Sushi, the spacebar preview utility for Nautilus file manager, has been ported to GTK4 for GNOME 51.
For anyone unfamiliar with it, Sushi is like Quick Look on macOS: you highlight a file (image, music, video, document, etc) in Nautilus, press the spacebar and an instant preview of its content appears. Press the spacebar again to dismiss it.
For v51, Sushi’s GTK4 port means it looks nicer on newer GNOME releases. There’s a flatter headerbar, and overlay controls on certain file types (like media) that let content bleed through from underneath. Light/dark mode preference is also now respected.
Previewing different files types in the improved Sushi
Earlier versions of Sushi didn’t adjust the window size when cycling through files using the arrow keys. I use it to preview images of various sizes/ratio and the preview frame would stick to the dimensions of the first file previews – which was annoying.
So I’m pleased to see Sushi v51 has resolved that. Developers overhauled the window sizing logic and made it nicer with display scaling. The preview canvas now resizes on the fly, gracefully:
Adaptive resizing in action in Sushi v51 (nightly build)
New keyboard shortcuts have been added too:
- F2 to rename the file in preview
- Del to move it to the trash
- O to open the file in the default app for that file type
- P will pause/resume playback of video/audio content
HTML file previews block remote content from loading. An info bar you know if this happens and give you the option to let content load. You can also now right-click on URLs inside of an HTML preview to open them in the default web browser.
And if you were ever annoyed at hitting spacebar on an animated GIF only to see a static frame, rejoice: Sushi is now able to play animated GIF and TIFF images.
Other changes:
- Text viewer wraps lines
- Video previews can be paused/resumed by clicking
- Opening a previewed folder opens in the parent folder
- Audio file preview show embedded artwork
- Double-click the preview area to enter/exit fullscreen
- Fullscreen icon added to the headerbar
- Support for XHTML and more office file mime types
- Animated spinner is shown if previews take time to load
The old Gdkpixbuf image rendering has been replaced by the Rust-based Glycin for loading images. The sandboxed decoder library is used by other GNOME apps, including the image viewer Loupe.
Sushi is on the menu again
Maintenance recently passed to Nautilus developer Peter Eisenmann who, along with Lorenzo Ubaldi and Tau Gärtli, has done a sterling effort at fleshing out the features and modernising the codebase; the GTK4 port was tackled by Corey Berla.
Sushi is a GNOME project, acting as a companion for Nautilus. Ubuntu considered adding Sushi to its default install in 2017 but, like other plans put forward during the transition from Unity to GNOME, it didn’t happen.
A proposal is open on the GNOME design tracker with some early suggestions for a new app icon. The main theme? Why, Sushi ofc!
Trying Sushi 51 early
Sushi v51 will be released in September, alongside the stable release of GNOME 51.Hopefully, it will be packaged in the Ubuntu 26.10 repos but, as of writing, it only has the v50 release – fingers (or chopstick) crossed the new version makes it in.
If you use the GNOME Nightly Flatpak repo you can install a development build of Sushi from there. Keep in mind that the repo also needs the GNOME 51 development runtime, codecs and you’ll want Nautilus 51 too.
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