Quick Look

File Cabinet Pro version 8.5.7 has been released for macOS.

What’s New?

Improved Alias Icon Handling in File Cabinet Pro

Fixed an issue that caused the Terminal icon to be inappropriately displayed in alias file icons. Since macOS Ventura the built in Quick Look framework provided by the operating system started creating flawed icons for alias files.

Instead of relying completely on Quick Look, File Cabinet Pro now composites icons for alias files to workaround this issue. File Cabinet Pro still uses the Quick Look framework to generate the icon for the original file type and then layers the alias arrow badge over it. Prior to Ventura, Quick Look handled all of this and no additional work was required by developers.

Conditions for Proper Alias Icon Display

File Cabinet Pro needs to know the type of file an alias points to in order to composite the icon. Because of this, alias icons will only display properly if at least one of the following conditions is true:

1) The file type of the original file the alias points to can be inferred by the filename extension (e.g. Filename.png alias).
2) File Cabinet Pro has permission to resolve the alias and query the original file to determine its type.

If either of the above conditions aren’t met the icon may still display incorrectly. Usually File Cabinet Pro has permission to the original file but if you are using the sandboxed version of the app (the Mac App Store version) there may be times where File Cabinet Pro can’t resolve the alias. But you can fix this problem by doing one of the following in the Mac App Store version:

Make the name of the alias file end in: .fileExtension alias (replace .fileExtension with the actual file extension of the original file).
Add the parent directory (or any ancestor directory) of the original file to your Favorites sidebar.
Follow this tutorial and grant File Cabinet Pro permission to an entire directory tree in File Cabinet Pro Settings.
Grant File Cabinet Pro full disk access in System Settings.

Developer Feedback to Apple

I filed two bug reports with Apple about this. The first bug report I filed back in 2023 against NSWorkspace -iconForFile: (which presumably uses the Quick Look framework internally). I also filed a bug report against the Quick Look framework back in March. Apple did not respond to either bug report.

The image below is an example of the preview Quick Look provides for alias files to third-party apps (starting in Ventura):

Screenshot of Terminal's icon appearing in the icon image of a file alias.

And here is a screenshot of the icon File Cabinet Pro now generates for file aliases in version 8.5.7:

File Cabinet Pro Mac app screenshot with file alias selected.