Not sure how GNOME's preview feature is written, but macOS QuickLook plugins are written in C, C++, or Objective-C and the plugins included with the OS leverage OpenCL (or maybe Metal now) to accelerate rendering of previews, which is part of why it's so fast.
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> plugins written in C, C++, ...
no, thank you
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Sure, until you mention Finder is browsing an SMB share folder ...
Once upon a time I used a Macbook, never again :D
Knew I would get this type of response. The goalposts keep shifting
No. It’s just that performance and UX is capital for this software, and generally terrible on Linux as compared to MacOS