Quick Look Your Obsidian Vault

Browse Your Vault at the Speed of Space

You already use Quick Look for images and PDFs. With Peekdown, it works for your Obsidian notes too. Select a note in Finder, press Space, and see it rendered with full Obsidian syntax — instantly.

No app launch, no vault loading, no plugin initialization. Obsidian is where you write and think. Peekdown is where you glance and move on.

What's Supported

Peekdown renders Obsidian-specific syntax natively — in both Quick Look and the standalone app:

• Callouts — all 13 types (note, tip, warning, caution, important, abstract, info, todo, success, question, failure, danger, bug) with matching Lucide icons
• Highlights — ==highlighted text== rendered with background color
• Wikilinks — [[page links]] rendered as styled links
• Tags — #tag rendered as styled inline tags
• Embeds — ![[file]] embed syntax recognized
• Frontmatter — YAML frontmatter automatically hidden from preview
• Comments — %%comment%% syntax stripped from output

Plus everything from standard GitHub-Flavored Markdown: tables, code blocks with syntax highlighting, task lists, strikethrough, and more.

How It Works with Finder

Your Obsidian vault is just a folder of .md files. Finder can browse it like any other folder. With Peekdown installed:

• Navigate to your vault folder in Finder
• Select any .md file
• Press Space — see your note rendered with callouts, highlights, and all Obsidian syntax
• Use arrow keys to flip through notes while Quick Look stays open
• Press Space again to dismiss

This is the same Quick Look workflow you use for previewing images and PDFs — extended to your vault notes.

Why Not Just Use Obsidian?

Obsidian is great — Peekdown isn't trying to replace it. They serve different purposes:

• Obsidian is for writing, linking, and thinking. It's your knowledge base.
• Peekdown is for glancing at a note without context-switching out of Finder. "Did I update that note?" "What's in this file?" — answered in under a second.

Obsidian takes a few seconds to launch and load your vault. Quick Look is instant. For the quick-check moments, that difference matters.

Also a Standalone Viewer

Peekdown works as a full markdown viewer too. Open any note for a larger preview with all the Quick Look features plus side-by-side editing, zoom controls, pin-on-top, and live file watching. Compare it to VS Code's markdown preview to see how they differ.