How I Built a 3.4 MB macOS-Like Spacebar File Preview for Windows Using Rust, Tauri v2 & Svelte 5

As a longtime Windows user who occasionally works on macOS, there is one feature I always miss dearly when switching back to PC: macOS Quick Look. The ability to hit Space on any file and instantly inspect images, PDFs, code, or archives without launching heavy desktop applications is a massive workflow booster. On Windows, power users usually turn to PowerToys Peek or QuickLook. But both left me wanting more: PowerToys Peek requires installing the massive PowerToys suite (>200 MB) and pulls in 100–200 MB of RAM just sitting idle. QuickLook (built on C# / WPF) works well, but still hovers around 40–80 MB RAM and lacks a modern, extensible Web-based plugin ecosystem. So I decided to build PeekIt — a native, ultra-lightweight Windows 10 & 11 utility powered by Rust, Tauri v2, and Svelte 5. Here is how it works under the hood, how we achieved