Quick Look no longer works after the 13.3 update.

Oh, thank goodness I’m not alone. This has been maddening all day.

I deal with GIFs and GIF-creation daily, so can confirm QuickLook is busted after 13.3 when playing GIFs (including Finder preview panes), and attempting to do so immediately breaks it.

Other image formats are fine, but as soon as you view a GIF (either via QuickLook or allow it to load into a Finder preview pane), after the GIF ends to begin its loop again, QuickLookUIService will hang (not responding) and the hang counter in Activity Monitor will start counting up indefinitely—breaking the functionality completely for all other images. The UI in the Finder will also start to choke and stutter.

I’m on a Mac Studio M1 Max.

I’ve tried all the suggested troubleshooting:

• Resetting and nuking the QL generator caches via terminal.
• Nuking preferences and .plists.

I even loaded into Safe Mode and the problem persists and is reproduced in exactly the same way, so it is not some software conflict. I’m pretty sure Apple just accidentally busted QL this release and no one caught it.

Hopefully it can get sorted out quickly, it’s very frustrating.

In the meantime, you can kill it via Activity Monitor—or more quickly, just ⌥-Right-Click the Finder icon and Relaunch Finder.

I just dragged and dropped an animated GIF onto an existing Note and the first time that I clicked it and pressed the space bar, it showed animated in Quick Look. Any subsequent attempt to view in Quick Look was the spinning wait icon. Replacing that animated GIF, or substituing an animated PNG did not resolve the continuing Quick Look display issue.

Tested: macOS 13.3.

Apple's iOS/iPadOS is implemented differently than macOS and expected features may work in one operating system and not in the other.

You can submit direct feedback to the Notes for Mac product team about this flakey Quick Look support for animated GIFs and PNGs.

eternalrz wrote:

It also happens in Apple's Messages app, when you double-click on a GIF.

FWIW, that's actually a totally different issue. GIF support seems to be semi-broken with Ventura 13.3. You can file a bug report from the feedback page: Feedback - macOS - Apple

VanillaStudio wrote:

I just found that .exr files aren't shown, it persist even on restarts, safe mode or relaunching finer.

Very frustrating

I downloaded a couple .exr files. Some display, some don't. I have no idea what the difference is.

Same here. Pressing the spacebar will loop an animated gif once and stop. If I click "open with Preview" the Finder locks up. I do have this free app called Photostickies from the Mac App Store that will open an animated gif just fine but I'm so used to using the spacebar. This is very frustrating. What do I do? Downgrade to Monterey?

I'm running a MacBook Pro M1 (and I still have a 2006 iBook G4 running MacOS 10.4 that actually works without a problem)

It also happens in Apple's Messages app, when you double-click on a GIF. The Quick Look window opens, the GIF will play for half a second before freezing, then the Quick Look window and the rest of the Messaging app becomes unresponsive. So anything that uses Quick Look can crash if you try to Quick Look a GIF.

I've got multiple Macs and it happens on all of them. Mac Mini 2018, Mac Mini 2020, and MacBook Pro 13" 2020.

Really? Because I still see the "QuickLookUIService" process name in red when it becomes non responsive. Which means it's a Quick Look issue. Which means my statement still stands that this also happens with Quick Look in Messages and just about any other instance where Quick Look would be used to display a GIF image.

If the same process in Finder is used in Messages and both are crashing when doing the exact same things, then how are these different issues? Seems more like the same issue among multiple programs, which is again, Quick Look, since it's not just exclusively used with Finder. So far, I have no issues with other image formats as far as I'm aware.

Same here. Reported to Apple.

GIF-files in Finder cause the process to hang.

I wonder how something like this can slip through QA. Nobody noticed in the beta tests or was Apple not listening to bug reports? And does Apple not have automated regressions tests: For QuickLook the natural thing seems to open all supported file types.

But maybe the problem is not affecting everybody who uses GIF-files. Maybe another condition has to be met for the issue to occur. I wonder what that other condition could be though.

The condition is just having a Mac with MacOS 13.3. I did a fresh install to test and the problem still persists. Apple's just being Apple and breaking things. At least no one's HomePods got bricked this time around.

Yes, this will likely be fixed in the future.

(Apple deleted my reply because I acknowledged the existence of future software.)

MacWorld even lists this Quick Look issue as something they are aware of anecdotally in the community, so I’m gonna assume it’s extremely likely Apple is also aware.

Just gotta be patient for now and keep relaunching Finder or the hanging process in Activity Monitor when you run into it.

13.3.1 fixed this problem for me.

And other problems, too: Universal Control is working again, so is Universal Clipboard.

This has been a noticeable functional problem. But as a general rule of thumb, anything that can crash something also bears a security risk, so the fix is also recommendable from a security aspect.

FWIW, I see the same behavior in the Finder. Click a gif one time it works. After that the spinning icon.

edit: relaunching the Finder will allow it to work once again, once.

Ventura 13.3.1 just landed, so let’s see....

Feel free to send Apple feedback.

Feedback - macOS - Apple