QLStephen is a QuickLook plugin that lets you view plain text files without a file extension. Files like:

README
INSTALL
Capfile
CHANGELOG
etc...

brew cask install qlstephen

port install qlstephen

• Download the latest version of QuickLookStephen
• Unzip
• Copy the file into /Library/QuickLook or ~/Library/QuickLook (You can create the QuickLook folder if it doesn’t exist)

Compiling the project yourself? The build process will copy the file into ~/Library/QuickLook.

To keep quickview fast the priview is limited in its number of shown bytes. The default value is 100kB. You can change this using the shell to set your own max size.

defaults write com.whomwah.quicklookstephen maxFileSize 102400

If you’ve installed the plugin, but don’t see any changes:

• Make sure you are editing (a) the correct plist of (b) the correct bundle. (For example, you might have two QLStephen plugins. It’s possible the plugin in another directory—perhaps /Library/QuickLook/—is what is being read.)
• Run qlmanage -r in the Terminal. (This will restart QuickLook, which reloads all plugins.)

Because I was listening to Adam and Joe when I first wrote it.

Original author: Duncan Robertson

Special thanks to the following people for submitting patches over the years:

• Guillermo Ignacio Enriquez Gutierrez
• Rob Lourens
• Avi Flax
• Tony
• Nicholas Hutchinson

• Fork the project
• Send a pull request
• Don’t change the build number (I’ll do that when I release a new version)