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QuickView — Quick Look with OCR for Linux

Overview

A lightweight image previewer for Wayland with built-in OCR text selection. Inspired by macOS Quick Look + Preview. Two modes: quick preview (spacebar) and full viewer (double-click).

Target Environment

  • Arch Linux (and Arch-based distros)
  • Wayland compositors (niri, Hyprland, Sway, etc.)
  • wlroots-compatible
  • GTK4 / libadwaita for native look and feel

Two Modes

1. Quick Preview (spacebar from file manager)

  • Opens a borderless floating window centered on screen
  • Shows the image immediately, fit-to-window
  • OCR runs in the background — text becomes selectable once ready
  • Spacebar again (or Escape) dismisses it
  • No window chrome, no titlebar — just the image
  • Feels instant

2. Full Viewer (double-click / "Open With")

  • Opens as a proper windowed application
  • Image display with zoom and pan
  • OCR text overlay still available
  • Navigate between images in the same directory (arrow keys)
  • Basic info (filename, dimensions, file size)

Core Feature: OCR Text Selection

  • Text recognized by OCR is selectable directly on the image
  • Click and drag to select words, like selecting text in a PDF
  • Selected text is visually highlighted
  • Ctrl+C or right-click to copy
  • OCR happens async — image shows first, text layer appears when ready
  • Small indicator while OCR is processing

Out of Scope (v1)

  • Image editing (crop, rotate, adjust)
  • Video or non-image file preview
  • Thumbnail generation
  • Plugin system
  • PDF support

Integration

  • Registers as an image handler via .desktop file
  • File managers (Nautilus, Thunar, PCManFM) can use it as default viewer
  • Compositor keybind integration (e.g. niri spawn for quick preview mode)
  • Reads from stdin or file path argument
  • wl-copy for clipboard (or native Wayland clipboard)

Dependencies

  • Tesseract (OCR engine, packaged on Arch)
  • GTK4 + libadwaita
  • Wayland (no X11 fallback needed)