Quick Look not rendering with Clearly

[drale2k]

App works great expect for Quick Look, which keeps rendering with the default macOS preview. Is there anything extra i need to install or configure for Quick Look to work? Can't see anything in the docs

[Shpigford]

app version and macos version? also a screenshot of what you're seeing in Finder and Quick Look will also help.

[drale2k]

Clearly: Version 1.7.4 (1.7.4) - (Running the DMG from github instead if the App Store because theme swichting is broken currently in the App Store build)
macOS: Tahoe (latest)

The preview shows the default macOS renderer.

I tried restarting Finder but no difference

[Shpigford]

Gotcha! So...the Quick Look extension should work automatically. It sounds like something on your system might be interfering.

Could you run these in Terminal and share the output? That’ll help narrow it down:

What UTI does macOS assign to your .md files?

mdls -name kMDItemContentType /path/to/any/file.md

Is Clearly's QL extension registered?

pluginkit -m -p com.apple.quicklook.preview | grep -i clearly

Also, do you have any other markdown apps installed (QLMarkdown, Typora, iA Writer, etc.)?

[drale2k]

> pluginkit -m -p com.apple.quicklook.preview | grep -i clearly
com.sabotage.clearly.quicklook(1.7.4)

> mdls -name kMDItemContentType ~/Downloads/Raw_03-27-2026-04-43-01.folder/api.md
kMDItemContentType = "net.daringfireball.markdown"

I do not have anything fancy installed for MD viewing. Just apps which offer to open it with, like Zed, Warp, Xcode etc. None of these: QLMarkdown, Typora, iA Writer.

I also set Finder now to always by default open .md files with Clearly but that did not help with Quick Look

[Shpigford]

Thanks! Okay...couple of things to try. 🤞

1. Reset the Quick Look server:

qlmanage -r
qlmanage -r cache

Then try previewing a .md file again.

2. Check if the extension is loading at all:

qlmanage -p ~/Downloads/Raw_03-27-2026-04-43-01.folder/api.md

This will show which generator handles the file. If it says something other than com.sabotage.clearly.quicklook, macOS’s built-in handler is taking priority.

If none of the above helps, open Console.app, filter for “quicklook” or “clearly”, then press Space on a .md file in Finder — any crash or error from the extension should hopefully show up there.

[drale2k]

This does not return anything, just opens the file.

qlmanage -p ~/Downloads/Raw_03-27-2026-04-43-01.folder/api.md
Testing Quick Look preview with files:
	/Users/xxx/Downloads/Raw_03-27-2026-04-43-01.folder/api.md

What seems to be happening is that:

1. Markdown files use the net.daringfireball.markdown UTI.
2. No app is registered to handle that UTI on my system
3. macOS fallback to treating it as public.plain-text since that's the parent of net.daringfireball.markdown in the UTI chain

I ran qlmanage -m plugins, which dumps a list of every Quick Look generator on the system and all the UTIs each one can handle. There is no net.daringfireball.markdown listed which means Clearly was never registered to handle it.

I tried deleting the app and reinstalling from the App Store but the issues persists. If it works for everyone else, something has to be wrong on my side, even though i don't have anything fancy running 🤔

[Shpigford]

Okay, one more thing to try:

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain system -domain user`

That resets the launch services database (which rebuilds UTI app associations).

Then restart and give it another go.

(So far you're the only report of this, but would still like to figure out what's going on.)