No Preview in Peek for certain file extensions / extensionless files (that DO display via file explorer preview pane)

[pa-0]

Microsoft PowerToys version

0.79.0

Installation method

WinGet

Running as admin

Yes

Area(s) with issue?

Peek

Steps to reproduce

1. Open a folder in File Explorer with Preview Pane activated.
2. Select a file to view preview
3. Preview Pane loads with progress bar as usual
4. Text appears.
5. CTRL+␣ for Peek Preview
6. Peek appears displaying typical window when a filetype has no preview available.

✔️ Expected Behavior

Peek should mirror the PowerToys File-Explorer Preview Add-on in what it displays for text files.

❌ Actual Behavior

For certain file extensions and files with no extension, there is a discrepancy between what is displayed in preview pane of explorer and in Peek. Below is a screenshot that demonstrates this pretty clearly:

Question: Is there a registry key I can edit/add to tell Peek to treat certain filetypes as text-encoded files? For instance if I add the proper shellex subkey with the correct Preview Handler ID to the "." key in HKCR, I can preview the text in files with no extension. I'm hoping there is something similar that can be done for Peek (for both files with no extension and those with extensions that currently display nothing in Peek, e.g., *.ahk files.

Thanks.

Other Software

No response

[github-actions]

Hi I'm an AI powered bot that finds similar issues based off the issue title.

Please view the issues below to see if they solve your problem, and if the issue describes your problem please consider closing this one and thumbs upping the other issue to help us prioritize it. Thank you!

Open similar issues:

• Peek doesn't respect NeverShowExt (#28689), similarity score: 0.80

Closed similar issues:

• Peek Only Showing App Icons (#26595), similarity score: 0.82
• peek can only successfully preview image files, but text files cannot be displayed. In the .txt, .pdf and world files I tested. (#26379), similarity score: 0.82
• [Peek] No file type on shortcuts (#26132), similarity score: 0.80
• Not open prewiew (#26169), similarity score: 0.78

Note: You can give me feedback by thumbs upping or thumbs downing this comment.

[mcbsys]

Seeing similar symptoms on one machine, not another:

• Win10 22H2.
• Explorer file preview works for PDF but not for Office files ("error in the Microsoft Word previewer"), so I installed Power Toys from the MS Store as a workaround.
• Peek can view PDF and PNG files on a network drive. However when viewing DOCX files, it only shows the file information as in the screen shot above (although I was testing DOCX, not TXT files.) The Open in Word button works, so the user has permissions on the file.
• Peek installed on a different Win10 22H2 machine, logged on as an admin user, can successfully view the same DOCX files that the first machine cannot view. So the inability to view seems to be machine-specific.