Workaround for .nfo Quicklook Preview?

The Quicklook extension, qlsteven, hasn't worked since Catalina. When it did work, it allowed Quicklook to preview text files with unknown or missing extensions.

Does anyone have a workaround for previewing .nfo files? KM's Read a File action returns nothing, so I can't access the file contents that way. Currently I'm using a macro that opens the file in Textedit and saves it as a .txt file, before deleting the original and previewing the new version. It's unsurprisingly clunky.

Convert .nfo to .txt.kmmacros (25 KB)

Macro screenshot

Supposedly, you can use qlmanage to force a file to be treated as a text file by following the instructions here, but I had no luck with it (on Monterey, macOS 12.3.1).

One way to make your macro a little less clunky—avoiding TextEdit and the pauses—would be to use the Move or Rename File action. You can also avoid creating a variable for the Finder selection and just use the token when getting the path and basename.

nfo to txt.kmmacros (3.3 KB)

Image of Macro

1 Like

...and here comes my most frequently used emoji on the forum: :man_facepalming:t2:

Because KM couldn't read the .nfo file, I presumed it must be formatted differently to a .txt file. Nope. It's just a descriptive extension to show that the file contains info.

In my defence, I did think of this, and came up with another clunky macro:

Convert .nfo to .txt (Finder actions).kmmacros (22 KB)

Macro screenshot

Yours is a far nicer idea. For some reason the one you posted isn't downloadable, but it wasn't hard to recreate. There's actually no need to reveal the file as you never leave Finder, so I removed that. :slight_smile:

Thanks!!

Can confirm that qlmanage used to work for this.

Here's my demo (also clunky, would need work before primetime):
QuickLook any text file.kmmacros (3.7 KB)

Macro image

This works for me on Big Sur, macOS 11.7.10.
This does not work on Monterey, macOS 12.7.
I can't test Ventura or Sonoma.

The issue with newer versions seems to be that the -c flag is being passed but for some reason has no effect.

now in 2024 I am using the qlsteven and seeing .nfo, .txt, and files-with-no-extension just fine as I space-bar them in Sonoma