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User profile for user: Anarchitect
Anarchitect Author
User level: Level 1
9 points

Text selections made in Preview.app are not made available to text-input services

When selecting text in a PDF opened in Preview.app the services that take text as input are not shown in the menu Preview → Services. However, when it is an image containing text that was recognized through OCR, the respective services are actually shown, e.g., "Look Up in Dictionary".


This seems to be an issue already for several macOS versions and it is also the case Ventura, i.e., Preview version 11.0.


Any help, bug fix, or work-around would be appreciated.

MacBook Pro (M2 Pro, 2023)

Posted on May 7, 2023 6:23 AM

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7 replies
User profile for user: Anarchitect
Anarchitect Author
User level: Level 1
9 points

May 7, 2023 10:49 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thank you for your reply. The respective Automator actions and services have text set as the data type. However, the application does not need to be specified — my understanding of the services function in macOS is that they can be used in different contexts, i.e., different applications that allow, as in this case, text selections.


As I wrote: Preview.app actually supports the text-based services, when the text has been recognized from OCR. I am attaching the Apple Community Support welcome page as a PDF export and a PNG screenshot to illustrate this.


This seems like a bug that has been around for a while, for multiple macOS versions. There are actually several posts here that have mentioned it and it seems you, @VikingOSX, have also replied to some of them:



What is the official way of reporting bugs? This is clearly an issue with Preview.app and/or PDFKit


PDF – text services are not shown:



PNG – text services are present:


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User profile for user: Camelot
Camelot
User level: Level 9
55,449 points

May 9, 2023 11:30 AM in response to Anarchitect

> Could you please open a PDF, select some text, and share a screenshot of your services menu?


Because you don't believe me?


I took a page from these discussion boards (not this thread since the inline images messed things up).


I printed the page to a PDF file (via File -> Print -> Save as PDF.


Opened the PDF.


Nothing selected:



Text Selected:


As you can see, I have a very different list of available services when I have text selected vs. none.


MacOS 12.6.1/Preview 11.0

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User profile for user: Camelot
Camelot
User level: Level 9
55,449 points

May 9, 2023 10:50 AM in response to Anarchitect

I suspect there's something particular about the PDFs in question.


I can, for example, open numerous PDFs, select some text, and se the Services enabled.


There's a clear difference in the services offered when I have text selected, and when I don't, so clearly something is working as you'd expect.


Which implies there's something about the PDFs you're using - how are you generating them?

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Text selections made in Preview.app are not made available to text-input services

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