QLCARFiles

QuickLook plugin to visualize .car files (compiled Asset Catalogs)

Blog post

https://blog.timac.org/2018/1112-quicklook-plugin-to-visualize-car-files/

Description

The QLCARFiles QuickLook plugin lets you visualize the content of a car file. It extracts the assets using the CoreUI.framework, generates a webpage with all the images, and displays this webpage in the QuickLook window. The use of a webpage has several advantages, one of them being the possibility to render multiple images in a scrolling view.

Features

• Display images and their dimensions and file sizes
• Support for png, pdf, gif, svg, video, ...
• Display named colors and their hex values
• Support for Light and Dark mode
• Generate the previews as HTML data to allow scrolling
• Display the total number of assets in the window's title
• Add a light gray background to images that are too white or transparent
• For thumbnails, render the best asset as icon and the number of assets
• The command line tool has a -r option to dump all the car files found in a folder

Installation

macOS 10.14 or later is required. Please note that the precompiled binaries are not code signed. To install the precompiled QuickLook plugin, you should:

1. Download and unzip QLCARFiles.qlgenerator.zip
2. Remove the quarantine flag by running in the Terminal xattr -c -r QLCARFiles.qlgenerator
3. Move QLCARFiles.qlgenerator to ~/Library/QuickLook/QLCARFiles.qlgenerator. Note that you might need to create the folder ~/Library/QuickLook/.
4. Execute in the Terminal qlmanage -r to make sure the QLCARFiles plugin is loaded

Alternatively you can sign the precompiled binaries or recompile the application yourself.

Known limitations

• No support for special car files used by pro applications like Final Cut Pro.
• Assets of the following type are not supported: CUINamedExternalLink, CUINamedTexture, CUINamedModel, CUINamedRecognitionImage, CUINamedRecognitionGroup, CUINamedRecognitionObject, CUINamedVectorImage, CUINamedMultisizeImage, CUINamedLayerImage. So far I never encountered these types of renditions.