Preview, the Mac app people forget about

https://www.fourth-wall.co.uk/post/10-tips-for-preview-the-default-mac-app-that-people-forget-about

by curiousBadger • 4 years ago

514 318 4 years ago

fourth-wall.co.uk

mattl2• 4 years ago

I love Preview and I can get about 80% of the things I'd use GIMP for on Linux done with it.

Etheryte• 4 years ago

I use many of these features often and it often blows my mind just how much better Preview is with PDFs than any other program. It's leaps ahead of anything Adobe's Acrobat spyware ever was and it comes with your OS right out of the box.

nicoburns• 4 years ago

Apparently "Apple’s Core Graphics framework uses the PDF format for its internal vector graphics presentation."

https://pspdfkit.com/blog/2020/apple-and-pdf-history/

mattl2• 4 years ago

Yeah, there was a switch to PDF from Display PostScript at the time of the NeXT merger.

lordgilman• 4 years ago

The memory is mostly lost to time but MacOS X before 10.4 (released in 2005) took PDF screenshots of the desktop.

mlex• 4 years ago

Speaking as an iOS developer, we use PDF files to represent our vector icon assets in the app.

I thought it was a bit odd of a choice on the platform vs SVG which seems more popular (and which the Android devs on our team use), but CoreGraphics using it internally ties the whole picture together.

kitsunesoba4• 4 years ago

I remember in the early 2000s, right around the time that Acrobat Reader had started rapidly bloating and becoming worse, upgrading to the first release of OS X and feeling relieved after finding out that installing Reader wouldn’t be necessary. Even in the buggy slow mess that was OS X 10.0.4, Preview was still a great deal better than Reader at most of the things you’d use a PDF app for.

Macha2• 4 years ago

SumatraPDF is what you want as a windows user (yes, ignore the website looks like it's from the 90s). No upsells like acrobat/foxit, better compatibility than pdf.js like your browser.

Linux I mostly use evince (included if you use a Gnome based distro), but it's clearly the weakest of Preview/SumatraPDF/evince, as someone who uses all 3 regularly. Still better than Acrobat Reader though.

kjksf2• 4 years ago

Hey, I just updated the website https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org (for reference, the old one: https://sumatra-website-preview.onrender.com/free-pdf-reader).

Does it look better? Maybe early 2000?

colanderman• 4 years ago

I don't understand. Preview is by far the slowest PDF viewer I've ever used. Scrolling through 100+page documents brings it to its knees.

Gthumb in my experience is far more performant. Scrolls like butter, regardless of PDF size. But unfortunately I don't think there's a macOS native UI port.

dschuessler3• 4 years ago

Preview is one of the single-best pieces of software I use in my daily life. It manages to be incredibly powerful without bloating the UI while still remaining usable. It is unfortunate the name suggests it being a simple preview application. It's far from it.

realstacktrace3• 4 years ago

I agree it's poorly named. "Visual File Processing Tool" is the best I can come up with, which is even worse.

JKCalhoun8• 4 years ago

I feel like it (when a NeXt app) was literally for previewing print jobs? I was never a NeXT guy though so maybe someone can correct me.

Tarragon• 4 years ago

It's mentioned heavily in the article but I want to emphasize... Preview is the easiest way to slice up and merge PDF files.

ollien2• 4 years ago

This feature is one of the few things I miss dearly since moving to Linux as my daily-driver OS. There are command-line tools but nothing compares to Preview from what I've found.

dorchadas• 4 years ago

I never realized how much I used it and relied on it until I moved to Windows over the winter break so I could game with friends. One of the many reasons my next computer is going to be another MacBook most likely. I really miss that thing.

jeffbee3• 4 years ago

https://github.com/pdfarranger/pdfarranger

deepspace• 4 years ago

My cross-platform goto for manipulating PDF pages is PDFsam: https://pdfsam.org/

armchairhacker• 4 years ago

Okular is another great pdf viewer.

IMO it’s not as good as preview and idk if it supports annotations or does them as well. But it’s a great lightweight pdf and image viewer and “traditional” Desktop app.

rib3ye• 4 years ago

The fact that people don't know about this sucks when the feature breaks. Around 2016 it was broken for a year and then after a year, just like that it was fixed.

data-ottawa• 4 years ago

Preview and Automator are a powerful duo.

When applying for mortgages I needed a lot of paperwork and it was so nice being able to point Automator to a folder of pdfs and documents and quickly set up a little workflow that collated everything, then it opened the documents in Preview, I fixed a few minor tweaks, signed the forms, and sent them off. It felt like I had superpowers.

AndrewStephens• 4 years ago

I have done exactly this - Automator is the other secret weapon in MacOSX's arsenal.

Downloading a bunch of PDFs from my bank/broker into folder and then running an Automator script to combine them into a single PDF is the only satisfying part of collecting information for my tax return.

nerdjon• 4 years ago

Yes this!

I had to recently compile some documents for court, they were in several different PDF's and I did not necessarily want all of it. The ability to easily copy specific pages from one document into one large document. Made life so easy.

There are so many small features in Preview that just makes it such an underrated tool

jitl5• 4 years ago

Preview is one of those essential things that sets macOS apart from the other operating systems, and contributes to that “Mac has good UX” vibe. Last time I opened the Windows equivalent, it tried to sell me on Microsoft’s PDF-alike format… and asked me to connect Office365.

Another tiny macOS feature I love is that you can drop a file icon on any Open or Save dialog to select the file in the dialog. On other OSs, this moves the file to the directory shown in the dialog, or does nothing. On Windows, I install Listary to get the same features https://www.listary.com/

There are so many other little macOS things that make it easier to work in the GUI - but on HN they’re all overshadowed by the big “wow window management on Mac is 90s unless you install an app” issue, which makes me sad. I’m hoping that the post-Ive Apple - an Apple more comfortable with “pro” users and beauty in utility versus form - will try to fix that one… and bring back all the good Mission Control stuff from Snow Leopard (which IMO is the greatest OS ever released).

pimlottc• 4 years ago

Another great related feature is how easy it is to “print” to Preview and save as PDF. It makes it very easy to save copies of confirmations, payment receipts, etc when sites don’t provide a PDF link.

If you haven't tried it, make sure you are printing using the system dialog, and select "Open in Preview" in the drop-down list in the lower-left corner.

lotsofpulp2• 4 years ago

Is there any reason it took so long for Microsoft to include print to PDF in Windows other than bad management?

jfk13• 4 years ago

Or instead of "Open in Preview" (and then save it somewhere from Preview.app), you can directly use "Save to Web Receipts" from the Print dialog.

kergonath8• 4 years ago

Another great related feature is how easy it is to “print” to Preview and save as PDF.

It's an OS-wide feature. Any application can print to PDF without specific support from that app.

bigtex• 4 years ago

I think that has been a standard feature since at least OS X 10.2.

Anechoic• 4 years ago

Another great related feature is how easy it is to “print” to Preview

BTW, if you are trying to save a protected PDF from Adobe reader that won't let you save it in an unprotected format that's compatible with Preview, there is "print" document trick you can try since Adobe Reader blocks the system print dialog: pause the queue for your printer (if you don't have a printer, just "install" a network postscript printer), and print the document. The document is then saved to a non-secured temp PDF file in /var/spool/cups, to a filename starting with "d" (ls -l -t to find the most recent file). That file is normally deleted after being sent to the printer, but my pausing the print queue, the file is there long enough to copy somewhere. Rename the document, and you're good to go.

This is a trick from the Mac OS X Hints days, and still works, as of at least Catalina.

mortenjorck• 4 years ago

Such a great feature. I’ve been using it for years and have what is effectively a filing cabinet of documents in digital form.

wlesieutre6• 4 years ago

I can't stand when I have to deal with a PDF on Windows on my office computer where I have the free copy of Acrobat.

You can right click on a page and it's got "rotate" buttons up at the top. But when you click on one, it takes a second to think about it and then opens a popup to offer you a free 7-day trial of the Pro version. Rotating a page is too powerful a feature for Adobe to not try and sell it to you.

https://imgur.com/a/oAYOoqG

What you can do is "Rotate View Clockwise" three times, way down at the bottom of the menu. It applies to the entire document instead of a single page, and it doesn't persist next time you open the file. Works in a pinch but it's deliberately shitty.

Microsoft even had their own PDF viewing software with Windows 8, but instead of improving it to get their user experience one step closer to Apple's, they killed it off to make more people launch Edge by accident.

I can only assume there's a KPI somewhere in Microsoft HQ tracking how many times Edge is launched, and making that graph go up and to the right has become their number one corporate priority.

It would explain the taskbar's search screen, the "news and weather" bullshit, pressing F1 in Explorer opening a Bing search for "How to get help in Windows" instead of just giving you help, and most every other design choice they've made in the last couple of years.

samstave• 4 years ago

What I hate about software like PDF viewers is that they are akin to:

Here I printed your manuscript, but in order to read it, you need to pay me for these special glasses to see the ink.

Oh you want a change? Pay me for these special gloves so you may handle the pages and reorganize them as you like.

layer84• 4 years ago

You can use the Adobe Reader Classic Track, which is still on the feature level of 2020 and allows counterclockwise rotation: https://www.adobe.com/devnet-docs/acrobatetk/tools/ReleaseNo...

GraphenePants• 4 years ago

Correct, you get what you pay for. Acrobat Pro supports advanced rotations for only $14.99 per month.

https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/pricing.html

timeon• 4 years ago

Comparing to Preview, just opening Acrobat is pain.

abawany• 4 years ago

I recommend trying SumatraPDF - it also supports epub.

asiachick• 4 years ago

I think preview on MacOS is great but when I'm on windows (and 95% of the time I'm on Mac) I open PDFs in Chrome (Firefox would probably work as well). Both have a built in sandboxed reader.

In fact pretty much the only time I open a PDF in preview is to merge 1 or more PDFs (show the thumbnails, copy and paste them from one to the other).

Otherwise I never use Preview for PDFs and I reference tons of PDF based specs.

On the other hand I use Preview to quickly crop or markup screenshots all the time.

lostlogin2• 4 years ago

My passport application photo kept getting rejected as my eyes were ‘too dark’.

I tried various things without luck, then in a rage, I copied my ‘light’ eye and stuck it over my shaded eye.

I thought the passport photo submission tool would let me review before accepting an upload. Nope, off it went.

The passport has worked in several countries, USA, UK and others.

Thanks Preview.

wildrhythms• 4 years ago

Ancient companies requiring I print out a form, sign it physically, scan it, send it back... I just open it in Preview, use the text annotation tool and some random cursive font, "sign it", re-export, done. I haven't owned a printer or scanner in 10 years.

maxwelldone2• 4 years ago

This is my wish list for preview:

1. Support for h265 video previews (not sure about technical or any other licensing hurdles)

2. Basic playback controls (via keyboard) when viewing video previews - just play, pause, skip would do. I review a ton of videos and I'd often like to pause to take a screenshot or skip to quickly see what's happening in the video.

3. Option to zoom on text files like json, csv etc. Not a big deal but would be a great addition especially on hi-res external displays.

Edit: Looks like I mixed quicklook with preview. My bad.

saagarjha5• 4 years ago

I'm curious why QuickTime Player is not what you want?

kergonath8• 4 years ago

Quick Look does this, does it not?

hnlmorg6• 4 years ago

Another tiny macOS feature I love is that you can drop a file icon on any Open or Save dialog to select the file in the dialog. On other OSs, this moves the file to the directory shown in the dialog, or does nothing.

The reason other OS's don't support that macOS feature is because their open and save dialogue is usable on its own. In my opinion the open and save dialogue is one of the worst designed interfaces on macOS (and easily the worst open and save dialogue across all of the popular desktop environments). The fact that it's "killer feature" is having to use another file navigator to find the target and then drag that file into the first dialogue (ie dialogue that should have been used to find the file to begin with) is more damning than anything.

If there were two things I wish Apple would add in macOS, it is:

1. draggable hotspots (like in Windows and KDE)

2. a completely redesigned open and save dialogue that works a little more like Windows and KDE

I can live (and even like some of) macOS's idiosyncrasies. But those two irritate the hell out of me on an almost daily basis.

saagarjha5• 4 years ago

What do you not like about the existing dialog?

hedgehog• 4 years ago

I gotta say, for all of my (many, many) criticisms of macOS the save dialog seems fine to me. I almost always have the destination folder already open in Finder, if anything the improvement would be to put a list of Finder's open folders into the save dialog. Dragging it over works ok though.

kergonath8• 4 years ago

The reason other OS's don't support that macOS feature is because their open and save dialogue is usable on its own. In my opinion the open and save dialogue is one of the worst designed interfaces on macOS (and easily the worst open and save dialogue across all of the popular desktop environments). The fact that it's "killer feature" is having to use another file navigator to find the target and then drag that file into the first dialogue (ie dialogue that should have been used to find the file to begin with) is more damning than anything.

It is not a browser, or a file manager. It is a file selector. So it allows you to select files, not do some file management. It is not rocket science. I get bitten at least a couple of times a week on Windows when I stupidly drag and drop the file I want to open, and instead of the sensible behaviour it gets just moved to whatever the app thought the default directory should be for its open file dialogs.

a completely redesigned open and save dialogue that works a little more like Windows and KDE

Hell, no! Let me double that: hell fucking no.

adrusi2• 4 years ago

The macOS open/save dialog is almost identical to the Finder UI, what would you change about it? The reason it's helpful to be able to drag a file from somewhere else into the open/save dialog is that you often already have the file open somewhere. A common workflow: navigate to a document in finder, edit it in some app, save it, upload it to a web form. Similarly if you have a path to the file handy somewhere, you can hit ⌘⇧G and paste it.

And while I can see how reasonable people can disagree about the virtues of Mac/Windows/KDE open/save dialogs, Gnome definitely has the worst. Personally my KDE experience is limited, but of the other three I prefer macOS by a wide margin.

vvillena• 4 years ago

This is an interesting chicken-and-egg problem. It could be said that other OSs had to add lots of file management features to their file selector dialog because relying on drag-and-drop from another application was unfeasible.

alsetmusic2• 4 years ago

I’m hoping that the post-Ive Apple - an Apple more comfortable with “pro” users and beauty in utility versus form - will try to fix that one… and bring back all the good Mission Control stuff from Snow Leopard (which IMO is the greatest OS ever released).

I wouldn't hold my breath. They've been gradually hiding controls behind buttons and popovers. The proxy icon (folder or document icon in the title bar of a window) was hidden by default in I believe Big Sur. There's a `defaults` command to make it visible at all times in Monterey, but hiding it is a foolish design choice on Apple's part.

Look at the debacle with Safari last year. The software is form over function for the last few years.

I can't remember the name of the guy everyone blames for this, but he talks about minimalism and reducing app UI in favor of putting content forward during OS feature reveals. The approach is completely backwards, imo.

BTW: thanks for the tip about Listary. I'll check it out.

kitsunesoba4• 4 years ago

There's a `defaults` command to make it visible at all times in Monterey, but hiding it is a foolish design choice on Apple's part.

It's also a setting under Accessibility > Display > Show window title icons, so there's little danger of it disappearing since it's not a hidden setting.

JKCalhoun8• 4 years ago

I worked on the Preview app for a number of years during a time when the app more or less flew under the radar. It was easy then to simply add features that "we" wanted as users of the app.

At that time, the design team was less interested in Preview, more interested in Mail and Safari (of course). Design would come in and maybe tell us to put the thumbnail drawer on the right vs. the left.

Honestly, I think the design team found Preview useful as well and didn't stand in our way when we wanted to add "instant alpha" or simple annotations.....

333c• 4 years ago

I can't remember the name of the guy everyone blames for this, but he talks about minimalism and reducing app UI in favor of putting content forward during OS feature reveals

I believe you might be referring to Jony Ive (who is named in the portion you quoted). He left Apple a few years ago, which is what the comment you quote is talking about.

matwood• 4 years ago

Preview is great. Among the many other features, it's also what I use to sign PDFs. You can enter and save a signature using the trackpad or camera and then paste it into any PDF. It looks like you printed, signed, and scanned the PDF back in.

solarkraft• 4 years ago

On other OSs, this moves the file to the directory shown in the dialog, or does nothing

Apps on Linux (Gnome?) do it too.

jitl5• 4 years ago

Nice! The last time I used Gnome/Ubuntu as my daily driver (2019?) that wasn’t the case — or maybe wasn’t consistently the case.

rbanffy• 4 years ago

I think it makes more sense than opening the file - you are looking at a place in the filesystem after all.

Matl• 4 years ago

Preview is one of those essential things that sets macOS apart from the other operating systems

KDE's Okukar is pretty similar imo.

EvgeniyZh• 4 years ago

But supports more formats

brundolf• 4 years ago

I adore the fact that I can sign PDFs so easily from the system-default viewer (and save my signature for next time)

Also love that I can do all the image-editing basics from the same app (enough to make memes anyway...)

Though it does concern me a bit that most of the best UX features in Apple software are older; usually the newer an Apple UI is, the worse it is. Control Center and such are pretty nice I guess, but Apple Music on macOS is terrible

Hammershaft• 4 years ago

If Mac OS spent two OS update cycles just fixing the usability kinks that plague window management, context switching across apps, mouse support, multi desktop support, and finder, then it would be the most pleasurable OS to work with out of the 3. As it is, these flaws make up most of the interactions I have with an OS moment to moment, and as a result Mac OS frustrates me in ways Windows and Linux (using Pop OS with Gnome) don't.

Rebelgecko2• 4 years ago

Absolutely. I recently tried switching to Linux, and realized how amazing Preview is. Tasks like "swap 2 pages in a PDF" or "crop this image" are much less intuitive and often require you to install a single-purpose command line utility, or fire up something like GIMP which has a steeper learning curve and feels like overkill

wtetzner2• 4 years ago

Yeah, PDFs on Windows are a pain. I've set Firefox as my default PDF reader on my Windows box.

08982• 4 years ago

I worry that not enough people are aware of these little touches, and that one day they'll disappear.

brightball• 4 years ago

Preview and OmniGraffle are the 2 apps that I really miss from OSX now that I’m on linux full time.

That’s about it though.

uhuruity• 4 years ago

Preview is one of those essential things that sets macOS apart from the other operating systems, and contributes to that “Mac has good UX” vibe.

As I read this I thought of another such feature - how pressing Space with a file selected (in either Finder or any 'choose a file' dialog window) presents a quick preview of the contents of the file. Extremely low friction way to quickly check out the contents of a file, almost like the GUI version of `head`

2muchcoffeeman• 4 years ago

It also has better file puppet than Windows or Linux. I can hit space on an STL and it will show me a preview.

barbs• 4 years ago

Been a while since I've used Windows as a daily driver but I used to use SumatraPDF for basic PDF operations. Small, lightweight, open-source. Looks like it'd still be useful today?

https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader

secretsatan• 4 years ago

I never thought about it, but I do use it a lot, some of the things in there I didn't even realise were difficult.

I use it for resizing images all the time for sure, it's quick and easy The markup tools are nice as well to quickly annotate things for sharing in the team, although for some reason it always takes me a little bit figure out how to unlock the toolbar.

I had no idea simple edits to PDF were such a pain for other people

incanus77• 4 years ago

I use all of these features all of the time. It’s a great program, and so under-appreciated as just a cog in the OS.

smcl2• 4 years ago

You get an obnoxious modal popup asking you to sign up for something about 10 seconds after opening the page. I don't even know what I'm looking at yet, why would I hand over my name and email address? Instant ctrl-w, no thanks.

maxwelldone2• 4 years ago

As an engineer and from a common sense perspective, these modals bother me a lot. However, in the interest of curiosity, I'd like to hear from PMs and the likes as to how successful these annoyances are in reality.

Broadly, I see two types of visitors to these kinda sites:

1. Someone new, who's most likely just following a link (like us) - they haven't even had a chance to read the article yet & knows nothing about the site, it's reputation, quality etc. All a pop up does is annoy a new visitor. I highly doubt people will take the time or even trust to give away their email with no obvious benefit.

2. A repeat user, someone who's familiar with the site. What's wrong with placing a simple signup form at the end of the article. It's unobtrusive & if people really like your stuff, they will sign up.

Or is it the case that people like us are not the target audience - they couldn't give two shit*s whether we stay on the page or not. Fortunately I haven't had to deal with SEO and shoving stuff on users to sell my stuff, so perhaps I'm naive.

drcongo3• 4 years ago

Many many years ago, when this trend first appeared, I made the Tumblr Tab Closed; Didn't Read [0] - it got retweeted by some web luminaries like Eric Meyer and Tim Berners Lee and, while the vast majority of the replies I got were in huge agreement, there were a bunch of "growth hackers" absolutely furious that I'd made it and now everyone hates them. So I wrote this [1].

The key takeaway is that "growth hackers" only care about conversions. They don't care if it pissed people off, or if someone only signed up because they couldn't see the close button etc. Just some numbers that help them justify their pay packet.

[0] https://tabcloseddidntread.com

[1] https://andybeaumont.com/post/the-value-of-content/

Disclaimer: Back in 2013 when I wrote [1] Medium wasn't the growth hacker clown car that it is today. And actually, nor was Tumblr.

criddell• 4 years ago

Read it through archive.org and you don't get the popup:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220509170301/https://www.fourt...

smcl2• 4 years ago

Good shout, it’s just stupid and annoying to get nagged for shit like this. Not to mention counterproductive. I dunno, maybe I’m just overreacting.

atonse3• 4 years ago

I've used preview to sign hundreds of PDFs and love showing people that little feature that is invaluable.

haroldp3• 4 years ago

I recently discovered that the signing feature can use an associated iPhone or iPad (with stylus!) as the signing device where you write your signature.

Kon-Peki• 4 years ago

You can also sign a piece of paper and hold it up to the camera to create the signature it uses.

swlkr• 4 years ago

I'm a big Preview user, it does little photo editing/resizing things so well, glad to see it get some recognition on HN

wetpaws• 4 years ago

I really like the concept of Preview on mac, but every time I try to do something simple in it for more than 10 seconds, I just sigh and install Krita.

dry_soup• 4 years ago

The title would be much more clear with a comma after "Preview" IMO.

yasoob• 4 years ago

Yes! I was wondering which app it is asking me to preview. These are the times when I wish HackerNews allowed OPs to edit post titles after submission.

RaoulP• 4 years ago

Agreed. In this case the modified title was extra hard to parse because "Tips" is also an iOS app.

simlevesque• 4 years ago

It isn't even fixed in the original blog post.

dang• 4 years ago

A comma, added.

kevinsundar2• 4 years ago

People also forget that you can use Preview to scan documents from your scanner rather than using whatever shitty software came with yours.

Also, Preview > File > Import from iPhone > Scan Documents gives you a virtual scanner instead of having to install one of those "scanner" apps on your phone. Its built into your iPhone already!

I also use it frequently to change image file types.

You can also make a digital version of your signature from a picture of physical version.

There's just tons of small features that work well.

josephg• 4 years ago

If you want to scan a document and have an iphone handy, you can also right click in Finder and "Scan document... from iPhone". It opens a UI on your phone that I've never seen before, and "scans" (photographs) pages of a document.

When you're done the results end up in a new PDF wherever you clicked.

kevinsundar2• 4 years ago

Ah I just added this to my comment as you were typing it up. I've used this feature a lot too. Works well.

jeffbee3• 4 years ago

Preview has other interactions with iOS and iPadOS, too. If you enter markup mode you can draw all over a PDF with your phone or tablet.

MawKKe2• 4 years ago

That iOS scan feature is "hidden" in the Files app. Open it on your phone and press the three dots in the top right corner and it should have "scan documents" option.

You can also select "black & white" mode for text documents which saves a ton of space

jdwithit• 4 years ago

Holy hell, I'm glad I clicked on this story. Had no idea this feature existed, I've been using much clunkier solutions to get a photo or document over from my phone. Thanks!

apnsngr• 4 years ago

There is also the built in Image Capture app that works with most flatbed scanners or printer/scanner combos. It has its own quirks, but works better than any manufacturer software I’ve ever tried.

JKCalhoun8• 4 years ago

Agree. Works out of the box with every Epson flatbed scanner I've attached.

saagarjha5• 4 years ago

The Scanner feature is actually PrinterProxy.app, rather than Preview.

robin_reala• 4 years ago

Oh wow, I use iPhone Notes to scan documents when out and about quite often, but I had no idea Preview could connect to it. Thanks!

ask_b1234• 4 years ago

For scanning there's also Image Capture.app which also comes with the OS. I haven't tried using it with the phone though, just a normal printer/scanner.

haroldp3• 4 years ago

I like Image Capture.app when I want to scan a multi-page document to one PDF

kccqzy• 4 years ago

I've always used the built-in Image Capture app to do tjr scanning, mainly because the app seems to open automatically when I plug in my USB flatbed scanner.

skrtskrt• 4 years ago

People probably forget that because the Preview UI is extremely minimalist, like it doesn't want to tell you about all its capabilities

specialist• 4 years ago

...rather than using whatever shitty software came with yours.

I just helped a friend setup a Brother all-in-one for use with their newish Lenova Windows 11. Two hours. No way they could have figured this out on their own. So many hoops, glitches. Everything was ... so ... slow.

With Mac & iPhone, printing and scanning Just Work.

Having not used Windows for ages, I can't believe how bad that stack, ecosystem, tech culture remains. Just turrible.

joshstrange• 4 years ago

I love preview and this post covers a number of cool features but I can't help but be extremely frustrated by not only getting a (presumably) newsletter signup without any interaction but also the sheer gall to pop this [0] without a single bit of information as to what you are signing up for. Not title, no description, just "Give us your name and email". I hate these popups to begin with but this takes the cake.

[0] https://imgur.com/a/kDis8Yo

junglistguy5• 4 years ago

Still don't know how to preview all photos in for example "downloads"

Osx UX is a messsssss

smoldesu• 4 years ago

Just import it to Photos and send all of your images to SQLite hell!

lostlogin2• 4 years ago

Select them then open them? Or select, right click, open with.

I suspect I’m missing your point somehow?

jhasse4• 4 years ago

The thing is, that "selecting them" might not be that easy depending on the number of files and how the content of the folder is sortes.

On Windows/Linux you would just open the first file which is a lot easier.

js2• 4 years ago

You have quite a few options. Switch to Icon view and enlarge the icons, switch to Gallery View, or use Quicklook:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201732

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-view-options...

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/view-and-edit-files...

nicky0• 4 years ago

Select them in finder and press space bar.

jitl5• 4 years ago

How I would do it is go to Downloads in Finder (Command shift g), filter file type to images, select the first one (down arrow), and press spacebar to open in Quick Look, and just use arrow keys to move around - no need to open an app at all for quick viewing. If I did want to use Preview to view all the files, select them (eg shift down arrow) and drop on the Preview icon.

egypturnash• 4 years ago

The Finder can do this pretty easily.

1. Open the downloads folder

2. view>as icons

3. view>use groups, view>group by>kind

4. scroll down to the images section, hit the 'show all' at the top right of this section

5. drag the icon size slider at the lower right to make icons huge, scroll around

Alternatively

1. open the downloads folder

2. view>as list/column

3. view>use groups, view>group by>kind

4. scroll down to the images section

5. select an image, hit space to bring up Quick Look, use up/down arrows to move through the images

You can use Quick Look from the icon view too but it's a bit confusing to try and navigate through a 2d grid that's hidden behind the Quick Look.

You could also use either of these methods to isolate all the images quickly, then select them and open them with Preview if you explicitly wanted them in that app, but big icons/Quick Look is usually gonna be a lot faster for uses like "finding that one image in a messy directory".

jhasse4• 4 years ago

1. Install Windows 2. Double-click the first image

junglistguy5• 4 years ago

If you consider five points to be "very easy"...

I need a simple solution. Someone below said how to do it in windows - doublecqick first photo. DONE

dev_tty012• 4 years ago

Sort Downloads by Kind. Select the group of photos. Double click. They will all be opened in one Preview window and you can scroll through all the photos.

Or, select the first, touch the space bar and you will see the Quick Look preview. Use the arrow keys to move between the different files.

Not really seeing the messssss, but to each their own I guess.

jhasse4• 4 years ago

Select the group of photos.

Not that easy depending on the number of pictures and the folder content.

Use the arrow keys to move between the different files.

Won't work correctly in grid view.

Also: I don't want to mess with the way I set up Finder to display/sort the folder just to view the pictures.

junglistguy5• 4 years ago

Not an option, i have list, and by date. Tons of files. No proper viewer

Tagbert5• 4 years ago

Have you tried switching that folder to "Gallery" view? It display a list of all images and then a large preview along with an info panel to the right. Seems like it should give you everything you need. You can then switch back to your normal view when done so it doesn't mess up how your folder is setup.

https://media.idownloadblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/m...

junglistguy5• 4 years ago

I need list view, and proper preview... Gallery its not an option

knolan4• 4 years ago

Use Quick Look. Simply press Space to instantly preview almost any file you’ve highlighted in Finder. You can use the arrow keys to move to the next file in the finder window below. For multiple files selected you get a film strip in Quick Look.

Lots of extra options are surfaced in MacOS when Option is held. Press option while any menu is open and you’ll see new options. The context menu will show that quick look becomes full screen preview in this case. Lo and behold simply pressing Option Space will do the same thing.

wafriedemann• 4 years ago

Preview - the app that made my mother ask me countless of times how to merge PDFs (and still does)

CyanDeparture• 4 years ago

One massive I'd add to this list that got added recently - being able to copy and paste text out of images. I'm so often sent a screenshot with a url in the url bar, I can now copy and paste that screenshot of a url. It's been massively the past month since I noticed it. Not sure how long it's been there, I assume not long, maybe last OS update.

Tagbert5• 4 years ago

That is called Live Text and was introduced in Mac OS 12 Monterey. It is available for any app that uses the standard libraries to display images so you will see it in other apps, too, like Safari.

https://www.macworld.com/article/351669/macos-monterey-how-t...

MBCook2• 4 years ago

It’s one of those transformative little features. But it’s especially great in PDFs where it’s not a “real” PDF but just a collection of page sized images so you couldn’t normally select the text before without OCR software of some sort.

Having it built into the OS is so handy.

drcongo3• 4 years ago

Particularly useful for Twitter announcements on Twitter, where in order to say anything of value they have to tweet an image of some text.

wanderingstan2• 4 years ago

To get this functionality everywhere, I’ve taken using the TRex app: https://github.com/amebalabs/TRex

I have it mapped to ctrl-alt-command-C. As more and more apps and webpages make text unselectable, it’s become invaluable. My favorite trick is to copy the URL when someone is screen sharing their browser in a virtual meeting!

zora_goron• 4 years ago

Thanks for sharing, I didn't know about TRex! I've been using TextSniper (https://textsniper.app) for this functionality -- not sure how these two compare, feature-wise.

austhrow743• 4 years ago

I really like how this works with alfred. Thanks!

urbandw311er2• 4 years ago

Anybody know how to override this feature when you’re just trying to draw a selection rectangle over the image? The App keeps recognising the portion under my pointer as text and changing the pointer to a text selection caret instead.

johnwalkr3• 4 years ago

iOS also recognizes text, and you can search your photo library from MacOS or iOS for text - a menu item or road sign you remember taking a picture of, for example.

agys• 4 years ago

Preview is very much part of my daily tools: signing/splitting/editing PDFs and images (even animated GIFs!) etc.

The only thing that bothers me slightly is the weird “File” menu: along with some other macOS apps (Textedit for example) they renounced the old “Save as” in favour of “Duplicate”, “Move”, etc. I never exactly know what happens with those commands.

bobbylarrybobby• 4 years ago

Duplicate is basically the same as save as, but they've swapped the order of operations. Save as would have you pick a destination, then start editing. Duplicate lets you edit and then choose where to save. I'm guessing part of the reason for the change was also that save as sounds like "rename" when it is in fact "duplicate under a new name"

SamBam2• 4 years ago

Signatures stamps are great, but the signature-creation method is absurd.

Ok, there is something cryptographically special about a signature image, which means we can't just import a file, it has to be created while in the program, and it gets stored on the keychain. Fine. But then why not also give us the ability to add an arbitrary stamp from an image? Why have the only method for adding a stamp to a PDF be through the signatures?

I have a fine signature as an image, which didn't survive the switch to a new Mac because it's not a plain image and you have to jump through hoops to bring it across keychains. I also have a stamp that I use. I can't import either of these into Preview, and my only option for the former is a terrible scrawl on the touchpad, or holding up an image in front of the camera and hoping it's not too distorted. Why?

r00fus2• 4 years ago

I think you answered your own question - both of the Apple-allowed methods described require a human in the loop. Your approach could more easily be automated and thus forged.

Why this is a big deal? Not sure but it seems the best bet. Would love to see this confirmed.

SamBam2• 4 years ago

My issue is mostly that they don't at least have a non-cryptographically secure method of simply putting an image or a stamp on a pdf. It's such a useful thing. Instead, to import a stamp like a green check mark into Preview, you'd have to print one out and then hold it up to the camera, which is absurd.

howinteresting• 4 years ago

Because fundamentally Apple computers do not put you at the center of your computer, they put Apple there.

For example, on the new M1 computers, iOS apps stop functioning if SIP is disabled. Why? This is entirely artificial, because the iOS app model depends on you not being able to do whatever you want with the device you own. Contrast this with open source where this sort of restriction would just be patched away.

cyral2• 4 years ago

Contrast this with open source where this sort of restriction would just be patched away.

Are there any distros with this feature at all?

johnwalkr3• 4 years ago

I only just now put two and two together to realize it's stored on the keychain. I wondered why I haven't had to update it in years, across multiple MacBook upgrades.

jedberg• 4 years ago

I love preview -- I've done every one of these things in it. I also use it to crop images all the time. Not only can you select a rectangle, but it also has a magic wand selector where you can draw an outline of what you want to select and it will find the borders for you.

ericd• 4 years ago

Yeah, Preview is awesome. I remember when I learned about adding signatures to docs, I was blown away at how awesome the import procedure was - sign on a piece of paper (sharpie works well), hold it up to your webcam, voila! Natural looking signature on hundreds of docs since.

Preview is one of the biggest things I’ve missed every time I’ve tried to finally make Linux my daily driver.

CalChris• 4 years ago

I switched over and mostly use Skim for doc viewing but I have used Preview for merging PDFs. I won't install Acrobat anymore.

https://skim-app.sourceforge.io

t_mann• 4 years ago

Pretty crazy if you think about it. Windows users are relegated to third-party apps, and even they don't come close to that in functionality. Merging and rearranging is such a pain, I've even resorted to using web apps on questionable sites sometimes.

PascLeRasc2• 4 years ago

PDF splitting sites and DiffChecker.com are some of the best industrial espionage tools ever created.

Tagbert5• 4 years ago

Maybe that balances out against the fact that Mac OS has rudimentary window management and users need third party apps to fill that gap while Windows has decent window management built in. :-)

minimaxir2• 4 years ago

The best use of Preview/Markup is proper redaction of names for posting images to social media:

1. Set Shape Fill color

2. Set Shape Border color

3. Insert a Rectangle.

The rectangle can then be moved/resized/copy/pasted to cover names precisely and won't inadvertently leak names like the spraypaint tool does.

Jcowell3• 4 years ago

You don’t even have to do this. Preview has a redaction feature. It’s the 3rd option on the left.

josho• 4 years ago

Be careful with that workflow. If you ever share the modified PDF that rectangle likely hasn't redacted anything.

On a digital PDF the underlying text is still accessible, and even if the PDF was a scan, the original image likely hasn't been modified, instead a new shape layer was added.

minimaxir2• 4 years ago

True; to clarify this is for images, not PDFs.

wtetzner2• 4 years ago

I usually end up printing out the dead-tree version with the black rectangles, and scanning it back in, just to be sure the data under the black rectangles can't be retrieved.

herodotus3• 4 years ago

I really enjoyed working with the Preview team before I retired from Apple. My small group created a private framework that added "document reconstruction" to PDF documents: basically an inferred DOM based on whatever information (mainly geometric) we could use in the PDF document.

Our moment of fame game at WWDC 2009, when Bertrand Serlet talked about Snow Leopard during the Keynote. At around the 5:10 mark he talks about performance improvements to Preview. He then goes on to say "There are also lots of little touches. The one I like is about text selection in PDF files. .... In Snow Leopard, we have used a little bit of AI to infer the structure of the document...." (He then demonstrates intelligent selection across columns) [Applause from the audience]. (https://youtu.be/FTfChHwGFf0?t=306)

My colleague and I presented the proposal to add this "little bit of AI" to a small group from the Graphics and Imaging department. Bertrand was in attendance, and it was thanks to him that we joined G&I. They were a fantastic team to work with!

kergonath8• 4 years ago

Thank you very much for this feature, which I have used regularly for quite some years! That was one of the thousands of details that make Preview vastly better than most PDF viewers I have used.

diegof79• 4 years ago

Thanks for creating that feature. It’s very helpful to highlight and copy notes from multi-column papers!

As others said in this thread… Preview is the best macOS built in app.

JKCalhoun8• 4 years ago

Ha ha, I know you. (And I retired just this last year, FWIW.)

herodotus3• 4 years ago

It was fun, wasn't it? I am thinking of driving down some time this summer. Hope to see you!

spookybones2• 4 years ago

Preview is one of the reasons I stick with Mac OS. I'm surprised how far behind other operating systems remain when it comes to viewing PDFs. Thank you!

vestrigi2• 4 years ago

Have you by chance written a blog post or another HN comment about this? I think I heard that story before with some more detail :)

herodotus3• 4 years ago

yup.

emadabdulrahim• 4 years ago

macOS has so many essential utilities and tools I can not live without. System wide dictionary and looking up a translation is something I use every single day. Screenshot and screen recording is utility I use every week.

PartiallyTyped• 4 years ago

Speaking of the dictionary, it can be invoked by opening the search with CMD+space, which brings me to one of my favourite features, the capacity to calculate currency changes, just write X dollar to eur and it will automatically compute the exchange.

ask_b1234• 4 years ago

It also works for different units. e. g. type 4'5'' to m.

Additionally, the dictionary definitions can be invoked by tapping with three fingers (Trackpad settings).

em-bee3• 4 years ago

every time i open a document with preview, it insists on opening all the documents i had open before. i must be doing something wrong, and find a different workflow, maybe instead of closing the app, i need to manually close each document that i don't need anymore.

i guess it's not an issue if you use preview often and keep it running all the time, but i rarely need it since most of what i do is either terminal or browser based or uses a dedicated application.

but when i open a document i expect that document to be opened, and nothing else.

this would work a lot better if preview would put all documents in tabs so that only the document i asked for is visible while the rest are hidden in the other tabs.

_moof• 4 years ago

This is an OS-level thing where apps can act more "iOS-like" by saving and restoring their state when they're closed/opened. I agree, it's annoying.

There might be a way to turn it off but in the meantime you can press command-option-W to close all windows.

EDIT: You can disable this globally in System Preferences, or on a per-app basis by writing to the app's defaults:

  defaults write com.apple.Preview NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false

xenadu02• 4 years ago

The Mac is document-centric, not app centric. The intended working model is you just open documents in Preview and close them when you're done. You don't concern yourself with whether Preview is running or not.

If you Command-Q to quit Preview you are observing State Restoration - the intent there being that if the system is low on memory and the app is not visible or being used the system could quit the app then re-launch it later. Or you can reboot and upon login everything goes back to how it was. Some of this is not as transparent on macOS as it is on iOS because it was added to the Mac much much later, but even many third party apps implement it (probably because NSDocument/NSApplication provide good built-in support).

Any documents open in a state-aware app that quits get re-opened when it launches again. Hold down Option to skip state restoration. This works for any app by the way: Hold Option to skip re-opening projects in Xcode or documents in Pages.

em-bee3• 4 years ago

actually, the observed behavior makes macOS app centric. for a truly document centric system, opening a document should do exactly that and nothing more. what instead happens is that the preview app is started, and it remembers its previous state opening all the other documents it had open before. from an app-centric perspective that makes total sense. and i also approve of the concept of an app keeping its state.

to make the preview app and other apps document centric, the app itself needs to become less visible. for example the function to close the app could be replaced with one to close all documents. this would offer a document centric intent behind the close action. and for those cases where i don't actually want to close those documents, but just need to move them out of the way, different mechanisms are needed. functions like hide or suspend for starters that allow the OS to actually remove the apps and documents from memory but without changing their state to being closed. work spaces are also a possible concept.

another approach that preview could easily implement is to hide the documents that i didn't ask to be open at this moment. so the documents are still there, and their state is preserved, i just don't see it until i switch to that document. this would be similar to how at least firefox handles tabs. the tabs are there, but they are not loaded until i open each one of them. in the same way preview could remember all the recent documents, until i explicitly close a document just like i would close a tab.

a truly document centric system needs at least proper interface design and language, but parts may also need a redesign of core concepts. for example, when opening a document, i should be able to specify what kind of activity i want to do with it. depending on the chosen activity the right app that offers that activity will be started. currently i get to choose which app i open a document in, and there is one default app, and if i want another, i either open the app first, and then tell it to open the document, or i specifically choose the app that this document should be opened with. again this looks very app centric.

in a document centric system i expect that i open a document, and then all the possible actions on that document are available to me. but different actions can be provided by different applications which requires that apps interface with each other in a completely different way.

wtallis• 4 years ago

Generally speaking, on macOS manually quitting an application is not part of the intended workflow. When you're done with a document, you close that document's window. The app can continue to be open in the background with zero windows, and will be closed by the OS automatically if it needs to reclaim the resources. Manually quitting the application is unnecessary micromanaging.

em-bee3• 4 years ago

while i agree in principal, i am quite bothered by unused applications cluttering up the dock. i use the dock to tell me which apps i am currently focusing on, so inactive apps really get in the way.

jjmorrison• 4 years ago

I want preview on iOS!!

saagarjha5• 4 years ago

The file preview has some of the features of the macOS app, like basic editing of PDFs.

Synaesthesia• 4 years ago

Yes but where it fails is allowing a rectangular selection to be made and copied over to eg Pages to make a composition.

PrimeDirective4• 4 years ago

All this, and yet you can't move forwards or backwards, when there are other files in the folder. I would be gladly wrong if someone could point out how to do this in Preview

ask_b1234• 4 years ago

It seems like you can move to the next or previous file with tab + up/down arrow keys.

I just found out by mashing all the buttons I could think of. :-)

PrimeDirective4• 4 years ago

This is not exactly it. What I meant was, something what IrfanView does: when you open an image (or any file the program can read), you can press a button to open the (alphabetically?) next or previous image in the same folder.

Looks like Preview only has this, when you select all files and open them (Cmd+O). Wish it was like IrfanView.

travelbyphone• 4 years ago

To scan the files in your folder like that you can use quicklook. Just press space to open the first one and use the arrows to navigate. Another super power of macOS.

dkjaudyeqooe• 4 years ago

I agree that Preview is a great tool and still use it for images, but I grew out of it when I needed to edit PDF content and outlines.

I use PDF Expert instead which is available at a reasonable price (I got mine for $20, look around for a deal) and it's made by Ukrainians to boot. That was 4 years ago and they've yet to have a paid upgrade.

It especially has effective search and replace. Everything else I tried would choke when trying to delete several hundreds bits of text from a PDF.

08982• 4 years ago

Love Preview, but the markup features are seriously confusing. It isn’t clear how the shapes and the colours relate to one another, so even after 12 years drawing a filled box is much harder than it needs to be.

saagarjha5• 4 years ago

Question: Preview used to have automatic detection for "lines" and stuff so you could click on one and it'd create a text box for you to start typing, correctly sized and everything. For some reason this seems to no longer work for me. Has anyone else had success with this in the recent past?

spookybones2• 4 years ago

I think form detection has to do with how the source PDF is saved, such as if the PDF is flattened. Also, this feature doesn't work with some other formats, like JPEGs. If it's not working, there is a text box tool in the markup toolbar.

jkubicek• 4 years ago

Lack of any equivalent Preview app on the iPad is the main factor that's prevented me from switching to an iPad as my full-time computing device. Filling in form PDFs, signing documents, performing some light editing is so easy in macOS and so challenging on iPadOS.

realstacktrace3• 4 years ago

This. Bring Preview to iPad!

macintux• 4 years ago

I’ll freely admit I haven’t tried all of those tasks, but I’ve been happy with GoodReader.

(But I’ll definitely agree: Preview for iPad is a big gap in Apple’s offering.)

wrycoder• 4 years ago

I was astonished it was not on my new iPad.

OJFord• 4 years ago

Preview is the one thing I miss from macOS (i.e. excluding hardware) using Linux. Unless I'm not allowed to include it's integration into Finder (or 'the file browser') as 'one thing', in which case that too.

PeterCorless• 4 years ago

I have no idea why the author says this is an "app people forget about." I use it constantly. Hundreds if not thousands of times a month. It is always open. It is my faithful companion. It flows through my bloodstream. I breathe and dream and gain my nutrients and sunlight via screenshots and edits in Preview.

chii• 4 years ago

"app people forget about."

as in, there's no hype or news about preview.app - it just gets used quietly in the background amidst the news cycle of the next great apps.

vampiretooth1• 4 years ago

Preview is an underground juggernaut. The app is incredibly versatile, and I've used it as a lightweight replacement for almost everything Adobe

pletnes• 4 years ago

One more thing: if you select an area of a pdf, you can copy/paste, retaining vector graphics info. Never seen that in any other app. Works in several other macos apps, too.

cvak• 4 years ago

I love preview, but it has bugged comments/annotations in PDFs, which cost my like 1h of work last week, so, yeah, don't use it for that.

Bigpet• 4 years ago

It has some even more fundamental bugs with PDF. Concatenating transformation matrices with negative scaling (i.e to flip the coordinate system you're drawing in) is completely broken in Preview and Safari. It's completely conformant according to the PDF standard.

Obviously prints fine and chrome/firefox or Windows don't have any issues with it. Obviously Adobe has no issue with it.

But here it is staying broken for years, because you can't explain to mac users that Apple is the one that made the mistake if they preview things your tool generates and they look broken. So devs just "fix" their PDFs to be bug compatible with Apples version.

bgorman• 4 years ago

What are features preview has that Okular and Evince are missing?

In my opinion all three apps are worlds better than Acrobat, but I am not sure about the differences between the three.

mLuby• 4 years ago

Preview can photoshop images too, with a bit of effort. Wish it had a smudge/blur tool though.

• https://imgur.com/D1G9h63 Removed people on either side of the arch.

• https://imgur.com/iZazOgA Removed people above the person's head.

• https://imgur.com/taMCXpC Removed graffiti from below the carving's hand.

P.S. Get with the times HN; even Google Docs supports Markdown now.

realstacktrace3• 4 years ago

Blur would be a killer feature in Preview!

dantondwa• 4 years ago

Preview is amazing and I miss it very dearly, now that I'm not running macOS anymore. There's simply nothing like it anywhere else. The amount of things it can do, and what a sleek UI.

I only suffered a bit during the El Capitan-Sierra era, as I think they rewrote the PDF engine and there were some regressions. Anyway, it's the best and I wish something like that existed elsewhere.

On Linux, GNOME's pdf viewer could be close to it, but it is lacking all the annotation features except for highlights. KDE's Okular is a bit better, but it's UI is bad. On Windows, there's just nothing like it. I use Sumatra, but I miss Preview all the time.

octoberfranklin2• 4 years ago

Okular is a bit better, but it's UI is bad.

Understatement of the century.

It can do a lot of impressive stuff, but makes you fight with it to do it for the dumbest reasons. Like the fact that entering text into a form field requires a popup window, which I still can't figure out how to complete interacting with solely via the keyboard. Ye gads.

MiddleEndian2• 4 years ago

I honestly didn't get why people hated PDFs so much until I stopped using Mac OS as well. I've never seen anything on Windows or Linux that was as pleasant for reading PDFs as Preview (at least up to OS X 10.6, no insight past that).

princevegeta89• 4 years ago

Such a terrible name for a software that does much more than just a "Preview".

Honestly all this time I was under the impression that it's only good for previewing and nothing else.

rogual• 4 years ago

Preview is great. I miss it whenever I'm not on a Mac. Fast, light, useful, tasteful. I dread the day a design team remembers it exists and decides it's due for a "refresh".

monocasa• 4 years ago

For those who don't know, Quartz (the 2D graphics layer of macOS) is internally built off of PDF.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_(graphics_layer)#Use_of...

chrisweekly• 4 years ago

Preview is awesome; love how Cmd-N for a new file will automatically use image contents from clipboard if present.

ask_b1234• 4 years ago

Something else I found (by browsing the linked page) is that you can drag (while pressing cmd) and drop one of your apps to the top of the Finder.

Removing the app by dragging it back results in a poof animation that I can only describe as adorable. It is so cartoony!

dlivingston• 4 years ago

I love the little “Easter egg”-y details like this.

Others of note:

- A detected server on your network will, if it’s not a Mac, display as an ancient CRT monitor with the blue screen of death [0]

- TextEdit.app’s icon used to have the transcript of “Here’s to the crazy ones…” [1]

A few others, which may or may not still exist: [2]

Apple is slowly stripping these out - the little glimpses of the personalities of people who made them - and it makes me sad.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/l5ft60/macos_easter_...

[1] https://forums.macrumors.com/media/macrumors-png.232193/

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/mac-os-x-easter-eggs-2013-4

Bondi_Blue• 4 years ago

Another underrated feature: add Quartz Filters to a PDF file by Choosing File > Export, click the Quartz Filter pop-up menu, then choose a filter. You can create custom Quartz Filters in ColorSync Utility.app (Note: these are not the same as Quartz Composition Filters, which live in Automator workflows and Photo Booth.app).

For some inspiration: https://github.com/joshcarr/Apple-Quartz-Filters

urbandw311er2• 4 years ago

Yes - agreed. This is one of the best ways to shrink the file size of a PDF: and if it’s not shrinking it enough create your own quartz filter with lower res/quality JPG or DPI settings.

rumblestrut• 4 years ago

I use Preview daily. I definitely haven't forgotten about it.

andrewstuart• 4 years ago

I use it every day for splitting and joining PDF files.

Maursault• 4 years ago

For such a simple application, Preview is very powerful. Generally I use pdftk to do things with pdfs. But Preview duplicates nearly all that functionality. Need to separate one page of a pdf into a new pdf document? Preview can do that. Need to join two pdfs? Preview can do that. Need to create a pdf that has some pages from another pdf, and some pages from yet another pdf, Preview can do that. Need to markup or sign a pdf? Preview excels at this.

Windows has only third party pdf support, and almost every available option is inferior to Preview.

The only software I know that is more advanced than Preview is Enfocus PitStop Pro. But that is for professional situations where you need low level control and editing of a pdf for whatever reason, such as correcting typos without the original document source format, or pdf processing and creation automation.

akeck• 4 years ago

I haven't forgotten. I use it everyday. One issue is that it has gone for sizable lengths of time with frustrating unfixed bugs. For example, there was a period during which if I wanted to quickly peek at Nikon raw file with it, I'd have to wait a minute or more for it to load the file. A few years ago, it was pretty crashy viewing PDFs, one of its primary uses. It's better now, and I hope Apple continues to refocus on their classic levels of reliability. Preview for me really is an "Everyday Thing".

pikseladam• 4 years ago

awesome app

spicymaki• 4 years ago

I use this daily for taking screen caps after I solve my daily Wordle.

gnicholas• 4 years ago

I love using Preview to make icon backgrounds transparent and to invert black/white icons. The transparency tool for Preview is significantly better than the Instant Alpha in Keynote, IMO.

knolan4• 4 years ago

I love Preview. It was one of the reasons I switched to Mac back in 2010.

Another fun feature since we’re all sharing. This works across many native apps. Hold Option and drag to select a block of text. Handy for pulling numbers from a table.

contradictioned• 4 years ago

Preview is one of my most loved pdf viewers, next to skim for latex writing.

I often have pdfs from my scanner which I want to join into a single document or remove back sides which accidentally got picked up by the duplex scan. It's so easy with preview; if only it could do ocr...

pschastain2• 4 years ago

I used to use Preview.app extensively for work until it was rewritten & hobbled post-Mavericks. While it's still useful it lost a lot of functionality i.e. "smart" text insertion.

vestrigi2• 4 years ago

Only thing Preview is weak at is filling out PDFs. I often have to place my own text boxes by hand and when text boxes are recognized the entered text is often oddly formatted.

pschastain2• 4 years ago

Apple rewrote Preview.app post-Mavericks and crippled it in the process; text box placement definitely lost functionality

Pufferbo• 4 years ago

I’ll literally boot up my Mac to do something with preview even if I’m in the middle doing something on windows.

Just did this a few days ago when I needed to combine two PDFs into one.

ChrisMarshallNY• 4 years ago

I use Preview all the time.

I have the whole Adobe CS suite, but dread the startup lag, when all I need is a simple resize, or whatnot.

Also, Preview is the best way for me to do “scribbles” on an image (markup).

perfectstorm• 4 years ago

It’s a neat software and has tons of hidden features like for example, you can redact parts of a document. You can also combine different documents into a single pdf file.

needle0• 4 years ago

* 'Get Info' or CMD + I * Select the icon in the top left of the dialogue box * Copy it using the keyboard shortcut CMD + C

This sequence of steps to obtain the file's icon art has been consistent for a very long time, going far back as early as Macintosh System 7 (1991).

prawn• 4 years ago

I love Preview but since the Monterey upgrade and this M1 Max, mine constantly loses the ability to actually preview something with spacebar. It will only show me a thumbnail. I'll have to kill and relaunch the Finder a few times a day to regain the normal functionality.

Anyone else seen this and managed to resolve it?

thrusong• 4 years ago

Preview has been seriously broken on my M1 MacBook Air running macOS Monterey since I bought it.

I can't use the space bar to preview a file most of the time— I have to actually Force Quit Finder to get it to work again, which it does for a short while.

It then goes back to showing me a simple info window which shows a thumbnail, a date, and file size.

I've been hoping an update would fix it soon, but so far, no dice. I really don't want to do a clean install.

calf2• 4 years ago

Have you tried using it from another login account? Just a thought.

mchusma• 4 years ago

Preview is pretty good but anyone know why Finder on Mac is so bad? I mean, the search is bad. But even doing something like trying to go up to the parent folder is almost impossible. I only ever want to do two things, and both are hard.

ChromeOS gets these things so right comparitively.

calf2• 4 years ago

The parent folder is listed as Enclosing Folder in the Go menu, you can press Command-UpArrow.

But there's a secret mouse trick, if you Command-Click any Finder window's or e.g. a Preview document's title bar, it will open a menu showing its full path.

For search, I wish it would differentiate between documents and code. I've never used ChromeOS, is its search better?

teleforce• 4 years ago

Little known fact that LibreOffice Draw can edit PDF document [1].

We badly need an open source equivalent of Preview for easy PDF documents management that works accross OSes.

Just wondering is there any software that can perform integrated processing for bitmap and vector graphics including PDF documents?

[1]Yes, You Can Use LibreOffice as a PDF Editor – Here’s How

https://www.makeuseof.com/libreoffice-pdf-editor/

manicdee2• 4 years ago

One feature I miss from Preview was being able to define bookmarks so I could make the TOC of a PDF clickable.

Still, being able to reorder pages, insert new ones or delete obsolete ones is pretty useful for scrapbooking an instruction manual for my whole kitchen so I can hand guests one document instead of a ZIP file with a dozen different docs in it.

tehwebguy• 4 years ago

Preview RULES and keeps getting better. The first thing I do on a new Mac is add it to the dock so I can always easily drag an imagine into it.

lajt• 4 years ago

A small annoyance of Preview is that the PDFs it displays don't render JPEG2000 images correctly. I found this out due to the project we're on. Some of the PDFs were generated about 20 years ago with JPEG2000 images in them. Acrobat Reader does display them correctly. I can't stand Acrobat Reader, but in this one case it's a better PDF viewer than Mac Preview.

couchridr• 4 years ago

Unfortunately although Preview is good for these tricks, such as editing a PDF or creating a PDF from multiple inputs, I often find that the official acrobat reader from Adobe will refuse to display the resulting file. That may be Adobe trying old Microsoft “you can’t keep up with my definition of a legal file format” tricks. Nevertheless what you produce cannot be viewed with a significant fraction of PDF readers.

Preview, the Mac app people forget about

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