Macos – Open file with Quick Look from command shell

It is not possible in Mac OS X itself, since Space does not actually activate a menu item, and the title of the menu item in the File menu changes with the name of the selected object(s). You could learn to press Option-Space for fullscreen mode.

Alternatively, you can use hotkey/utility applications such as Butler or Keyboard Maestro for this, to intercept your key press and reroute it. The following steps are for Butler.

1. Add a Smart Item » Keystrokes to Butler, and move it to the Hidden category.
2. In the Keys tab, press Cmd-Opt-Y (which is the regular Finder key combination for fullscreen/"slideshow" Quick Look.
3. In the Triggers tab, press Space as hotkey, and confirm the dialog questioning your sanity.
4. As Exceptions, select Only, and enter "Finder" in the text box.
5. Enjoy!

A significant downside to this sledge-hammer-solution: You cannot ever press space in Finder to have it mean something else. Renaming folders, searching in Spotlight: Space is not going to work.

From Ars Technica Forum, courtesy of username DarylF2:

link to Ars Technica Forum

I figured it out, and is was actually pretty simple.

Show the package contents for "/Library/QuickLook/iWork.qlgenerator/" and edit "/Library/QuickLook/iWork.qlgenerator/Contents/Info.plist".

Change the "QLPreviewHeight" parameter value from "600" to your new value (I used "1000") and change the "QLPreviewWidth" parameter value from "800" to your new value (I used"1333").

That's it.

I didn't need to reboot or even log out and log back in for this to take effect, but I did need to open a few Pages document Quick Look previews before it seem to "take".

As always, back up the original file first and realize you are editing a file Apple didn't intend for the end user to edit.

I just tested it and it works for iWork documents only. PDF and other types of previews aren't affected. I'll try to see if there is more to it than that.