When selecting text in Preview app (Mac OS 26) it shows a blue outline box around the text, but it doesnt allow text selection or highlighting.
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
Original Title: apple os 26 bug-preview doesnt allow highlighting on much of text
MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 26.0
There's definitely something odd with Preview, specifically the blue boxes that show up. The ability to select text in Preview has always depended on the way the PDF is generated. For some pdfs it works well, others less so. I do seem to get better text selection than you, but it ignores the table break and there are still the extraneous boxes. Paste into Word on the right.
If Preview is problematic, you can try Adobe Acrobat Reader (in this case perhaps because the Chevy pdf was made with Acrobat Distiller from Adobe InDesign, though it was done on a Mac). For the pdf you linked, it properly selects the right table (and the paste into Word reflected that, with just the right table though the column breaks were ignored).
[Edited by Moderator]
Work around that worked for me. Opened the pdf with MS Word. I can highlight there but some of the fomatting is off. Ug.
i also have the same problem with bank statements, very annoying, no solution that is time effective seems to work that i have seen posted here yet, so i thought I would share my solution. Install VirtualBuddy (free from apple), install an older version of macos with the working version of preview. then use it. takes a bit of time to set up, but afterwards, you have a long-term easy solution to this problem forever. I am very happy now.
MacOS 26.0.1 still has this problem. I am able to highlight text on page one. Page two only gets blue selection boxes but nothing will highlight, no matter what tools are selected. Page three allows for highlighting. If it was a problem with tool selection, then pages one and three would also have blue boxes and no highlights. The PDF is from the Print dialog, PDF dropdown, Open in Preview. Used to work fine prior to MacOS 26.
Selecting text for highlighting on page two. As soon as I release the mouse, the box and highlight vanish.
Selecting text for highlighting on page one. The highlight appears immediately, no blue box, and the highlight remains afterwards.
It appears they have abandoned the Preview app. It is not highlighting. I see multiple instances reporting the problem and there has not been a resolution that I see working yet. I saved the file as PDF, I exported as PDF, I will try printing it them I must get some work done. I'd highlight it myself but I don't have a printer here. Printing and saving as PDF worked. This is shameful I thought this was a professional organization. This is not responsible behavior, it is appropriate for the times but not for the integrity.
I am having a similar issue with Mac OS 26.2. I was able to highlight the first PDF document, and after that, I was not able to do so. I closed Preview down and reopened it, but that did not help.
I transferred the documents to my Mac 2019 Intel MBP, which cannot upgrade to OS 26. It did not have the issue. I suspect this is either a software defect or some non-intuitive setting making the UI a software defect.
Just like the other comments, this software issue is anti-productive. My other option was to install Adobe Acrobat to try to accomplish the same thing. Acrobat is very bloated, and I didn't want to install it if I had a workaround.
For my M4 iMac this started after I installed MacOS 26.4.1. After reading all the other comments I tried using Skim, a free PDF editor. It exhibited the exact same problem. That suggests to me the problem is not in Preview but in MacOS. Please fix this, Apple!
Does it work for you on a file with more complicated formatting? Try this one:
Try the table on the right side of page 26 (or any other similarly formatted pages). I tried with Text Selection both active and inactive and get some really funky selections:
Seems better with the left-side tables, but not the right-side ones.
[Edited by Moderator]
Doug.Smith wrote:
Not a huge deal, just coincidence that I happened to be doing this right before and after the update.
Worth reporting to Apple:
I typically wait until the x.1 or x.2 update to move to a new major macOS version, but this time I decided to upgrade immediately on one of my Macs. This is the fun that comes with that choice.
@thebarbazul
Found a solution -> Adobe Reader
I thought that would work too. It did until I tried to save it and Adobe Reader said a number was out of range and would never let me save it, not even as a new file. I uninstall Adobe Reader for doing that to me. The only solution for now is to edit it in an older MacOS like Sequoia on another Mac or in a VM like Parallels with MacOS 15 or older.
Just a reminder to everyone: Please report this as a bug at Product Feedback - Apple, if enough people yell about it, then maybe, just maybe, it will get fixed.
Cool. Thank you for checking / confirming. What is notable is that I was highlighting text in the Chevy pdf just before the Tahoe update (the OS, not the truck, lol) without any problem in Preview. After the Tahoe update this text selection issue cropped up in Preview. I also downloaded a fresh copy of the pdf after the update in case my initial pdf was corrupted during the update, but that didn't seem to make a difference.
Not a huge deal, just coincidence that I happened to be doing this right before and after the update.
Already tried the "work-around", and printing the PDF as PDF does nothing. Stays the same.
Downloaded other software, which worked initially, but when I highlight text, I can not undo or delete it afterward. Something else must be going on because I pretty much can't highlight PDFs as no software, be that Preview, Adobe Acrobat, or Notability, will work.
This is too frustrating.
Mine highlighting is working ok now - I can't tell you why, other than it being just luck on a reinstall of Tahoe. Three months ago I had Tahoe installed for just a few hours when I noticed highlighting in Preview was broken, it's crucial to my work so I very quickly rolled back to Sequoia.
My colleague is on Tahoe and his highlighting works ok, so today I decided to upgrade to Tahoe 26.4 and I had planned to spend the afternoon troubleshooting the highlighting problem... but highlighting works ok this time around. Maybe my upgrade was cleaner for some reason this time?
Similar for me. Last summer I updated to the Tahoe preview and found PDF highlighting was broken. Then I got a new M4 Air with Sequoia. Was planning to update anyways..
The issue with PDF highlighting appears when I try to highlight numbers in a table, which I do a lot.. Glad to hear 26.4 could fix it
April 5, 2026, and still not fixed on Tahoe 26.4. Of course the very first thing Apple highlights about this latest OS update is "new emoji!" and that needs to stop already.
None of the suggestions made here have fixed the problem.
What's weird is that some lines in a bank statement can be highlighted and others can't. There seems to be no pattern to the failures.
There's a suggestion to report this bug at Product Feedback - Apple but Preview is not one of the apps listed.
macOS 26 preview does not allow highlighting on much of text
