QuickLook · Ink

English · 中文

A Chinese-ink-flavoured take on QL-Win/QuickLook. Every upstream preview capability is preserved. On top of that, the main-window chrome is rewritten as a four-plate XAML layout with a dual-theme engine, and the buttons plate gains an AI-analyze entry point that routes the current preview file through the OpenRouter chat/completions API and persists the response as Markdown. GPL-3.0 inherited.

At a glance · fork vs upstream

Area	Upstream QuickLook	This fork (Ink)
Main-window chrome	Fluent captioned window	Four-plate Ink layout with 3 px transparent seams and asymmetric corner cuts
Theme	Follows system	Explicit Ink / Paper toggle with charcoal or paper noise texture
In-app AI analysis	Not offered	Light-bulb key on the buttons plate → OpenRouter multi-model (Gemini / Claude / DeepSeek / GLM)
File-type coverage	Full IViewer plugin catalogue	Same — every plugin is preserved
Plugin system	IViewer	IViewer, unchanged
License	GPL-3.0	GPL-3.0 (inherited)

What this fork adds

Ink-styled chrome

The main viewer window is rewritten as a four-plate composition — a name plate carrying the file name, a buttons plate carrying every action key, a content plate hosting the actual preview, and a status plate displaying file metadata. Plates are separated by 3 px transparent seams so the desktop or the window behind is visible straight through them, which makes the window read as a floating composition rather than a solid block.

Corners are cut asymmetrically with a Path clip: the title plate cuts TR14 (top-right only), the buttons plate cuts BL14 (bottom-left only). The two cuts diagonally balance each other and give the window an editorial character without touching the other two corners.

Two ResourceDictionary themes ship — Ink (dark, charcoal grain) and Paper (light, warm paper grain). Switching is instant via SwitchTheme() and propagates into WebView2-backed viewers (Markdown, HTML) through PreferredColorScheme, so the content plate re-styles atomically with the chrome.

Each plate surface is a 96×96 tiled ImageBrush seeded from a fixed Random(seed), so the grain reproduces byte-for-byte across runs. The brush is exposed via ViewerWindow.GetPlateNoiseBrush(isDark) so the AI dialogs re-use the same instance and stay visually consistent with the main window.

Interaction: hover produces a Storyboard-driven lift on the key you point at, mouse movement inside the window drives a four-quadrant TranslateTransform parallax on the plates, and the window entrance plays a staggered DoubleAnimation bite-in — plates settle from a small offset instead of appearing pinned.

Source lives in QuickLook/ViewerWindow.* (split across Actions.cs, HwndHostBridge.cs, PlateAnimations.cs, Properties.cs) and the theme dictionaries in QuickLook.Common/Styles/MainWindowStyles(.Dark).xaml.

AI-analyze surface

A light-bulb key (Segoe Fluent glyph E82D) is added to the buttons plate, positioned between buttonShare and the divider. Clicking it wires through OnAIAnalyzeClick and runs the following pipeline:

1. Prompt capture — AIAnalyzePromptDialog opens as a modal reskinned to match the shell (three plates, vacuum seams, single-corner cuts, subtitle showing the current model). The user can leave the prompt empty for an auto-analysis, or type a specific instruction and submit with Ctrl+Enter.
2. Dispatch — CallOpenRouterAsync() classifies the file by MIME and composes the request body. Text files are sent as content:string with head/tail sampling for anything over 60 KB (40 KB head + 15 KB tail + gap marker). Images are sent as image_url with a data URI. PDFs are sent as file + file_data. Everything above 20 MB raw (≈ 27 MB base64) is rejected up front with a specific error rather than a silent OpenRouter 400.
3. Response — usage:{include:true} asks OpenRouter to return exact token counts and USD cost. When usage.cost is missing (older routes, some proxies), an AiPricing table provides a fallback estimate keyed on the model id.
4. Result window — AIAnalyzeResultWindow opens as a non-modal window in the same visual system as the prompt dialog. It shows the model output, a footer line with model · input+output tokens · $cost, a Copy button, and a Save button that writes the response as Markdown to AIAnalyzeSaveRoot.

Model and API key are stored in QuickLook.config (never in source). Both are edited through the tray icon's right-click menu — see Usage below.

Source: QuickLook/AIAnalyze*.cs plus the tray-menu wiring in QuickLook/TrayIconManager.cs.

All upstream capability preserved

The IViewer plugin system, every format viewer, the named-pipe IPC, and the tray core are untouched. Everything that works in upstream QuickLook works here.

Install

Two options:

Prebuilt MSI — download from the Releases page. None available at the time of the 0.1.0 tag; the first binary release will land once a GitHub Actions build pipeline is set up.

From source — see Build from source below. All you need is Windows and the .NET 10 SDK.

Usage

Preview a file

Select any file in Explorer and press Space — exactly the upstream QuickLook behaviour. The Ink chrome renders around whatever viewer plugin handles the file type.

Toggle theme

Three ways:

• The lightbulb-shaped key on the right of the buttons plate — rotates between Paper and Ink instantly.
• Tray icon → right-click → Theme — three-state selector: Light / Dark / Follow System.
• QuickLook.config → ThemeOverride — persist a choice manually. Values: Light, Dark, or omit to follow the plugin or OS.

The three sources stay in sync — flipping the key writes the same setting the tray menu reads.

Run an AI analysis

First-time setup:

1. Tray icon → right-click → OpenRouter API Key... — enter your key. It goes into QuickLook.config under OpenRouterApiKey, never into source or logs.
2. Tray icon → right-click → AI Analyze — the section lists seven curated models with $in / $out pricing per million tokens. Click one to select; the choice persists.

Per analysis:

1. Preview a file with Space.
2. Click the 💡 light-bulb key on the buttons plate.
3. In the prompt dialog: leave the field empty for an auto-template (built from the file type — code, CSV, Markdown, image, PDF, etc.) or type a specific instruction. Ctrl+Enter submits.
4. The result window shows the response, model, token counts, and cost. Copy puts the raw text on the clipboard. Save persists a Markdown file.

Change the save location

By default, saved analyses land in %USERPROFILE%\Documents\QuickLook AI Analyses\. Override by adding one line to %APPDATA%\QuickLook\QuickLook.config:

<AIAnalyzeSaveRoot>D:\my\notes</AIAnalyzeSaveRoot>

The value is read every time you press Save, so changes take effect without restarting.

Preset models

Seven models are wired into the tray menu with fixed pricing labels:

Model id	Short name	Modality	$ per 1M tokens (in / out)
google/gemini-3.5-flash	Gemini 3.5 Flash	Multimodal	$1.50 / $9.00
google/gemini-3.1-flash-lite	Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite	Multimodal	$0.25 / $1.50
google/gemini-2.5-pro	Gemini 2.5 Pro	Multimodal	$1.25 / $10.00
deepseek/deepseek-chat-v3.1	DeepSeek Chat v3.1	Text-only	$0.21 / $0.79
openai/gpt-5-mini	GPT-5 Mini	Multimodal	$0.25 / $2.00
anthropic/claude-sonnet-5	Claude Sonnet 5	Multimodal	$2.00 / $10.00
z-ai/glm-5.2	GLM 5.2	Text-only	$0.42 / $1.32

Custom models — any OpenRouter model id can be used. Set OpenRouterModel directly in QuickLook.config:

<OpenRouterModel>your/model-id-here</OpenRouterModel>

The tray menu will not display a check mark for unlisted models, but the pipeline dispatches them fine. Pricing shown in the result window falls back to $0 for unlisted models since there is no local table entry — token counts are still exact from OpenRouter.

Sending an image or PDF to a text-only model returns whatever OpenRouter's fallback behaviour is (usually an error). Stick to multimodal models for non-text.

Configuration

Fork-specific settings live in %APPDATA%\QuickLook\QuickLook.config:

Setting	Default	Description
ThemeOverride	Dark	Light / Dark / omit to follow plugin or OS.
OpenRouterApiKey	(empty)	Set through tray icon → OpenRouter API Key... Never edit by hand unless you have to.
OpenRouterModel	google/gemini-3.5-flash	Any OpenRouter model id.
AIAnalyzeSaveRoot	%USERPROFILE%\Documents\QuickLook AI Analyses	Where the Save button writes Markdown files.

Upstream QuickLook settings (AutoStartup, CloseOnLostFocus, Topmost, ShowInTaskbar, plugin toggles, …) remain valid and untouched.

Build from source

Prerequisites:

• Windows 10 22H2 or Windows 11
• .NET 10 SDK — this fork currently pins to 10.0.301
• Visual Studio 2022 (17.x) optional; command-line dotnet build is enough

Build the main app (Release, x64):

dotnet build QuickLook.slnx -c Release -p:Platform=x64

Output lands under QuickLook\bin\x64\Release\net10.0-windows10.0.19041.0\. Copy or run the binary from there; no installer step needed for a from-source build.

More details in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Credits

Product direction, visual decisions and acceptance testing: @lucaszhouc. Most of the fork's implementation code was written by Anthropic Claude models under the maintainer's direction — see AUTHORS.md for the module-level breakdown.

Upstream QuickLook remains © the QuickLook contributors under GPL-3.0. See LICENSE.

Contact

Honestly, GitHub notifications tend to slip past me — the fastest way to reach me is email: lucaszhouc@gmail.com. Bug reports, PR ideas you want to sanity-check before writing them, questions before you fork the code, or just curiosity about a design decision — all welcome.

Attribution

This project is a fork of QL-Win/QuickLook. See the upstream repository for the original project, its documentation, and the full contributor list. GPL-3.0 is preserved on every source file that carries an upstream copyright header.