Cover Flow is browsed using the on-screen scrollbar, mouse wheel, gestures, or by selecting a file from a list, which flips through the pages to bring the associated image into view.

Cover Flow was conceived by artist Andrew Coulter Enright[3] and originally implemented by an independent Macintosh developer, Jonathan del Strother.

During the WWDC Keynote on June 11, 2007, Steve Jobs announced that Cover Flow would be added as a view option in Mac OS X Leopard's Finder.

6006227, 6638313, 6725427, and 6768999) (Mirror Worlds, LLC, vs Apple, Inc; Texas Eastern District Court) [7] On February 24, 2009, Cover Flow was also included with the public beta of Safari 4, with the final version of Safari 4, released on June 8, using Cover Flow to browse history, bookmarks, RSS feeds, Bonjour, and the Address Book.

[8] On October 1, 2010, Apple was ordered to pay $625.5 million to Mirror Worlds LLC for infringing utility patents relating to Cover Flow.