How to Use the Finder Preview Pane on Mac

Finder can show a large preview of the selected file — plus its dimensions, duration, camera settings, and more — in a pane on the right side of every window. It answers "which of these files is the one I want?" without opening anything. Here is how to turn it on, control what it shows, and use the action buttons hiding at the bottom.

Show and hide the preview pane

Press Shift+Cmd+P, or choose View → Show Preview. A pane appears on the right edge of the window with a thumbnail of the selected file above a stack of metadata. The same shortcut hides it again, and the setting is remembered per view.

It works in icon, list, and gallery views. Column view is slightly different: the preview appears as the final column when you select a file, controlled by Show Preview Column in that view's Cmd+J View Options. Gallery view (Cmd+4) is where the pane shines — a filmstrip of thumbnails with a big preview and full metadata beside it, ideal for sorting photos.

Drag the divider between the file list and the pane to make the preview larger or smaller.

Choose which details appear

The metadata list is configurable per file type:

1. Select a file of the type you want to configure — an image, say.
2. Choose View → Show Preview Options.
3. Check the fields you want. For images you can show dimensions, resolution, color space, camera model, aperture, and exposure; for video and audio, duration, codecs, and sample rate; for documents, page count and author.
4. The choices apply to that file type everywhere — set up images once and every image shows the same fields.

This is the fastest way to answer questions that otherwise mean opening Get Info repeatedly: which of these PNGs is 2x resolution, which take of the recording is the long one, which PDF has the most pages.

Use the Quick Actions buttons

At the bottom of the preview pane, under the metadata, sit context-sensitive Quick Actions buttons — the same actions available from a file's right-click menu:

• Images: Rotate Left, Markup, and under More… options like Convert Image and Remove Background (Ventura and later).
• PDFs: Markup — sign or annotate without opening Preview.
• Audio and video: Trim.
• Multiple images selected: Create PDF stitches them into one document.

If you do not see the buttons, enable Show Quick Actions in View → Show Preview Options. You can build your own actions too — a Shortcuts or Automator workflow saved as a Quick Action appears in the same spot. See our guide to Finder Quick Actions for that.

Preview pane vs Quick Look

The pane overlaps with Quick Look (select a file, press Space), so which should you use? Quick Look is better for a one-off full-screen peek and for flipping through a selection with arrow keys. The preview pane is better when you want information continuously — metadata always visible as you arrow through a folder — and for the persistent action buttons. Many people run gallery view plus the pane for media folders and plain list view elsewhere; since Finder remembers the choice per view, the two setups coexist without fuss.

Go one step further

For files the pane cannot render, Quick Look supports more formats and full-screen browsing — and with markup, trimming, and rotation built into both, you may stop opening apps for small edits entirely.