File preview
Preview opens a read-only view of a remote file right inside the file browser — no download, no shell, no round trip through another app.
Opening a preview
Section titled “Opening a preview”- iPhone and iPad — tap a file row. Tapping a directory still enters it.
- Mac — double-click a file row, or press Space on the focused row, Finder-style.
- Both — right-click or long-press a file and choose Preview.
With several rows selected, preview applies to the focused row only.
Text and code
Section titled “Text and code”Text and code open in a read-only viewer with syntax highlighting. The theme follows the system
appearance — xcode in light mode, atom-one-dark in dark — and the text is selectable and
copyable.
A few deliberate choices:
- Files over 1 MB render as plain text without highlighting, so a big log still opens instantly.
.pem,.key,.crtand friends are treated as text — on a server they are certificate material, not a Keynote deck.- Decoding tries UTF-8 first, then falls back to a best guess. If the encoding is uncertain, a banner says so rather than letting misread characters pass silently.
Size policy for text:
| Size | What happens |
|---|---|
| Up to 2 MB | The whole file is fetched |
| Over 2 MB | The first 512 KB are shown, with Load Entire File in the banner |
| Over 50 MB | The banner offers Download Full File instead — full preview is off the table |
Images, PDFs and documents
Section titled “Images, PDFs and documents”Images, PDFs, Office and iWork documents open in Quick Look:
| Size | What happens |
|---|---|
| Up to 10 MB | Fetched and shown right away |
| 10–50 MB | A confirmation asks first: Preview Large File? |
| Over 50 MB | Preview refuses — use a regular download |
Everything else
Section titled “Everything else”Media files, archives and compiled binaries have nothing useful to show inline. They get a metadata card instead — name, size, permissions, modified date — with a Download button. And if you know better (“that extensionless file is really a script”), an escape hatch lets you open it as text anyway.
Previews never block transfers
Section titled “Previews never block transfers”Preview fetches run on their own dedicated connection — the third one a file session may open, after browsing and transfers. They never enter the transfer queue and never appear in the transfer UI, so peeking at a config file can’t stall a download that’s already running.
While a preview is being fetched, its file row shows an inline spinner with progress — select the row again to cancel. Fetched files are cached for the life of the file session, so reopening the same file is instant; the cache is dropped when the file session closes.