Observatory 2.1.4: Still no Quicklook preview

[avalondria2050]

Hi.
I have seen several reports about the missing Quicklook preview in macOS. I have been struggling with the same issue since macOS 26.0 and still haven't found a solution. I have granted Observatory to full disk access and have tried to change the extension .fit for .fits ( although it doesn't matter as the issue also affects to .xisf images ). Also checked that there is no other extension in /Library/Quicklook that could be interfering with the Observatory one ( in fact, I don't have anything in that folder, not even hided )... So I don't know what's the real problem here. This happens with any location where the image could be ( internal or external SDD or HD ) and in more that one computer ( 3 computers, 2 Apple Silicon, 1 Intel, no preview ).

Any solution to this? As I have seen that this issue is around for quite a long time.

Thank you.

[Sander Berents]

Without exception this problem has always been caused by third-party software hijacking the FITS or XISF file formats by registering their support for these formats incorrectly. The most recent case is Planet Stacker X. The developer made some changes to fix this, but last time I checked it was still broken. Apple's documentation about this topic is outdated, and macOS accumulated many regressions over the years, so it is mostly Apple that is to blame here.

I am running macOS 26 and the plugins work just fine. I did find though that macOS 26 is a bit finicky and I had to disable the Quick Look plugins once using the System Settings, and then re-enable them again for macOS to pick them up. Open System Preferences > Login Items & Extensions > Quick Look and toggle them (and check if you have any others there that may conflict).

I was about to release Observatory 2.1.5, but I'll see if I can make Observatory a bit more robust against this recurring problem ("play less nice").

[avalondria2050]

Thank you for your reply, Sander.

I didn't realize that I have another astronomy app that has the ability to preview .FITS and .XISF files and was blocking Observatory to work properly. Now I have this app disabled and Quick Look is working again just with the Observatory plugins. I have contacted with the developer of the other app to fix this issue and prevent this situation in the future.

Best