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.