Lightweight CSV viewer for Mac?

Question

I need to view (large) CSV files on my Mac. I could use something like OpenOffice, but unfortunately it's pretty big and slow. I'm wondering if there's a Mac equivalent of some of the Windows tools mentioned on this SU question.

Adding on my own remark about the slowness of OpenOffice: the new LibreOffice is a *lot* faster in starting up than the old Oracle version. Still a bit heavy for just viewing CSV files though. — Hay, Feb 25 '11 at 15:19

paragbaxi · Answer 1 · 2011-05-19T20:06:13.707

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Quick Look the file. There are two methods of doing so.

Right click the file, in the context menu, select 'Quick Look "file you right-clicked"'.
Click the file, keyboard shortcut Command-Y.

edited May 19 '11 at 20:06

answered May 19 '11 at 15:42

paragbaxi

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Probably the easiest way of doing this. – John Riselvato Jun 11 '12 at 02:59
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also you can select the file and press "spacebar" – GusDeCooL Jun 28 '13 at 22:14
Too slow on the latest MBP for CSV files even over a few MB... – Matt Sep 18 '13 at 05:06
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This is cool and all, but you can't even select data to copy/paste. – Ezekiel Victor Mar 09 '18 at 00:48
And quicklook doesn't align the columns, so it's difficult to visually scan as a table. – scipilot May 15 '21 at 03:04

Patrick Berkeley · Answer 2 · 2019-07-24T15:15:22.360

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Update 7/24/2019

Commenter @Boris Yakubchik points out there's a new CSV app: Tablecruncher - tablecruncher.com . I have not tested it.

Update 4/13/2017

There's a new desktop app for viewing and analyzing CSV files on macOS: Tad.

Update 9/8/2016

There's a new cross-platform desktop app for viewing CSV files: Comma Chameleon.

Original answer

Open Refine weighs in at 50.6 MB, but I don't think that's the 'weight' you're interested in. Anyway I think it's a good tool for any size dataset. They make it faster by paginating the data.

edited Jul 24 '19 at 15:15

answered Jan 20 '12 at 00:04

Patrick Berkeley

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This is the BEST tool to edit/refine/reformat CSV files. Period. – Landitus Feb 04 '12 at 22:26
Very good indeed, but that's not what we can call lightweight – lajarre Jan 17 '13 at 17:26
Google Refine is now archived. Can you suggest alternatives? – Manu Manjunath Jan 14 '16 at 06:49
@Manu Google no longer maintains Refine, but it's still available as an open source project: http://openrefine.org – Patrick Berkeley Jan 14 '16 at 11:39
Chokes on a 2GB file. – logic-unit Aug 05 '16 at 13:15
Doesn't work well. Not intuitive design at all. Very slow. – Vladimir Despotovic Nov 29 '16 at 23:13
I tried Comma Chameleon on OS X 10.11 and wasn't impressed. It was buggy (popping up errors every time I resize) and can't reorder columns or search for text, so it didn't meet my needs – stokastic Jan 25 '17 at 02:25
Also tried Comma Chameleon, it was actually very slow (slower than MS Excel). – Jay Wang Mar 31 '17 at 20:25
Refine chokes on a 5 MB file. Comma Chameleon and Tad work well. Tad has much more features. – Olivier 'Ölbaum' Scherler Oct 04 '18 at 08:05
A new super-fast CSV viewer (and editor) is Tablecruncher - https://tablecruncher.com/ ... it can handle files > 2GB – Boris Yakubchik Jul 24 '19 at 13:12

score 5 · Answer 3 · edited Jul 27 '13 at 18:06

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Not sure how light-weight it is, but I found this with a quick Google search: XTabulator 2

XTabulator is a tabular data file editor for Mac OS X. With XTabulator, you can edit, manipulate, > massage, slice, and dice comma-separated (CSV), tab-separated (TAB), or anything-separated files quickly and easily.

edited Jul 27 '13 at 18:06

Jason Sundram

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answered Feb 25 '11 at 15:10

Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007

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A note for others: Free version adds a line "Created by XTabulator" in every CSV you edit with it. – Manu Manjunath Jan 14 '16 at 06:51

Lightweight CSV viewer for Mac?

3 Answers3