Preview app not responding after searching and clicking back into the text (after macOS 11.3?)

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Level 1

16 points

Preview app not responding after searching and clicking back into the text (after macOS 11.3?)

Hey, since the update on macOS 11.3 (I'm not completely sure if it started immediately after the update), I'm having troubles with the Preview app.

Machine: base (8/256) Macbook Air M1, MacOS version 11.3

Steps to reproduce:

1) Open any PDF with text in Preview

- any file size works, I have reproduced it on 0.8, 1.2 and 4 MB files

2) Search for any term you KNOW the document contains

- so you can see search results in the left bar

- Preview should jump on the first search result and show other results in the left bar, pretty normal stuff

3) after that, click ANYWHERE in the document text

- like you would like to change focus of the window back to document

- like you would like to select some word with your mouse to copy that word

4) Preview immediately freezes and mouse goes to spinning beachball a split second after the click in step 3

5) I have tried to "wait it out", but the beachball can spin even hours, I don't think it can ever stop and go back to normal

Current (bad) solution:

Option+Command+Esc to ForceQuit Preview app and start it again (and don't use search function)

ActivityMonitor:

CPU:

Memory:

Energy:

Overal CPU usage is ok (91 % idle) and also overall Memory is also ok (6GB used out of 8GB).

So far I have tried:

I deleted all files associated with Preview from ~/Library/Containers and restarted Mac (didn't help):

Does anybody have any suggestions? I really don't want to install any third-party PDF readers.

Thanks, Muzosh.

Posted on May 1, 2021 5:16 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

CleffyHeft

Level 1

16 points

May 3, 2021 1:18 PM in response to Muzosh

I have fixed the issue with mine. Turns out one of the apps I have installed was causing this. You can test this out by booting into safe mode. If Preview works fine there, it should be caused by an app in your case too. Boot out of safe mode and turn on your Mac as you would normally and open Activity Monitor. Analyse all the apps you have installed that are open and through the process of elimination, close and test your Preview and see if it's still bugging out. Eventually I found the culprit which was Rectangle.

I tried installing Magnet as an alternative but the same thing happened so it might be a problem with window management apps.

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Answer 2

Muzosh Author

Level 1

16 points

May 3, 2021 2:17 PM in response to CleffyHeft

Oh wow! I'm using Rectangle as well.

Steps are not reproducible immediately after quitting Rectangle and suddenly are reproducible right after starting Rectangle again.

Thanks for the info, I will definitely stop using window managements apps for now, until (I guess Apple) fixes it. They must have done something with windows API in 11.3.

Some user actually reported that the problem does not occur in MacOS 11.4 (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/preview-app-not-responding-after-searching-and-clicking-back-into-the-text-after-macos-11-3.2294289/post-29843410).

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Answer 3

May 2, 2021 7:21 PM in response to Muzosh

Here's with MacBook Pro 13 M1 with macOS 11.3 and having the sam issue.

Also tried to remove the ".com.apple.preview.plist" from ~/Library/Preferences and re-indexing the Spotlight (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201716), both didn't help.

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Answer 4

Mick_M

Level 1

38 points

May 6, 2021 11:40 AM in response to matthewon18

I too have this same issue, but I don't have the application Rectangle. I do own the Magnet application, but I'm not running it. I have an app called Spectacle that also does window snapping, so I quit that - problem still there. BetterTouchTool also has a window snapping mode so I quit BTT but the issue was still there. BTW - I'm assuming you don't need to do a log out/in for any of this.

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