Indesign document preview in Finder

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
June 21, 2017
6 replies
14543 views

I view Photoshop, Illustrator, PDF etc files within the Apple OS Finder. Whenever you select these file icons in 'column view' you are given a preview of what the content of the document looks like.

However, when I select an Indesign file icon all I see is a blown-up Indesign icon. Is there a preference somewhere that I have to select so that a preview is generated?

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Steve Werner

It can be done with a third-party product: Art View 2 from Code Line:

Art View 2 – Code Line

J

janemig

Participating Frequently

Surely we're not the only people who find it completely ridiculous that Adobe has a preview for Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat but not for InDesign. Why should you have to open Bridge—which I NEVER use—in order to view a thumbnail preview in InDesign?

BobLevine

Community Expert

It’s not Adobe, it’s Apple. Take it up with them!

B

Brycesteiner

Inspiring

@BobLevine - Why do you keep defending Adobe? Apple wrote the ability for any third party developer to use Quicklook. It works well. By your logic Apple has written them for the other developers' programs. Is that correct? Affinity's Designer and Photo files preview just fine like most other formats do. It has nothing to do with Apple when Indesign is a proprietary format, as I'm sure you would agree. So, please stop spouting off your ignorance.

MoonriverHH

Participant

There is another 3rd party product: inddPreview provides macOS with preview images of InDesign files to show up in Finder and Quick Look. Since the latest release it also supports InDesign snippets and InCopy documents. It’s available on the Mac App Store.

inddPreview – Quick Look for InDesign® documents · Software by Jenny C. Hofer

PS: I totally agree with those saying that it’s not the responsibility of Apple to support a proprietary file format like InDesign documents. Apple provides the Quick Look feature and supports a lot of public file formats as well as their own proprietary files (Pages, Numbers etc.). It would be up to Adobe to provide a Quick Look plugin for their own file formats (like e.g. Microsoft does for Word etc.), because they know their formats best (of course). But Adobe goes its own way with Bridge. And this is why I decided to write »my own 3rd party solution« already in 2008 ...

Steve Werner

Community Expert

Nice write-up about inddPreview in InDesignSecrets.com as well:

https://indesignsecrets.com/preview-indesign-snippets-and-incopy-documents-with-inddpreview.php

P

Pijnacker01

Participating Frequently

We here at Markzware have ID Util. ID Util is a FREE standalone macOS application that allows you to view InDesign previews, styled story content, linked images, and used fonts. You can also export the previews and styled stories to standard formats. Use ID Util to ensure that files are opened in the proper version of InDesign.

It will also provide you, as an option, the ability to add Preview support to the Finder on Mac OS. We learned that not all wanted that. Some love it, some rather see that a-typical InDesign file icon. Try it out, totally free, here;

https://markzware.com/products/id-util-macos/