CSV Viewer for macOS

A lightweight, native macOS CSV viewer/editor built with Swift and SwiftUI.

Features

File Management

• Open CSV files with the native file picker
• Drag and drop a CSV from Finder onto the empty-state canvas to open it
• Click the centered empty-state drop zone to trigger the native file picker
• Open Recent list (last 5 files) with security-scoped bookmarks
• Save and Save As with UTF-8 output
• Large file prompt with Load Preview or Load All options
• File encoding detection and status display
• Unsaved changes warning on app quit (Save / Don't Save / Cancel)

CSV Processing

• RFC 4180-compliant parsing and formatting via CSVParser
• Correct handling of quoted fields, commas, escaped quotes, and embedded newlines
• Auto-extends headers when row width exceeds header width

Grid and Selection

• Sticky header row with horizontal/vertical scrolling
• Row number column and multi-selection support
• Row selection and column selection modes (mutually exclusive)
• Cmd-click toggle and Shift-click range selection
• Dynamic column widths based on content (clamped to 60-520 px)
• Optional line wrapping

Editing

• Double-click to edit header cells and data cells
• Enter to commit edits, Tab/Shift-Tab navigation, Escape to cancel
• Add row/column around current selection
• Delete selected rows/columns with confirmation dialogs
• 3-level undo/redo stack for delete operations

Find/Search

• Dedicated Find window (⌘F)
• Case-insensitive, diacritic-insensitive substring matching
• ⌘G / ⌘⇧G navigation between matches
• Search can scope to selected columns
• In-grid match highlighting and auto-scroll to current match

Filtering and Navigation

• Quick row filter above the grid narrows visible rows across all columns
• Matching filter phrases are highlighted in visible cells
• Filtered copy uses visible rows when no explicit row selection is active
• Arrow-key navigation across visible cells
• Enter edits the active cell
• Tab / Shift-Tab move horizontally outside edit mode
• Home / End jump to first or last column in the active row
• Page Up / Page Down move by larger row increments

Sorting and Clipboard

• Click header sort controls to sort ascending/descending
• Numeric-aware sort (falls back to case-insensitive string compare)
• Copy behavior:
  • Selected rows across all columns
  • Selected columns across all rows
  • Entire table when nothing is selected
• Clipboard output is valid CSV

User Interface

• Compact toolbar with file/edit/view/help controls
• Window title includes the app build version (example: CSV Viewer v2026.06.16-003)
• Manual light/dark toggle
• Font size controls (10-22 pt)
• Status bar with rows, columns, encoding, and preview indicator
• Settings and Help sheets

Keyboard Shortcuts

Action	Shortcut
Open	⌘O
Save	⌘S
Save As	⌘⇧S
Undo Delete	⌘Z
Redo Delete	⌘⇧Z
Copy Selection	⌘C
Find	⌘F
Find Next	⌘G
Find Previous	⌘⇧G
Navigate Cells	Arrow keys
Edit Active Cell	Enter
Move Active Cell	Tab / Shift-Tab
Row Start/End	Home / End
Page Rows	Page Up / Page Down
Toggle Wrap	⌘L
Decrease Font	⌘-
Increase Font	⌘=

Requirements

• macOS 14.0+ (Sonoma or later)
• Xcode 15.0+
• Swift 5.9+

Build and Test

# Build
xcodebuild -project "xcode/CSV Viewer/CSV Viewer.xcodeproj" -scheme "CSV Viewer" -configuration Debug build

# Test
xcodebuild test -project "xcode/CSV Viewer/CSV Viewer.xcodeproj" -scheme "CSV Viewer" -destination 'platform=macOS'

For a consistent double-clickable app bundle in the repo, run:

./scripts/build-app.sh

That publishes the latest debug build to artifacts/CSV Viewer.app.

Personal Default App Workflow

CSV Viewer is intended to be a fast personal CSV viewer/editor for ordinary CSV inspection and small edits without opening Excel.

To refresh the runnable app:

./scripts/build-app.sh

Then use:

artifacts/CSV Viewer.app

To make it the default app for .csv files on macOS:

1. In Finder, select any .csv file.
2. Press ⌘I for Get Info.
3. In Open with, choose CSV Viewer.app.
4. Click Change All....

The app bundle declares CSV documents and is signed for local use with user-selected file read/write access.

If xcodebuild fails before compiling with Xcode plugin or IDESimulatorFoundation load errors, repair the local Xcode install state first:

xcodebuild -runFirstLaunch

Project Structure

csv-viewer/
├── README.md
├── prd-csv.md
├── plans.md
├── example.csv
└── xcode/
    └── CSV Viewer/
        ├── CSV Viewer.xcodeproj
        ├── Info.plist                   # Bundle metadata + CSV document declaration
        ├── CSV Viewer/
        │   ├── CSV_ViewerApp.swift      # App entry + command wiring
        │   ├── ContentView.swift         # Main UI + app behavior
        │   ├── CSVParser.swift           # RFC 4180 parse/format utility
        │   ├── SearchState.swift         # Find state and navigation
        │   ├── AppState.swift            # Unsaved-changes shared state
        │   ├── AppDelegate.swift         # Quit flow / save confirmation
        │   ├── EditingTextField.swift    # NSTextField bridge for editing UX
        │   ├── FindView.swift
        │   ├── SettingsView.swift
        │   └── HelpView.swift
        └── CSV ViewerTests/
            └── CSVParserTests.swift

Settings

Configured in the Settings sheet:

• Preview large files (on by default)
• Preview row limit (10,000 by default)
• Large file threshold in MB (50 by default)

Known Limitations

• Undo/redo currently applies to row/column delete actions only
• CSV is the only export/save format (no TSV/JSON/XML export yet)
• No multi-column sorting yet
• Core behavior is still concentrated in ContentView.swift (not yet split into a fuller model/view-model architecture)

Roadmap

• Export formats (TSV, JSON, XML)
• Column filtering
• Advanced sorting (multi-column and options)
• Custom delimiters (tabs, pipe, semicolon)
• Performance upgrades for very large files (streamed preview, virtualization)
• Architecture split of ContentView into smaller components/model layers

Contributing

Contributions are welcome. Open an issue or submit a pull request.

License

MIT License (see LICENSE).

Credits

Built by 323 Works, LLC