🔎 macOS can preview almost anything — but it can't edit it.

Qedit fixes that. Find, edit and save text, code, Markdown, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF — each straight back in its own format. Click a file in Qedit's Browser and edit it right there, like a preview pane you can type into. A .pdf stays a .pdf. A .docx stays a .docx. No conversion, ever.

✨ What you get

	Feature
🗂️	Browser window — a folder list beside a live, editable editor. Click a file and edit it right there (⌘F, save in place) — no Space, no shortcut. The closest macOS allows to "edit in the preview."
✍️	Edit (almost) any format in place — text, code, Markdown, Word/RTF/ODT, Excel cells, PowerPoint text, SVG, JSON/YAML/CSV — each saved back in its own format, never converted
📄	A real PDF editor — find + jump-to-result, highlight, sticky notes, text boxes, replace text (matches the original font/size/color), ✍️ signatures, page ops, optional flatten-on-save
🖍️	Live change highlighting — see exactly what you changed: added/edited text is marked, removals flagged — in text, code, Word, Excel and PowerPoint
🔌	No preview plugin of its own — Qedit edits in its own window, so your installed Quick Look plugins (QLMarkdown, Syntax Highlight, …) keep your Space previews; Qedit's window simply falls back to them for any file it can't edit
⌨️	Editing one keystroke from Finder — ⌥⌘E opens the selection (rebindable), ⌥⌘B opens the Browser (rebindable), or follow the Finder selection live
🧩	Quick Look plugin manager — manage every Quick Look plugin on your Mac: the types each claims, enable/disable any of them, restart Quick Look so a change sticks, and inspect which plugin previews a file
🔄	Auto-updates — Sparkle, EdDSA-verified, installed in the background, with an in-app Updates page

_{👉 Expand any section below for the details.}

🗂️ Browser — a folder list + a live, editable preview pane

Open the Browser (⌥⌘B, the dashboard card, or the menu bar): a folder list on the left, a real editor on the right.

• Click a file → it opens ready to edit, right there — find with ⌘F, save in place. No Space, no hotkey, no extra click.
• Switching files while you have unsaved edits asks before discarding them.
• Reuses every editor (text, code, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) and falls back to macOS Quick Look for anything else.
• Prefer the Finder? Turn on Follow Finder selection and the editable Quick Panel tracks whatever you click in Finder — a live, editable preview pane.

Apple's own Quick Look pane (Space / Finder's preview) is read-only and takes no keystrokes — no app can edit inside it. The Browser is Qedit's own editable equivalent.

✍️ Edit every supported format — in its own format

Type	What you can do
Text · code · Markdown · SVG · JSON · YAML · CSV	Full editing, ⌘F find, syntax colors, change highlighting
Word .docx .doc · RTF · ODT	Edit as rich text; saves back in place (a .bak is kept first — optional)
Excel .xlsx	Edit cells; a minimal-diff writer rewrites only changed cells and preserves styles/formulas
PowerPoint .pptx	Edit title/bullet text in place (opt-in) beside the rendered slides; layout & images preserved
PDF	Find, annotate, replace text, page ops, save in place

Word/Excel are editable by default; PowerPoint text editing is an opt-in toggle. Everything saves back in the same format — Qedit never converts. Anything Qedit can't edit gets a read-only Quick Look preview instead.

📄 PDF editor — find, annotate, reorganize, save in place

• Find across the whole document with live match count and jump-to-result (highlighted).
• Annotate: text highlights, sticky notes, free-text boxes, and freehand ✍️ signatures (draw once in a sheet, click to place anywhere). Pick any annotation color.
• Pages: rotate, delete, insert blank, insert pages from another PDF, reorder, and extract a page to a new file.
• Copy as plain text — selection or the whole document.
• Save in place writes back to the same .pdf via PDFKit. An optional timestamped .bak is made before the first write.
• A thumbnail sidebar for quick navigation.

🧩 Quick Look plugin manager — manage every plugin, fix conflicts

Qedit doesn't install its own Quick Look preview plugin — it edits in its own window, so the plugins you already have keep your Space previews. Instead Qedit is a manager for all of them (sidebar → Quick Look Plugins):

• Lists every installed Quick Look preview plugin (via pluginkit) with its bundle id, enabled state, and the file types it claims.
• Enable / disable any plugin — per-row, or Enable All / Disable All — and Qedit restarts the Quick Look daemons (quicklookd/QuickLookUIService) so the change takes effect immediately, no logout needed.
• Fixes "the wrong plugin previews my file." macOS shows one preview per type; the UTI inspector (drop any file) shows its type and exactly which plugins claim it, so you can turn off whichever one is winning.
• Refresh Finder & Quick Look / reset the cache in one click, with a debug log.
• Surfaces brew outdated --cask for plugins you installed via Homebrew — it never updates apps it didn't install.

⌨️ Hotkey & Quick Action — open the editor in one keystroke

• Global hotkey (default ⌥⌘E, fully rebindable in Settings): select a file in Finder, press it, and that file opens in the editor.
• Browser hotkey (default ⌥⌘B, rebindable): opens the folder Browser with the live editable pane from anywhere.
• Follow Finder selection (opt-in): while the Quick Panel is open, clicking through files in Finder re-loads each one into it.
• Finder Quick Action / Service: right-click a file → Quick Actions → Open in Qedit.
• All route through the qedit:// URL scheme / Carbon hotkeys to the (unsandboxed) host app, so editing real files just works.

The first hotkey use asks macOS for permission to read the Finder selection — that's the standard Automation prompt.

🔄 Auto-updates — Sparkle, signed and verified

Qedit ships with Sparkle. It checks a signed appcast.xml, verifies each update against an EdDSA public key baked into the app, then downloads, installs, and relaunches — all in the background. The Updates page lets you toggle automatic checks, check now, or grab the latest build manually. Every release is Developer-ID signed and notarized.

🚫 What it won't do (on purpose — these are real macOS limits)

• Never changes or renames your file's format. Edits write back in the original format.
• Never installs its own Quick Look preview plugin — your existing plugins (QLMarkdown, Syntax Highlight, …) keep your Space previews; Qedit just manages them.
• Never silently overrides system security — a macOS approval may still be required; Qedit guides you, it doesn't pretend.
• Can't edit inside Finder's own Quick Look pane. That region (Space / the preview column) is read-only and delivers no keystrokes to any app — so Qedit gives you the Browser window and the follow-Finder Quick Panel instead, the closest legitimate equivalents.
• .webarchive stays read-only (re-saving it would silently drop its images/scripts), and PDF editing is overlay-based, not Acrobat-style glyph reflow.

📦 Install

⚡ One command — the whole suite (Qedit + ChangeX + Quick Look)

Installs Qedit (find + edit any file) and ChangeX (tracked-changes + preview), and sets up ChangeX's Quick Look preview — in a single step. (Qedit has no preview plugin of its own; it manages the ones you already have.)

macOS / Linux

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ArioMoniri/Qedit/main/scripts/install.sh)"

Windows (PowerShell)

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ArioMoniri/Qedit/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex

The scripts only use Homebrew (Qedit) and uv/pipx/pip (ChangeX), and print every download link — nothing else runs. Read scripts/install.sh / scripts/install.ps1 first if you like.

🖥 What runs where

Qedit is a native macOS app (AppKit · PDFKit · QuickLookUI), so the Qedit app is macOS-only. The cross-platform half of the suite is ChangeX (Python + a Tauri viewer), which runs everywhere.

	macOS	Windows	Linux
Qedit app + in-place editor	✅	—	—
Qedit Quick Look plugin manager	✅	—	—
ChangeX CLI · MCP · changex view/preview	✅	✅	✅
ChangeX Viewer app	✅ .dmg	✅ .msi	✅ .AppImage
ChangeX native preview	✅ Quick Look (Space)	✅ Explorer pane (Alt+P)	changex view
Press-Space preview like macOS	built-in	install QuickLook for Windows	—

On Windows? You get ChangeX + its Explorer preview pane. For a macOS-Quick-Look-style Space preview, grab the free QuickLook app: winget install QL-Win.QuickLook. (Qedit itself has no Windows build — see above.)

🍎 Just Qedit (macOS)

brew tap ariomoniri/qedit https://github.com/ArioMoniri/Qedit
brew install --cask qedit

Or grab the signed, notarized Qedit.dmg and drag it to Applications. Open a file with the Browser (⌥⌘B), the hotkey (⌥⌘E), or Open With → Qedit — edit and save in place. Manage your Space-preview plugins in the Quick Look Plugins tab. 🎉

🛠 Build from source

Needs Xcode 16+ and XcodeGen.

brew install xcodegen
xcodegen generate        # project.yml → Qedit.xcodeproj (git-ignored)
open Qedit.xcodeproj      # ⌘R to run

🏗 Architecture & project layout

Sources/
  Qedit/                host app — editor, Quick Look plugin manager, updates, onboarding, hotkey
  QuickActionExtension/ Finder Quick Action → hands the file to the editor
  Shared/               code compiled into both targets
scripts/                build_release.sh + notarize.sh + install.sh/.ps1
.github/                release workflow + README assets

One host .app, two targets:

Target	Kind	Role
Qedit	App (SwiftUI/AppKit)	Editor (panels/windows), Quick Look plugin manager, updates, onboarding, hotkey
QeditQuickAction	Action/Service app-extension	Hands the Finder selection to the editor

The host app is unsandboxed (Developer ID) so the manager can shell out to pluginkit/qlmanage/brew and the hotkey can read the Finder selection. Qedit ships no Quick Look preview plugin — it manages the ones you already have. Project files are generated by XcodeGen from project.yml (the .xcodeproj is git-ignored).

🚀 Releasing (maintainers)

Pushing a vX.Y.Z tag runs .github/workflows/release.yml: build → Developer-ID sign → notarize → EdDSA-sign the Sparkle appcast → publish the DMG + appcast as release assets, with notes pulled from CHANGELOG.md. Everything comes from the APPLE_* and SPARKLE_ED_PRIVATE_KEY Actions secrets.

git tag v0.2.0 && git push origin v0.2.0   # 🪄 that's the whole release

❓ FAQ

Will Qedit ever change or convert my files?

No. Edits always write back to the original file in its original format. A `.pdf` stays a `.pdf`. The only extra file it may create is an optional timestamped `.bak` before the first save.

Does Qedit have its own spacebar (Quick Look) preview?

No. Qedit edits in its own window, so it ships **no** Quick Look preview plugin — your existing plugins (QLMarkdown, Syntax Highlight, …) keep your Space previews. Qedit instead gives you a **manager** to enable/disable any Quick Look plugin and see which one previews a given file (sidebar → **Quick Look Plugins**).

Is it safe? Signed?

Yes. Every release is signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple, so Gatekeeper accepts it cleanly. Updates are additionally verified against an EdDSA key.

My preview isn't showing — what do I do?

Open Qedit → Extensions and make sure Qedit Preview is enabled (or hit Enable Qedit Preview in Setup). If macOS still ignores it, approve it in System Settings → General → Login Items & Extensions → Quick Look, then use Reset Quick Look Cache. Logging out and back in helps macOS pick it up.

The hotkey doesn't open anything.

The first use needs permission to control Finder (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Automation). Make sure a file is actually selected in the front Finder window, and that the shortcut is enabled in Settings → Hotkey.

🗺 Roadmap

• M1 — Quick Look previews + in-place text editor
• M2 — PDFKit editor + Quick Action + ⌥⌘E hotkey
• M3 — Quick Look extension manager (enable/disable · qlmanage -r · UTI inspector)
• M4 — Sparkle auto-updates · theming · Developer-ID notarized release

See CHANGELOG.md for what changed in each version. 📝

📄 License

MIT © 2026 Ariorad Moniri.

_{Built with Swift, SwiftUI, AppKit & PDFKit on macOS. 🛠}