Image Peek
groundfic413 downloadsQuick Look–style image preview. Click an image or press Space to peek, like Finder and Freeform.
- Overview
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Quick Look–style image preview for Obsidian — like pressing Space in Finder, or tapping an image in Apple Freeform.
The preview zooms out from the thumbnail's position (FLIP animation), supports pan/zoom, and closes right back into place.
Usage
| Action | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Double-click an image (desktop) | Open the preview, zooming from the thumbnail |
| Single tap (mobile, in notes) | Open the preview |
| Double tap (mobile, on Canvas) | Open the preview; single tap keeps node selection |
Hover an image + Space |
Open the preview (never triggers while typing) |
Select an image node on Canvas + Space |
Open the preview (Freeform-style) |
Space / Esc / click backdrop |
Close, zooming back into place |
| Swipe down (mobile, not zoomed) | Close — the image follows your finger and the backdrop fades |
← → |
Browse other images on the same page |
| Scroll wheel / pinch | Zoom centered on the cursor (or pinch midpoint) |
| Drag / one-finger pan | Pan (once zoomed in) |
| Double-click / double tap | Toggle fit ↔ 2× |
| Drag any edge or corner (desktop) | Resize the window — the image scales with it |
| Drag the title bar (desktop) | Move the window |
| Action buttons | Share / Copy image / Open in default app / Reveal in Finder |
Zoom only goes up: the image never shrinks below its fitted size. Pinching back in stops at fit and re-centers.
On desktop the action buttons sit in the title bar. On mobile they move to a floating pill at the bottom of the screen, and the preview is shown full-screen on black.
Single clicks and modifier-key clicks are never intercepted — Obsidian's native behavior is preserved.
- Copy image works for all images, including external ones
- Share opens the Apple share sheet on macOS and the system share sheet on mobile (hidden on Windows/Linux desktop)
- Open in default app and Reveal in Finder apply to vault images on desktop only
Settings
- Click image to open preview — desktop double-click / mobile tap behavior
- Space key to open preview — hover or Canvas-selection + Space
- Show action buttons — toggle the title-bar buttons
- Excluded images (CSS selectors) — containers whose images should not trigger the preview (defaults to excluding Link Card Preview cards)
- Backdrop blur — frosted-glass backdrop; turn off on lower-powered devices
- Related images MOC — a note that groups images under
##headings; images in the same group appear in the sidebar
Privacy & network usage
This plugin makes no network requests of its own. The only network activity occurs when you use Copy image or Share on an image that is itself hosted externally — the image is fetched once so it can be placed on the clipboard or share sheet. No analytics, no telemetry, no accounts.
A note on internal APIs
"Open in default app" and "Reveal in Finder" use two Obsidian APIs that are not part of the public type definitions (app.openWithDefaultApp, app.showInFolder). They are widely used across community plugins and stable in practice, but may change in future Obsidian versions. If they ever break, only these two buttons are affected — the preview itself uses public APIs only.
Installation
From the Community plugin directory
Search for "Image Peek" in Settings → Community plugins.
Manual
Copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/image-peek/, then enable the plugin in Settings.
Development
npm install
npm run dev # watch mode
npm run build # compile main.js
Known limitations
- Canvas image-node filename resolution relies on the node label; identically named files in different folders may resolve to the first match
- Possible future additions: rotation, video and PDF preview, ordered navigation across multi-selected Canvas nodes
License
MIT