Image Peek

Quick Look–style image preview for Obsidian — like pressing Space in Finder, or tapping an image in Apple Freeform.

The preview zooms out from the thumbnail's position (FLIP animation), supports pan/zoom, and closes right back into place.

Usage

Action	Behavior
Double-click an image (desktop)	Open the preview, zooming from the thumbnail
Single tap (mobile, in notes)	Open the preview
Double tap (mobile, on Canvas)	Open the preview; single tap keeps node selection
Hover an image + Space	Open the preview (never triggers while typing)
Select an image node on Canvas + Space	Open the preview (Freeform-style)
Space / Esc / click backdrop	Close, zooming back into place
Swipe down (mobile, not zoomed)	Close — the image follows your finger and the backdrop fades
← →	Browse other images on the same page
Scroll wheel / pinch	Zoom centered on the cursor (or pinch midpoint)
Drag / one-finger pan	Pan (once zoomed in)
Double-click / double tap	Toggle fit ↔ 2×
Drag any edge or corner (desktop)	Resize the window — the image scales with it
Drag the title bar (desktop)	Move the window
Action buttons	Share / Copy image / Open in default app / Reveal in Finder

Zoom only goes up: the image never shrinks below its fitted size. Pinching back in stops at fit and re-centers.

On desktop the action buttons sit in the title bar. On mobile they move to a floating pill at the bottom of the screen, and the preview is shown full-screen on black.

Single clicks and modifier-key clicks are never intercepted — Obsidian's native behavior is preserved.

• Copy image works for all images, including external ones
• Share opens the Apple share sheet on macOS and the system share sheet on mobile (hidden on Windows/Linux desktop)
• Open in default app and Reveal in Finder apply to vault images on desktop only

Settings

• Click image to open preview — desktop double-click / mobile tap behavior
• Space key to open preview — hover or Canvas-selection + Space
• Show action buttons — toggle the title-bar buttons
• Excluded images (CSS selectors) — containers whose images should not trigger the preview (defaults to excluding Link Card Preview cards)
• Backdrop blur — frosted-glass backdrop; turn off on lower-powered devices
• Related images MOC — a note that groups images under ## headings; images in the same group appear in the sidebar

Privacy & network usage

This plugin makes no network requests of its own. The only network activity occurs when you use Copy image or Share on an image that is itself hosted externally — the image is fetched once so it can be placed on the clipboard or share sheet. No analytics, no telemetry, no accounts.

A note on internal APIs

"Open in default app" and "Reveal in Finder" use two Obsidian APIs that are not part of the public type definitions (app.openWithDefaultApp, app.showInFolder). They are widely used across community plugins and stable in practice, but may change in future Obsidian versions. If they ever break, only these two buttons are affected — the preview itself uses public APIs only.

Installation

From the Community plugin directory

Search for "Image Peek" in Settings → Community plugins.

Manual

Copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css into <your vault>/.obsidian/plugins/image-peek/, then enable the plugin in Settings.

Development

npm install
npm run dev    # watch mode
npm run build  # compile main.js

Known limitations

• Canvas image-node filename resolution relies on the node label; identically named files in different folders may resolve to the first match
• Possible future additions: rotation, video and PDF preview, ordered navigation across multi-selected Canvas nodes

License

MIT