MacOS Quick Look feature and ebooks

[Jonathann]

Does anyone know of any updated Mac plugins to enable the finder quick look feature for epubs or mobi files?

I have not been able to get either epub-quicklook (last updated in 2016) or QLMobi (also last updated in 2016) to work in BigSur.

Thanks for any help.

[Damieni]

Running Monterey 12.1. I can right click on an epub or mobi file and select quick look. All I get is the cover of the book.

[mariosipad]

Yes, we are in need of a quicklook plugin for pub's and mobi's.

Haven't found one since years.

Epubreader plugin for firefox/chromium works in a browser but it's not quicklook.

[tomsem]

Epub-quicklook plugin source seems to be here:

https://github.com/jaketmp/ePub-quicklook

Not working in Mojave and later!

and last updated 3 Mar 2016 (probably to add the above comment)

Developer guide is here:

https://developer.apple.com/library/...roduction.html

How hard can it be to update it? Just a few lines of code oughta do the trick.

[steveparry]

There is another plugin which I tried in Ventura but all I see is an image of the cover - no proper scrolling preview of the contents: https://github.com/GenjiApp/EPUB-Plugins

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by steveparry

There is another plugin which I tried in Ventura but all I see is an image of the cover - no proper scrolling preview of the contents: https://github.com/GenjiApp/EPUB-Plugins

Interesting. I'll try it when I have a chance, I see you have left a comment, so hopefully developer will check in at some point. At least this plugin has more active recent history.

[steveparry]

I tried the Genji one above and it did work briefly. I could see a scrolling view of the entire contents of my epubs. But subsequently all I see are cover images.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by steveparry

I tried the Genji one above and it did work briefly. I could see a scrolling view of the entire contents of my epubs. But subsequently all I see are cover images.

Oh, just restart your Mac between each Quick Look, obviously.

Wonder if there's a process you can kill to reset it.

In any case sounds like it needs a tweak.

[steveparry]

Fixed! I sent a report from Terminal and the developer identified the issue. It was because I had the plugin from the Mac OS Bookreader application installed. After binning that most epubs and kepubs display the full scrolling text in Quicklook. See: https://github.com/GenjiApp/EPUB-Plugins

[tomsem]

Thanks! I finally got around to installing it. Nice to have!

[steveparry]

There is still an issue with displaying cover images on some epubs/kepubs. The developer is looking into it.

[tomsem]

This is something Apple should just have in macOS. It's been a standard format for some time.

We're fortunate there is someone willing to fill the gap.

More generally, there should be more use of ePub over PDF for documentation, user guides and that sort of thing. PDFs do not have a true provision for a functional Table of Contents (pages with links to other pages doesn't count, nor do bookmarks). And of course the fact that they don't reflow makes them far less accessible.

So Print to ePub should be an OS feature as well, or at least a Safari feature. I don't know if there are any Safari extensions exporting ePub (or even reading ePub in Safari). App Store doesn't seem to have any.

[steveparry]

Is there a Quicklook plugin to enable viewing Kepub files?

[mariosipad]

@steveparry

The software you wrote about last year does not work or does no longer work? Or still does not work?

https://github.com/GenjiApp/EPUB-Plugins

[steveparry]

It still works but not for Kepubs... I tried to update it to the latest version but now I updated to Sonoma 14.2.1 I no longer see /Library/QuickLook in the Finder. I posted a query on Github page just now.