Peek is a free Chrome extension to preview documents, music, and videos before downloading them. That means using this extension you’ll be able to easily preview the documents, videos, and music files which you’re about to download from the web to PC. It supports various file formats including PDF, Word files, Excel files, Powerpoint files, MP4, FLV, MP3, WAV, and more. To preview the supported files, all you got to do is hover your mouse cursor over the file download link and it will open up a pop-up window where you can view and interact with the file. Apart from that, it also allows you to pop out the file preview window to a new tab for easy viewing.
In addition to that, this extension also allows you to preview Imgur GIF URLs, Gfycat URLs, and Google Docs files which are public. For documents, it also lets you change the file viewer and set it either as Office Online Viewer or Google Docs Viewer. Ultimately, this extension is perfect for you if you want to know the file content before you download it to PC.
How to Preview Documents, Videos, and Music Before Downloading to PC:
Step 1: To get started, simply install the extension “Peek” on your Google Chrome browser. After that, click on the extension icon on the toolbar to open up the extension settings. In the settings, you will be able to choose a default viewer for documents either as Google Docs Viewer or Office Online Viewer.
Step 2: Once you do that, you’re all set to preview documents, videos, and music before you download them to PC. Currently, the “Peek” Chrome extension supports the following file formats for preview:
- Documents – PDF, RTF, DOCX, DOC, XLSX, XLS, PPT, and PPTX files.
- Videos – MP4, WebM, OGG, OGV, GIFV, .F4V, and .FLV files.
- Music – WAV and MP3 Audio files.
Step 3: Now, let’s say you searched for a PDF file on Google, then before you download it simply hover the mouse cursor over the file link. As soon as you do that, a small pop-up window will appear with a preview of the PDF file. Remember, no matter which website you’re on, if the website contains a file download link (document, video, or music), then you can preview it before downloading. You can view the entire file within the pop-up window, zoom in and out, scroll through the pages, etc.
Step 4: It also allows you to open up the file preview as a new pop-up Chrome window or as an expanded new tab with the selected file viewer (Office Online or Gooogle Docs Viewer). You can do that by clicking on the respective buttons, as shown in the below image.
Step 5: In the same manner, you can also preview videos and music files of the supported formats using the Peek extension from the download link, without even downloading it.
My Final Verdict:
Peek is a very useful and interesting Chrome extension which can help you preview documents, videos, and music files before you download them. No Rocket Science is required for this, as all you got to do is install the extension and hover the mouse cursor over file download link, as simple as that. Go ahead and give it a try.
