Add an option to turn off the display of "File content preview" or can set not to display content in a certain format

Feature requests
1

新增一个可以关闭"File content preview"显示的选项，因为有些大文件，软件会强制去显示他的内容，会导致软件直接卡死。

2

You should just remove the extension of the file type you do not want to be previewed from the settings, as shown in the following screenshot:

image
image1258×1672 227 KB

3

Deleting pdf (or any other type) in the Settings > File Types panel only lasts until the next launch. That’s probably because the app scans the viewer plug-ins and re-adds any extensions they support, so the pdf entry (and the content preview) reappear immediately.

After spending hours wrestling with extconfig.js with no success, I tried a simpler fix: patch the pdf-viewer extension itself.

If you want to view the Details + Description of a file without the pdf preview (in the right panel), here’s what worked for me:

By the way, I have no experience with HTML. I used GPT o3 to generate a patch for the existing index.html file.

How to disable TagSpaces’ built-in pdf content preview (macOS 15.1, Tagspaces pro 6.4.9)

  1. Quit Tagspaces completely.

  2. Install Homebrew (skip if you already have it).

  3. In Terminal, run:

    brew install node      # gives you npm
npm install -g asar    # CLI (~30 kB) for unpacking Electron archives

  4. Go to the folder /Applications/TagSpaces.app/Contents/Resources, you’ll find the file app.asar. Unpack it so that Electron loads files from app/ instead of the packed archive:

    cd /Applications/TagSpaces.app/Contents/Resources
asar extract app.asar app   # creates an “app” folder next to app.asar

    This generates an app/ subfolder and some other files within Resources.

  5. Navigate to the pdf-viewer’s index.html file. I found it in the following location.

    /Applications/TagSpaces.app/Contents/Resources/app/node_modules/@tagspaces/extensions/pdf-viewer/index.html

  6. Backup index.html so you can revert the changes later.

  7. Open index.html in TextEdit. The file content starts like this:

    <!DOCTYPE html>
<html style="margin: 0; padding: 0; height: 100%">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <meta
      name="viewport"
      content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1"
    />
    <script src="../common/common.js"></script>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="../libs/bootstrap5/bootstrap.min.css" />
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="../common/common.css" />
  ...

  8. Within index.html, between the 3rd and 4th lines ( after <head> and before <meta charset="utf-8" /> ), paste the following block:

    <!-- ── Disable embedded PDF previews ───────────────────────── -->
<script>
  /* Set MB_LIMIT to 0 to block every PDF,
     or to a size (in MB) above which previews are disabled. */
  (() => {
    const MB_LIMIT = 0;  // 0 ⇒ always disable
    try {
      const qs   = new URLSearchParams(location.search);
      const file = decodeURIComponent(qs.get('file') || '');
      if (MB_LIMIT === 0) {
        document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => {
          document.body.innerHTML =
            '<div style="font:14px/1.4 -apple-system;padding:2rem">' +
            'Preview disabled. Use “Open externally” if you need to view.' +
            '</div>';
        });
        window.stop();   // abort loading pdf.js and the rest of the page
      }
    } catch (e) {
      /* If anything fails, fall back to the normal viewer */
    }
  })();
</script>
<!-- ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── -->

  9. This will impose a limit on the size of the pdf file before loading it for preview. You may set MB_LIMIT to a positive number if you’d like to preview small pdfs but skip large ones.

  10. Save the changes to index.html.

  11. Restart Tagspaces and click on a pdf. The preview pane in the right panel should now appear blank. It will show only Details + Description for the file.

Hope this saves someone else from a five-hour rabbit hole!