Drive Peek

Preview HTML, JSON and source code files in Google Drive: rendered pages, JSON trees, highlighted code.

Google Drive shows HTML, JSON and source code files as plain text. This extension adds a small toggle, "<Format> | Preview", to Drive's own viewer toolbar, next to the zoom controls, in the same style as Drive's native Markdown | Preview switch. Preview shows the rendered file right inside the Drive page; the left segment brings Drive's raw text back. Supported formats - HTML pages are shown as a real web page, inside an isolated sandbox. - JSON files open as a collapsible tree, with the first two levels expanded. - Source code gets syntax highlighting and line numbers for more than 30 common languages, from JavaScript and Python to Go, Rust and SQL, and follows your system's light or dark mode. - Code files that Drive treats as binary, and shows only as "No preview available", get a preview too. - Markdown, CSV and TSV are left alone: Drive already renders them itself. How it works - Open a supported file in Drive (drive.google.com/file/d/.../view). Preview is on by default (Auto preview); switching a file to the raw view applies to that file only. - The rendered file appears in a frame that covers Drive's content area. The "Open in new tab" button next to the toggle opens the file in a full-page viewer. - The file is downloaded with your existing Google session and shown in a page that belongs to the extension. The extension has no server. The file goes from Google to your browser and nowhere else. - Permissions are minimal: storage plus two Google hosts. No sign-in or OAuth screen. - If Drive already has its own toggle for the file, or the extension cannot find Drive's toolbar, it does nothing and Drive stays as it is. How to turn it off - Click the toolbar icon and switch "Drive Peek is ON" off to turn the extension off, or untick a single format. - Under Features, untick "Auto preview" to open every file as Drive's raw text: nothing from the file is loaded or run until you click Preview. Useful for files shared by people you do not know. - Or click the left segment of the toggle to see Drive's raw text for the file on screen. Known limitations - JSON: whole numbers beyond 2^53 are rounded in the tree. Very large or deeply nested documents fall back to formatted text. - Code: files over 1 MiB are shown as plain text with a short notice and no line numbers, because highlighting them would freeze the page. Highlighting runs in a background worker with a 3-second budget; a file that exceeds it keeps its line numbers but is shown without colours. - Links inside a previewed HTML file open in a restricted (sandboxed) tab. Most sites load, but sites that need you to be signed in, such as Google services, may not work there: copy the link into a normal tab instead. - Files larger than 30 MiB are not downloaded: the toggle still appears and Preview shows a "File too large" notice; Drive's own view stays as usual. - The extension relies on Drive's page structure and an undocumented download address; if Google changes them, the toggle may disappear or preview may stop working until an update. Privacy The extension collects nothing, has no analytics, and sends file content to no one. Full policy: https://euclid1990.github.io/drive-peek-privacy/ Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Google. "Google Drive" is a trademark of Google LLC and is used only to say which service the extension works with.