Quicklook plugin not recognizing its file type

Question

Wrote a simple Quicklook plugin for Mac OS X for viewing custom image format. Worked fine on one machine, doesn't work on another. Both running El Capitan beta.

This works and displays the image even on the affected machine:

qlmanage -c "com.catnapgames.nlimage" -p saucer__0.nlimage

This doesn't work:

qlmanage -p saucer__0.nlimage

mdls returns this:

kMDItemContentTypeTree         = (
"public.data",
"public.item"
)

Here's a link to the plugin's Info.plist file.

Any idea why it works on one machine and doesn't work on the other? How can I further troubleshoot this to find out what's wrong?

Have you tried resetting the generator cache `-r`? – l'L'l Aug 28 '15 at 00:27 — l'L'l, Aug 28 '15 at 00:27
@l'L'l yes, I run ``qlmanage -r`` each time. – Tomas Andrle Aug 28 '15 at 09:57 — Tomas Andrle, Aug 28 '15 at 09:57

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:44

The fact that mdls just gives you the generic "public.data" tells you that LaunchServices doesn't recognize your UTI. And since it doesn't recognize your UTI then your QuickLook generator won't be invoked. (You can see this happen if you do qlmanage -d1 -p saucer__0.nlimage).

The reason for this is that you need to declare your UTI in an app - LaunchServices won't reliably read UTExportedTypeDeclarations or UTImportedTypeDeclarations from a QuickLook generator bundle.

See point #1 in this answer for more details.

Quicklook plugin not recognizing its file type

1 Answers1