that new desktop folder and immediately I get the bouncing Finder.

Not sure what you mean about "console."

Not sure why you consider Quick Look a "major core component of Finder." It wasn't in Finder before, never needed it and ML has been nothing but a slow, unstable irritant with numerous error messages. I have never experienced a new Apple OS with so many "fixes" necessary. Usually it's just plain sailing. Apple took their eyes off the ball here and I think they had a major attitude rethink. Such as ... we know we are right and we are going to do it our way ... like Microsoft ... and the Apple user be damned. It's all show and no substance.
Thanks for trying.

It sounds like you should reinstall the OS. That's probablytheeasiest way to fix your system, which is somehow hosed.

Quick Look has been a feature of OS X since Leopard (OS X 10.5), just over 5 years now.

A Guest user is a unique kind of login, and that's not what benwiggy was suggesting. Create a new user in your System Preferences/Users & Groups pane. Log out of your account, and log back in to your newly created account.
Double-click on one of your saved URLs. Do you still get the same result?

crabapple:
What model of Mac do you have?
Are you using the trackpad (on a Macbook) or a mouse? Is it an Apple mouse or a 3rd-party mouse?
I ask because Quick Look is usually triggered via the Space bar and just clicking (or double-clicking - which is what I assume you are doing) should not trigger Quick Look. So I thought perhaps your hardware is acting up somehow.

The other possibility is that your user account has somehow been configured to trigger Quick Look in some non-standard way (e.g. mouse clicks) and it is this second possibility that might be elucidated by the experiment of trying a different (freshly created) user account.

But if this doesn't get solved right away, please consider explaining in much more detail exactly where you have these saved URLs and exactly what you are doing, step by step. Some screen shots might help.

(Thank you all whom have responded. Awesome.)
1) iMac 27" 2009 Intel. (HD just replaced due to Seagate HD recall.)
2) WiFi Magic Mouse. All actions are from Magic Mouse clicks.
Attaching screen caps of the external HD where the URLs are saved and the URLs. Also the Quick Look error message. (Not familiar with how you attach images to this forum so I hope it works.)
I will try and redo the User thingie ... after the work day.
Thanks again.

Do you have another mouse? If so, try using that other mouse to see if the problem is limited to use of the Magic Mouse.

Also check your Magic Mouse preferences. It is possible to configure Magic Mouse to trigger Quick Look upon certain gestures. (See e.g.: http://mac.tutsplus.com/tutorials/cu...ur-macs-mouse/)
Perhaps you are inadvertently issuing the Quick Look command via a gesture.

BTW, Apple's "Magic Mouse" uses Bluetooth, not WiFi. Both are wireless but Bluetooth is for very short-range communications.

further rationale
 

Here is further rationale for tweaking quick look: crashes on start up, a screen that says you need to restart your computer. Crash logs viewed through console utility showed problems with quick look at start up. This thread showed up in a search. Suggested solutions are appreciated; snarky comments are not.

You described what is called a "kernel panic". There is a good list of troubleshooting steps here:

http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=13846

Too many files
 

I think the main reason for disabling quicklook is because it loads up too many files to your computer. Files I have to delete several times a day. If I did not, it would be in the hundreds with in a few days.

What are you talking about? QuickLook doesn't generate ANY files. It merely displays them to you, and only upon your request.