I have been using MacBook pro-2017 for about a year, in the mean time I have added a couple of quiclook generators (e.g. QLStephen.qlgenerator) for various services for the Finder.
For quite a few days it was working good, but now, I encountered a strange problem. Nowadays I can not see the contents of any file in the finder, e.g. when I click on a a.txt file it shows no contents, but when pressed Shift key it shows the QuickView of the item.
How to restore the original settings of the Finder?
I tried deleting all the quicklook plugins, but still, the problem is sustained.
Attempt:
cd ~/Library/QuickLook
sudo mkdir backup
sudo mv *.qlg* backup/
qlmanage -r
killall Finder
PS:
I tried also deleting all the contents of QuickLook and restarted the computer. Still it does not work. Maybe I have to reset the Finder settings, but I don't know how?
Note that here the a.txt is not empty but Finder shows nothing.
How can we make the Finder show the contents of this file?
Update
Backed up and deleted the QuickLook folders from the computer.
sudo mv /Library/QuickLook ~/library_quicklook
sudo mv ~/Library/QuickLook ~/home_library_quicklook
sudo rm -rf com.apple.quicklook.ui.helper.plist
sudo rm -rf com.apple.quicklookconfig.plist
sudo rm -rf com.apple.QuickLookDaemon.plist
qlmanage -r
qlmanage -r cache
killall Finder
Still does not work.
Related links:
https://www.cnet.com/news/fixing-quick-look-issues-in-os-x/
Best Answer
To show contents of a text file you must have the correct settings for your Finder window. You can't use icon view or list view. Your figure shows you are using list view. That view has never shown file contents on my computer. On the Finder header bar there is a label that reads "View", and above that are four icon options: the first is icon view and the second is list view. You want the third option but I don't know what its called. If you select this way of viewing the contents of the Finder window, text files and other types are displayed showing the 1st page of the contents of a file. The correct viewing option is shown in the figure below.