Hi, I'm using a Macbook Air (2018), the latest version of Sonoma. The other day Preview app just suddenly stopped working. It won't open anything, it just crashes. I have trawled these forums and tried the various tips... rebooting, updating, I tried deleting the plist file too. Nothing is helping. Any help gratefully received as I feel quite at a loss with out it!
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 14.2
Press and hold the shift key while launching Preview and see if that permits it to launch normally. This is a technique used to force the application to ignore its last saved execution state (crash) and only used following an application crash or hang.
That brings the question what type of file and where was it located that initiated the problem with Preview?
Additionally, some anti-virus and so-called cleaning applications wrongfully detect parts of the operating system and even content internal to applications as malware and may either directly, or prompt you for that removal. If that happened to Preview, you should:
Thanks so much. I tried pressing shift and it just crashed again. I was opening application forms and trying to edit them...I have no anti-virus/cleaning software. And tried reinstalling the operating system too. :/
Sharing a part of the crash report:
System Integrity Protection: enabled
Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
Exception Type: EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (SIGILL)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000001, 0x0000000000000000
Termination Reason: Namespace SIGNAL, Code 4 Illegal instruction: 4
Terminating Process: exc handler [28908]
The crash report only tells you what you already know. Fall down, go boom.
It may be the PDF you are working with that has specialized form code internal to the PDF. I recommend you install the free, current Adobe Acrobat Reader (not Acrobat Pro subscription), as Adobe keeps the PDF document handling code in Reader to current spec.
Right-click on the PDF and select Open With : Adobe Acrobat Reader. If Reader crashes or hangs, it is the PDF document.
Does Preview work ok for other local drive PDFs not among those academic papers you downloaded. Are those papers on your local drive or in some cloud location. Are you using Microsoft OneDrive?
Acrobat Reader will have the most current PDF and forms support, especially if those academic PDFs are requesting Adobe's Acrobat JavaScript to control form behavior. Preview will simply ignore Acrobat JavaScript entirely.
Thank you but it also crashes with the various academic papers I've downloaded (and opened fine before) plus photos...
I have downloaded Acrobat Reader but it's not ideal. I need Preview app back...
I have same problem and the Shift way works for me, thanks very much!!!!
Preview App crashes everytime I try and use it
