Level 1

1 points

Quick Look Bug

Recently I've been having a problem with Quick Look where the image appears for a split second and then goes blank. I haven't found a solution for this. If I close finder or restart my computer it still happens.

I found one suggest to delete these two files and then restart:

~/Library/Preferences/ com.apple.QuickLookDaemon.plist

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.QuickLookDaemon/Cache.db

But that did solve my problem.

There's a particular scenerio that causes this problem... I'll try to explain as clearly as possible:

I navigate pictures by pushing the space bar to bring up Quick Look and then use the arrow keys to look at the images. The problem occurs when I look back at the image I just left. So if I have have 5 pictures and look at them like so: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Right where I turn and go back over 4 is when Quick Look goes blank. But then as I continue on 3, 2, 1 all show up.

This bug makes it nigh impossible to use Quick Look because every time I switch directions, I encounter a blank image. Even closing Quick Look (with spacebar) and opening it again doesn't make the image show up. I appears for a very brief instant, and then goes blank. I have to keep trying over and over until that image finally shows up again.

Anyone else having a problem like this or know a solution?

Thanks,

Brandon

MacBook Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.2)

Posted on Mar 13, 2014 6:23 PM

28 replies

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Apr 18, 2014 7:10 AM in response to bzle

I applied the .plist fix as described above. No joy. This extremly frustrating. In the ~Libarary/Preferences folder I did find several com.apple.finder.plist files, each had random numbers/letters appended to the filename. So I took them all (except the lockfile) to the desktop as described above.

Now I have the exact same symptoms as Michel. The QL is blank on the previously viewed image, if you go 2 images away from it and then return it is then viewable.

Sigh. What a shame.

Apr 18, 2014 9:23 AM in response to KickDrum5150

That's a good description, KickDrum, and exactly matches my experience. It makes it quite difficult to compare two images to decide which to keep.

I submitted feedback/bug report at

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

It might help if we can determine what sorts of images it happens/doesn't happen with. At least in my case it doesn't happen with all images, but I don't know why.

bzle Author

Level 1

1 points

Apr 23, 2014 7:16 AM in response to Dessicator

Hey Dessicator,

The problem has returned for me (just a little over a month since being fixed). I tried the same fix but oddly enough it didn't help at all this time.

One thing I noticed: Testing Quick Look to go between two images right as/after my computer is starting up, instead of simply seeing the image briefly appear and then go blank, it actually shows the image and then basically unrenders it, removing large blocks of the image from left to right, bottom to top.

Anyway, sad day. :\

Apr 23, 2014 1:23 PM in response to bzle

Is there awareness since which version this bug appears? Subjective I'm sufferung since 10.9.2, but I'm not sure if this persists since previous releases.

Apr 23, 2014 2:20 PM in response to King_Julian

I don't remember the date of 10.9.2 release, but it seems possible.

It is always present anyway, I couldn't make it disapear.

I noticed that the image may be seen sometimes, as a flash, before being overloaded by blank.

Making a lot of comparisons between a lot of consecutive pictures, I find that very prejudicial.

[I also noticed another bug that appeared amazingly about the same time and that is very annoying: disparition of the cursor display; to retreive it you have to move it as a blind man (you can't see it but it is there) to the top left of screen and click. That works but it may disapear again more or less later. It seems linked to the use of a combination of softwares, such as Safari and Photoshop (CS5 for me) but I can't decide what exactly.

]

I hope a lot in the future 10.9.3, Hope is life, but I'm not sure Apple ears us, and with us a lot of people not claiming on these forrums.

Apr 23, 2014 4:49 PM in response to bzle

Ha! Well, welcome back to the club anyway bzle 😉

I'm not sure if another bug report on the issue would help, but anyone who feels inclined . . .

sebag

Level 1

4 points

Apr 29, 2014 1:04 PM in response to bzle

Hey guys, there's ongoing discussion about this issue here https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5480729?answerId=25625514022#25625514022&tstart=0#25625514

I posted a youtube video of my screen to explain the problem to somebody who does not have the problem but may know the solution.

bzle Author

Level 1

1 points

May 1, 2014 8:59 AM in response to bzle

I just found an interesting workaround for comparing two images or just getting an image to show up: press alt to show image at 100% (and cmd to return image to fit in quick look frame). Even if the image has gone blank, this makes it come back for me.

Also, if I'm moving between to files (up and down) and they each keep going blank, I can press alt (while in quick look), go to the next image and press alt, and now Finder lets me go between the two images fine.

It's not a great fix since it's very temporary, but when all you want to do is see the darn picture, this really helps.

May 1, 2014 10:12 AM in response to bzle

Great tip and workaround bzle, thanks.

Jul 12, 2014 6:12 AM in response to bzle

For me this helped: Re: Old QuickLook "white image" bug still present in Mavericks

defaults delete com.apple.finder QLEnableTextSelection; killall Finder

Sam(fr)

Level 1

0 points

Jul 25, 2014 7:28 AM in response to King_Julian

Works great ! Thx King

Jul 29, 2014 4:00 PM in response to King_Julian

This hint solved my issue on blank images from quicklook

Sep 10, 2014 3:45 AM in response to bzle

I wasn't able to simply delete the file to fix the problem. I don't know why. I had to go into my back up account and make a copy of the file from ~Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist and then move it into my user account. I'm sure you could do the same thing with your Guest User account too.

For me, the problem was caused by making the text in QuickLook copyable. I noticed when I turned on "defaults write -g QLEnableTextSelection -bool true" that I the blank Quicklook bug was coming up as talked about in this thread. When I turned it off, (defaults write -g QLEnableTextSelection -bool false) the problem went away.

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