Apple Preview buggy on Big Sur, how to reinstall, reset, or remove .plist?

Question

Level 1

13 points

Apple Preview buggy on Big Sur, how to reinstall, reset, or remove .plist?

Apple Preview is very buggy since my upgrade to Big Sur. How to reinstall, reset, or remove .plist? I can't find any .plist files

Thx in advance

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 11.0

Posted on Dec 16, 2020 2:27 AM

Reply

Answer 1

jelle.belle Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 16, 2020 11:27 AM in response to VikingOSX

Hi VikingOSX, your answer is very complete, thank you!

Alas, your thoroughness can't change or mitigate the general low bar qualities of the Preview app, which, just like the Contacts app, seems rather neglected by the developers at Apple. I guess I will just have to deal with the limitations and bugginess.

To clarify, the window (frame?) itself sometimes becomes transparent, as does the document or image that is contained within that window.

Anyway, I'm considering to install another (but hopefully less) low bar app called Adobe Acrobat...

have a nice day

Jelle

Reply

Answer 2

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,572 points

Dec 16, 2020 5:57 AM in response to jelle.belle

Before we get out the bulldozer, describe what you believe is very buggy Preview behavior. Does the Preview User Guide clarify what you consider an issue?

Reply

Answer 3

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,426 points

Dec 16, 2020 8:24 AM in response to jelle.belle

“Is deleting the entire Preview folder like a hard reset? “

No. It is more like deleting a preference file.

Reply

Answer 4

jelle.belle Author

Level 1

13 points

Dec 16, 2020 7:37 AM in response to VikingOSX

Well with buggy I mean

a file is sometimes is transparent when opening (including the app window itself);
general unresponsiveness;
a search for a word moves all page for two thirds to the left, hiding it partially from sight;
checking previous versions of an edited image messes the selection tool

What do you mean by bulldozer? Is deleting the entire Preview folder like a hard reset?

Reply

Answer 5

VikingOSX

Level 10

123,572 points

Dec 16, 2020 10:31 AM in response to jelle.belle

An image can have a transparent background, but there is no user interface means to set the Big Sur Preview window background to transparent, though this means exists in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. One can set the Preview background to a checkerboard pattern to represent transparency — via the Terminal — but the Preview window background does not allow one to see the Desktop behind the application.
If you are opening a large image or PDF in Preview, it will take time to uncompress them for viewing. This is magnified if you are using a slow rotational drive such as Apple's Fusion drive, or too many resource demanding applications are concurrently open. I have no issues with Preview when running on a 4GB RAM 2014 MacBook Air and Big Sur 11.0.1 or 11.1.
The normal behaviour of Preview when searching for a word is to open a left galley reflecting the occurrences of found words. It also reduces the document appearance side on the right side of the window.
When you are in Revert To > Browse all Versions panel, this is intended to locate the previous document and restore it. The current document will appear on the left, with its search galley. When you perform a search in one of the past revision document choices, the search results galley closes on the original document, and reopens on the prevoius document choice, with your same or different search selection. This is normal previous behavior while in this Revert To mode.

Bulldozer is a figurative expression to start removing Preview specific folders and preference lists.

Reply

Answer 6

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,426 points

Dec 16, 2020 5:48 AM in response to jelle.belle

I'm not sure there is a preference file for Preview.

Another option is to remove the sandbox which is in ~/Library/Containers/

Delete the entire Preview folder, there.

Reply

Apple Preview buggy on Big Sur, how to reinstall, reset, or remove .plist?

Similar questions