Preview, the Mac app people forget about
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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).
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.
>However, Adobe has freely offered the specifications on PDF to other companies. Apple’s Mac OS X operating system has built in support for reading and saving of PDF files.
It's an OS-wide feature. Any application can print to PDF without specific support from that app.
If you could render into a PDF context with your graphics engine (CoreGraphics) you would have a near print-ready document. (You still need to pass along additional info regarding whether to print duplex, number of copies, etc.)
So anyway, Save to PDF, Open in Preview were basically free.
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.
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.
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.
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.
On Windows it's more like a hardcover bound book that I can download and attach to an email to share with someone, but god forbid I want to change anything.
They can make me use Windows in the office, but next time something dies in my home PC I'm just going to sell the rest of it for parts and replace it with a Steam Deck.
The graphics primitives still apply to macOS.
It's missing the rotation arrow buttons that bug you to buy a subscription, so that's a bit nicer than the current Reader DC release. I assume this is just because it lags behind the main release and they'll be rolled in as a future update on the Classic track?
Appreciate the attempt to help, but Acrobat Reader is just shitty.
I know it's a deliberate choice to be useless in pursuit of selling more subscriptions, but it's hard to cut them a lot of slack for having a worse free PDF tool than what Apple was shipping for free on all their computers more than 20 years ago.
It’s easy for Apple because they don’t sell a competing product. Adobe has to balance providing a useful free viewer against a paid editor (or payed extra functions). There’s certainly a lot I’d like to see improved/included in Adobe Reader, but I also recognize that they are in a different market position than Apple.
They do let you fill in forms and comment in the free version, even though that's not strictly speaking under the definition of "reading".
I'm currently rotating pages by sending them to my iPad and using Documents by Readdle. Not sure if that's part of the free features or because I bought their PDF Expert and some of the PDF editing capability gets shared across apps.
It's usually that all of the pages are consistently oriented as portrait, but some of them actually have landscape content.
The incorrect portrait page orientation was probably done on purpose to keep printers from screwing it up, and rotating a piece of paper to look at it barely requires a thought. No big deal if you're printing it.
But the ease of looking at a single page sideways and then going back to the original rotation doesn't map to reading it on a computer screen with document-wide rotate commands, and they really should've sucked it up and let me fix individual pages. Even if it's a temporary "view" change and not something I can save back to the file.
That right there is a peak-2022 quote, alright!
They seemed to get the hint on the terminal finally…
Handle basic viewing, editing, signatures. Etc…
While we are at it a GTK one would be great in Gnome too…
In other words: the purpose of (consumer) Windows isn't to make money for Microsoft; the purpose of (consumer) Windows is to create a sales channel — "Windows users" — for Windows developers like Adobe to sell their Windows software products into.
Microsoft then makes their money off those very same Windows developers, through corporate Windows licensing, Office subscriptions, Azure, etc.
As such, Microsoft tries as much as possible to avoid "bringing in" any features that are currently being sold as products by companies in their developer ecosystem (which would deprive those developers of revenue, and thus deprive them of revenue.) Acrobat charges to rotate images? Better not offer native image rotation.
I also find it strange that MS keeps pushing people to use Edge as a PDF reader. only goes to show how valuable user data is, or rather, how desperate MS is for such data.
> As such, Microsoft tries as much as possible to avoid "bringing in" any features that are currently being sold as products by companies in their developer ecosystem (which would deprive those developers of revenue, and thus deprive them of revenue.) Acrobat charges to rotate images? Better not offer native image rotation.
to be fair, Apple does the same. lots of functionalities that you would expect from macOS are left for third party apps to provide. for example, changing external monitor volume, a proper window management that snaps windows to edges/corners, remembering the position of apps in different desktops, enabling font smoothing, enabling HiDPI on external displays, limiting apps’ CPU usage, etc.
Each of them costs like $15 which adds up to hundreds. But even if money wasn’t a problem, it’d still be concerning to use hacky methods that are sometimes closed source too.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There's a few other little annoyances but I can't recall them right now (currently awaiting delivery of a new MacBook Pro so I'm back to running Linux for the time being).
The dialogue annoys me enough that I've just gotten into the habit of opening everything from the command line instead. In fact Finder is pretty poor for those things too (I've lost count of the amount of times I've ran `open .` to launch Finder in the path I want rather than navigating there via the GUI). But at least Finder does 90+% of what I want, even if I do have to turn to the command line a lot. Whereas I find the open dialogue to be almost completely useless.
- “Show hidden files” is a preference you can change.
Once you’re comfortable with the CLI and know the paths you care about for a task, in what cases do you prefer a GUI open dialog on other systems?
The problem is that's not going to be an easy thing to remember. It's not an obvious hotkey and nor is it even memorable that the hotkey even exists. There's no UI hints that it does. And when you use hundreds of different pieces of software every day, from CLI tools to complicated desktop applications, there's no way anyone can remember every single hotkey and flag for them. This is why tools like fzf and sophisticated shell auto-completion exist. They've at least recognised that this stuff needs to be discoverable somehow.
In fact that is my biggest annoyance with Apple's UIs. There's so much hidden functionality that is almost impossible to discover (and a lot of it is incredibly easy to forget again too). For example I was using an iPhone for years before I discovered you could move the caret by long pressing on the space bar. Before then I was cursing how much easier it was to edit text in Android because I just assumed there wasn't a precise way to move the caret in iOS. I felt like such an idiot that it took an internet meme to teach me to use my phone...but then I remember that it shouldn't have taken a meme to make people aware that feature existed.
> "Show hidden files” is a preference you can change.
I don't want to change a preference. I want to be able to view hidden files on demand. Most of the time hidden files are better off hidden. That's actually an example of sensible defaults. However it's also useful to be able to toggle them on from the open dialogue when needed.
> Once you’re comfortable with the CLI and know the paths you care about for a task, in what cases do you prefer a GUI open dialog on other systems?
It's the other way around, I grew up on text only systems and had to learn to adapt to GUIs. I still struggle with them even now (which is why I hate it when you're expected to stumble upon functionality by chance).
As for when I prefer to use the GUI open dialogue? It's when I'm already using the GUI for something. Like emails, spreadsheets, word processing. Boring stuff we all wish we didn't have to do but cannot escape completely. I'd rather not have to context switch away from the GUI and back into iTerm just to open a file.
'G' for "Go to folder". cmd-G is standardized as "Find Next" across apps, so you add "shift" to do an app-specific behavior.
> I want to be able to view hidden files on demand.
cmd-shift-'.' . The '.' matches the prefix for auto-hidden files.
This is definitely not behavior I'm seeing in either file picking dialogs or Finder windows.
https://osxdaily.com/2018/02/12/show-hidden-files-mac-keyboa...
While I think Apple's UIs do have annoyingly hidden functionality, this particular one is something you can learn by using Finder -- it's the keyboard shortcut for "Go to Folder…" in the "Go" menu. A lot of the "View" and "Go" keyboard shortcuts there work in file picker boxes, but it's true you're not going to be able to do actual file management there.
A lot of "hidden" keyboard shortcuts in macOS really aren't hidden, though; they're either right there in the menus or in the Help menu. If you're in Finder, the first item in that menu is "macOS Help," which opens a user guide…and that User Guide talks about a lot of things. And, it also links to the fairly extensive "Mac keyboard shortcuts" support article. This may be the technical writer in me, but I kinda wish people would read manuals a little more than they do. :)
(ETA: This wouldn't work in the save dialog though, I missed that detail)
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.
But you're selecting the file in a file manager and then dragging it into your "file selector". That whole dialogue then becomes completely redundant because you might as well just drag that file into the application window without having to click "open".
> 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
If you drag the file into the text area it will work as you wish. Or you could just drag the file into the application -- a lot of applications will support that and open the file without displaying the file open dialogue.
Sometimes. Others the dialog is how you set things like the format of the file or some import options. Or you need a multiple selection and dropping a bunch of files just opens them separately. Sometimes you can input a regex and you just need to quickly go to the right directory. Sometimes you need to select a file to import it into another document and not open it. It is also damn convenient to just drop the folder where you want a new file to be in a “save as” dialog without having to navigate from dog knows where. There are plenty of use cases.
What is redundant is a file manager in an import dialog. There is a full blown file manager that’s always going to be better just a click away.
> If you drag the file into the text area it will work as you wish.
In theory, yes. In practice it’s hit and miss as developers don’t seem to care about using native widgets (that, and the fact that native widgets have vastly different capabilities on Windows thanks to years of cruft they cannot remove).
[edit] sorry if it sounded harsh; I have nothing against you. It’s just that the file selection dialogs are a particular pain point on Windows and Linux.
None of that prevents Apple from building a more featureful dialogue
> In theory, yes. In practice it’s hit and miss as developers don’t seem to care about using native widgets (that, and the fact that native widgets have vastly different capabilities on Windows thanks to years of cruft they cannot remove).
I agree it sucks when developers roll their own but that’s not really relevant because we are comparing two very specific dialogues and not the wider OS ecosystem. (I’d use macOS over Windows any day of the week. But that doesn’t mean I have to love everything about macOS).
> sorry if it sounded harsh
You didn’t and we are good :) It’s been really interesting hearing another viewpoint.
> It’s just that the file selection dialogs are a particular pain point on Windows and Linux.
For you. :) Personally I think KDE got it just about perfect.
I guess this just goes to show how completely different two peoples preferences can be.
That said there’s even easier ways to get there:
Just navigate, the sidebar will reflect what’s in your Finder sidebar so you can use that as a shelf if you’re going into one specific directory a lot for your work. It’s a dynamic environment, you don’t have to treat it like it’s static.
Or: hit Command-Shift-G. This will allow you to type the path with tab completion.
Dragging the folder in is for when you’re operating in the Finder and another application and rather than navigating you want to just drag the proxy in to go right there. It’s a shortcut, but depending on the task it’s not necessarily the most efficient way to do it.
Not only Finder! You can hover over the filename on the top bar of any application and drag the icon from there as well. It works for any application where you have a file opened.
Except for that, all proxy icons should be dragable without problem if they are from the native widgets (so no guarantee for misguided developers who reimplemented it to look like the native one without actually implementing its behaviour). There might be a small delay between the moment you click on it and the moment you can drag it, to avoid mistakes (I think that was the case at some point, not really sure now).
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.
I think some of that habit might have stemmed from the fact that I don't like Finder much. I don't like the hotkeys (eg [ENTER] to rename), I don't like it's layout. As much as I disliked Microsoft's "lets turn explorer.exe into Internet Explorer", the editable address bar is actually really nice (you can see precisely where you are and quickly change it to where you want to be).
I'd say Dolphin (KDE) is probably the perfect file manager for me. It's got a terminal baked in (which automatically changes directories when you navigate in the GUI) so you can mix and match GUI and CLI operations. You can add tabs so your file manager can be used as a session (eg if you're working in multiple directories for a specific task or project, you can have one file manager instance open for that task but different tabs per directory). There's so much I love about it. But it's also the polar opposite of Finder, which might explain why I don't like Finder much.
I do completely agree with you about Gnome though.
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.
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.
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.....
Out of curiosity, was there a team exclusively dedicated to the Preview app? How autonomous were you in deciding how to improve the application?
I was told, "Hey, we have a rich PDF API/SPI in CoreGraphics (Quartz2D) maybe you can beef up our PDF support in Preview."
PDF at that time was quickly rasterized (by AppKit) and really treated no differently than, say, a multi-page TIFF file in Preview.
As I started to switch over to rendering PDF's using CoreGraphics rather than NSImage, another engineer (Werner) took over the image side of Preview.
For a while then it was a team of two — me and Werner. Werner did the image side (but also owned and had responsibility for ImageIO) and I did the PDF side (I eventually wrote PDFKit but also had things like the Displays Prefs pane, some Color Sync stuff as my other responsibilities as well).
Werner is smarter than me though so where there were shared resources in Preview (like the toolbar, for example) often Werner handled that.
What I gave above is more or less the direction we were given — so there was a good deal of autonomy. I think everyone sort of had their hands full just trying to get a new graphics system up and running and to move functionality over from System 9 to OS X such that Werner and I were free to just add the stuff we wanted.
Initially I think we tried to keep some commonality — if images could be rotated, I would try to also rotate PDFs. Image zoom in/out? PDF zoom in/out.
But when I added text handling (text selection, search) we kind of acknowledged that the two really were separate beasts. I was surprised later though when the same annotations I had added to support PDF also were added as mark-up tools to images (I was no longer on the team then as I recall).
Preview eventually went to its own team though and the engineers working on it did not have other duties/distractions like Werner and I. This is when signatures, instant-alpha, and other niceties were added.
I definitely enjoyed the years Werner and I were on it and we could just add "cool stuff" we wanted. I remember someone asking for the "blank page" feature — where you can insert a blank page into a PDF – it allows you to play with even/oddness (front/backedness) of pages when printing 2-up. It was cool so we added it.
I like to point out that "we" were the users of the app as much (or more so) than some manager up the chain. To that end, I always felt we more or less knew what users wanted.
I think eventually the designers came to use Preview quite a bit and so had their own suggestions but they certainly weren't standing in our way early on.
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.
Apps on Linux (Gnome?) do it too.
KDE's Okukar is pretty similar imo.
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
That’s about it though.
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`
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
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!
As others said in this thread… Preview is the best macOS built in app.
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.
When you're done the results end up in a new PDF wherever you clicked.
You can also select "black & white" mode for text documents which saves a ton of space
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.
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.
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.
Does it look better? Maybe early 2000?
Also, in pre-release version I've added a feature that I'm super stoked about: a command palette https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/docs/Command-Palette
And fully customizable keyboard shortucts https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/docs/Customizing-keyboard-s...
For example https://www.rockauto.com
That said, I think the updates will reduce the number of people that react that way.
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.
https://www.macworld.com/article/351669/macos-monterey-how-t...
Having it built into the OS is so handy.
It works with anything that works with Monterey. So if you are running macOS Monterey you fit the requirements.
Edit: As of July of 2021, Live Text was available in beta on Intel Macs so by the time Monterey shipped it worked on both Intel and AS.
Whether it works on a given document may depend on how that app displays the image. I can see where it would be complicated in a PDF where you may have combinations of text, images, and OCR’d text behind images.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Preview is one of the biggest things I’ve missed every time I’ve tried to finally make Linux my daily driver.
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.
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.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220509170301/https://www.fourt...
(But I’ll definitely agree: Preview for iPad is a big gap in Apple’s offering.)
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.
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.
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?
Why this is a big deal? Not sure but it seems the best bet. Would love to see this confirmed.
[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pdf-signer/id428271079?mt=12
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.
Are there any distros with this feature at all?
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.
Stuff is just part of the system for years and years and we take it for granted when other systems don’t have these kinds of features.
The latest feature like this is Thunderbolt, which is starting to become more common on generic laptops, but is still surprisingly hard to come by in prebuilt PC desktops and enthusiast motherboards.
I want Apple to have healthy competition to keep them on their feet but they often just run a different race.
(I have LOTS of complaints about Apple stuff, I am not a fanboy, but as a technologist, I like that they push the envelope and raise the bar in many areas).
I'm especially glad that we seem to be out of the Jony Ive era where every design decision was a head-scratcher.
AirPods plus a mac work well too. It's usually not a fun experience when using bluetooth headphones on a PC and the microphone gets activated.
Regarding thunderbolt, it's disappointing it's not on every system. I use it all the time to transfer files between macs using static IP addresses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quartz_(graphics_layer)#Use_of...
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.
Additionally, the dictionary definitions can be invoked by tapping with three fingers (Trackpad settings).
I just found out by mashing all the buttons I could think of. :-)
Looks like Preview only has this, when you select all files and open them (Cmd+O). Wish it was like IrfanView.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Removing the app by dragging it back results in a poof animation that I can only describe as adorable. It is so cartoony!
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
• 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.
For some inspiration: https://github.com/joshcarr/Apple-Quartz-Filters
Honestly all this time I was under the impression that it's only good for previewing and nothing else.
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
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.
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.
Anyone else seen this and managed to resolve it?
ChromeOS gets these things so right comparitively.
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?
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...
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.
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 falseIf 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.
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.
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.
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).
Just did this a few days ago when I needed to combine two PDFs into one.
In my opinion all three apps are worlds better than Acrobat, but I am not sure about the differences between the three.
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.
Osx UX is a messsssss
I suspect I’m missing your point somehow?
On Windows/Linux you would just open the first file which is a lot easier.
On Mac, if you want to find something it's Command-F. In Finder this opens up a dropdown, set Kind: Image, now you see all images in the folder, and nothing which is not an image. Command-A for select all, drag or right click to preview.
I explain it the way I do because I had never had occasion to try "let's find all the images in a folder of mixed file types" on Mac, so I started with "Find" and yeah. Quite simple indeed.
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...
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".
All this finder-thing is damned
I need a simple solution. Someone below said how to do it in windows - doublecqick first photo. DONE
What more do you want?
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.
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.
You can also just continue to use Grid view and tell Finder to use large preview icons in that folder.
https://media.idownloadblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/m...
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.