Microsoft's PowerToys is definitely a well-known program that offers a host of helpful features to increase productivity or add more customization to the user interface. Personally, I consider it to be one of Microsoft's most powerful and best tools as a "means" to improve the way we use Windows on a daily basis. Through this tool, it is possible to perform many tasks such as changing the functions of keyboard buttons , launching programs quickly , organizing open windows to equal sizes, adjusting the dimensions of a batch of images with one click, knowing what prevents deletion or modification of the file , in addition to extracting any text from the images. .
A tool from Microsoft to display the content of a file without opening it in Windows
There are a large number of tools included in the program and more are constantly being added. In fact, the Peek tool that we are highlighting here is part of the latest v0.70.0 update as of the time of this writing, which also added another tool called Mouse Without Borders that allows the same use. Keyboard and mouse to control other devices.
Simply put, Peek is an addition to Windows or specifically to the default File Explorer tool for managing files in Windows. Its aim is to make it easier to find files by taking a quick look at their contents, so it allows you to preview the content of the file by pressing a specific shortcut on the keyboard without having to open programs multitasking or interrupting your workflow, just like the Quick Look feature in macOS. The extension provides a quick preview experience for various files, including images, web pages, text files, and videos. So, all you need to get started is to install the PowerToys program on your device, whether through the Microsoft Store or by downloading the EXE file from the Microsoft site for installation manually, then run the program and select the Peek tool from the side menu and activate it by activating the "Enable Peek" button as shown in The attached photo.
After activating the tool, scroll down and the keyboard shortcut dedicated to displaying file previews will appear within the Activation shortcut section. By default, it will be Ctrl + Space, but you can change it if you want. Just click on the pen icon and press the keys you want to use as a shortcut, which should start with the Win or Ctrl key. Or Alt or Shift, and when done press Save.
You can now select any file on the desktop or in a folder and then press the virtual keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Space to immediately appear a small pop-up window containing a "preview" of the file's content, if it is an image it will appear in a larger size or if it is a text file its contents will be displayed, and if it is A video that will play inside the window, and so on. This window disappears moments after you drag the mouse cursor away or when you press the same shortcut on the keyboard, or you can press the Enter key to open the file currently selected by the program responsible for it, such as the Photos application to display the image. There is also an icon that looks like a pin (📌) at the top. Click it if you want to pin the preview window to the current position for subsequent previews.
This is the idea of the Peek tool in a nutshell, display a quick preview of files, but not only does the preview appear for individual files, you can also select a group of files and press the same keyboard shortcut to bring up the preview window and then use the left and right arrow keys on your keyboard to switch between a preview Only selected files. The same method can be tried to display a quick preview of all the files in the current folder, so you don't have to press Ctrl + Space constantly to see the contents of each file individually.
As we mentioned, Peek will display a preview of different types of files, but if the content of certain files such as PSD or DOCX cannot be displayed, the tool will simply list details about the file within the preview window, and this includes the file type, the storage capacity it occupies, and the date of the last modification made on this file.