Macos – How to free files that are in use by quicklook

macosquicklookterminal.apptrash

I have a couple pictures I was looking through and deleting stuck in my trash (Mac OS X 10.6 latest) and finder tells me they are in use when I try to delete them.

I looked around online and found the lsof command in terminal (type lsod with a space, drag the file onto terminal, press enter) it told me the file was in use by:

 COMMAND     PID     FD
 Finder      7747    txt
 Finder      7747    13r
 mdworker    8685    txt
 quicklook   8822    13r
 quicklook   8822    14r

any idea what I can do about this? (other than restarting, this happens to me quite a bit), I'm wondering if this could be a bug as well.

Thanks for any help.

Best Answer

Running the command qlmanage -r in Terminal forces QuickLook to reload.

Hence releasing all locked files, now you will be able to empty your trash successfully.

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MacOS QuickLook – Use Text Viewer for Other Files

Based on the sample UTImportedTypeDeclarations from qlcolorcode, I use this entry:

    <dict>
        <key>UTTypeConformsTo</key>
        <array>
            <string>public.source-code</string>
        </array>
        <key>UTTypeDescription</key>
        <string>Org-mode Text</string>
        <key>UTTypeIdentifier</key>
        <string>org.emacs.org-mode</string>
        <key>UTTypeReferenceURL</key>
        <string>http://orgmode.org/</string>
        <key>UTTypeTagSpecification</key>
        <dict>
            <key>public.filename-extension</key>
            <array>
                <string>org</string>
            </array>
        </dict>
    </dict>

Don't forget to run 'sudo qlmanage -r' from the Terminal(or relogin) to pick up the changes.

MacOS – OSX: The item XYZ.txt~ can’t be moved to the Trash because it can’t be deleted

Try quitting and reopening Finder.

There is a bug where files that no longer exist are still shown on the desktop (but not if you open a separate window for ~/Desktop/). It has happened to me with .download bundles and with temporary files created by ImageMagick. The files have always disappeared after I have quit and reopened Finder.

Best Answer

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MacOS QuickLook – Use Text Viewer for Other Files

MacOS – OSX: The item XYZ.txt~ can’t be moved to the Trash because it can’t be deleted

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