File previews: video and audio play while they load

Opening a video or recording in the file preview used to download the entire file before anything played, so a long screen recording or meeting audio meant a long spinner, even for a quick look. Now playback starts as soon as the first part arrives, and the preview fetches only the parts you watch or skip to. This applies to a specialist's files in Resources, the files a workflow run produces, and files you open from ⌘K search.

How it works

• Streams instead of downloading. Video, audio, and images open on a short-lived signed link to the stored file. The player asks for the file's details first, then requests just the range it needs, so skipping to the end of a long video loads the end, not everything before it.
• Documents work as before. PDFs, Word documents, spreadsheets, slides, and text files are still read whole, since the preview needs the full file to lay out pages and cells.
• Unplayable formats fail fast. A video your browser can't play, like some HEVC .mov files, now says so right away instead of after a full download.
• Download still downloads. The Download action on a file or run output saves the complete file, and a copy saved from the preview keeps its own name.

Also shipped

• Word documents open as separate pages, like PDFs, broken where Word last laid them out.
• The file name and buttons sit above the file, so they never cover the top of a page.