Safari - PDF Black Screen... Can't view embedded PDF's - help.

Thank you, JimTN. I followed every bit of well-meaning advice on this thread and none of them worked until I read your line about just using Preview and deleting Adobe Reader. Now, although I have to take two extra steps by downloading the PDF to Preview, at least I can read it.

In Safari, click on the PDF. You will get a black screen. Move your cursor (do we still call them that?) to the end of the url.

Then type option+return. The PDF is now in your download queue.

Double click and Preview will open it.

No more Adobe Reader on my Mac either. Viva la Revolucion!

Dark screen opens on pdf's... This problem has really been bothering me since I had Maverick added to my system. Your solution works... although not as efficient as I would like - It does work!!!

Thanks!

Thank you so much!!! Fixed in a matter of seconds. I can stop pulling my hair out now. 😉

Genius! Thanks. Followed simple directions from makmacapplefan... everything is good.

Wow...after all this time I finally have this issue fixed! Thanks for the tip, it's the only reasonable one that's worked.

Thank you sooo much! I've been stumped by this for a while and really appreciate the post 🙂

I've been plagued by this problem for a while too. I finally figured out what was wrong. I started by deleting Adobe Reader and any plist files associated with it such as the NAPI**** whatever it was. Then I found another plist for PDF Browser. I don' t know if this was something else I had installed or if it was part of the Adobe reader but once I deleted it, emptied the trash, and restarted Safari; everything was back to normal. Finally after a year or two of seeing a black screen it is fixed.

Just did a nuke-and-reinstall on my MBPr; using Mavericks.

I had never - NEVER - had this problem until the nuke-and-reinstall (which pulled no library resources - library was corrupted). Even though I changed Safari permissions re PDF files, it didn't "take." In other words, even though I said "show this PDF" (so to speak), Safari showed only a black page.

These are the steps that worked for me.

1. Force quit Safari.
2. Go to Macintosh HD>Library>Internet Plug-Ins and move AdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin to "Unused" (the move is really "copy" and requires admin authentication), then delete AdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin (authentication required here, too) from the Plug-Ins directory.
3. Reboot Safari.

NOTE: I have the full Adobe Connect suite. Acrobat X Pro is not set to be the default app for PDFs.

The debugging process

After reviewing the thread, specifically makmacapplefan's post from 2009, https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2274113?answerId=10808523022#10808523022

I looked at this HD and fired up external drive to look at my TimeMachine backups.

The same two Adobe plugins were in the Internet Plug-Ins directory there as here, yet I did not have this problem two days ago. So I'm not convinced that the existence of the plugin is the source of the problem. I ran two tests.

Test 1 >

• Force-quit Safari (7.0.2).
• Leave only the older plugin (AdobePDFViewer.plugin, 2010) in the Plug-Ins directory.
• Move AdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin (2013) to "Unused"
  Macintosh HD>Library>Internet Plug-Ins>Unused
• Re-launch.

The PDFs that had been black were now readable. The 2010 Adobe reader plugin does not show up in Safari preferences>security>Internet plugins as something to configure.

Test 2 >

• Make only AdobePDFViewerNPAPI.plugin active.
• [Force quit, yadda yadda.]
• Black screens where there were readable PDFs.
• In Safari preferences, we now have Adobe Reader 10.1.10. The “allow” or “allow always” does not work. Screen captures are of ineffective Safari security settings.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5317130/publicly-shared/safari-preferences-a dobePDF.png

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/5317130/publicly-shared/safari-preferences-a dobePDF-ask.png

Kathy

I did try any possible suggestions above. Sadly, my Mac pro still got the problem. I try my wife Mac pro which is late 2013, and i got same problem. I did everything. I used many different browsers... but it is the same. Please help !

Thanks

No help and way over my head, too. Time for a store techie.

Don't reinstall I had this problem too.

All I had to do and All you'll have to do is free up some space to fit the pdf file

Last week I updated my os to 10.13, and I guess after this updating these problems occur. I don't know what should I do, because my information is very worthy and I should recover them.