macOS 26 preview does not allow highlighting on much of text

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]

These are exclusively public, user supported communities. No Apple employees participate here and only proper feedback links get to the the product development teams. Continuing to post about issues with Preview in Tahoe 26.0.1 is just noise as we fellow users cannot fix it, and Apple won't see it.

Even a change in the tools that the originator of the PDF uses, could impact how well Preview can select and annotate text passages. PDF document internals are a quagmire. Not only is Apple's Preview incapable of handling all PDF documents, the PDFKit/CoreGraphics development teams sometimes introduce bugs in it. I keep a current version of Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on the occasion when Preview has issues.

Neither Preview, nor Acrobat Reader are PDF Editors. One does not need PDF editing features for PDF annotation. When PDF editing is necessary, there are single-purchase, lower cost PDF Editors (e.g. Code Industry's Master PDF Editor) available for those that are sensitive to subscriptions. Recently, if not presently, stacksocial dot com was offering a Microsoft Office 2021 Home and Student plus a 3-year subscription to Adobe Acrobat (classic) for 89USD. That same three-year subscription from Adobe would run 324USD.

New to MacOS 26 and it's December 2025, and I'm having the same issue. Based on this discussion board, it looks like it's been going on for several months now and still isn't resolved. It's super annoying. The "work-around" (printing the PDF as a PDF) does allow you to highlight the PDF and gets rid of the light-blue selection boxes that prevent you from highlighting. But this needs to be fixed.

I just spent 15 minutes on Apple Chat because I have been unable to highlight certain PDFs. For me, it is PDFs that contain "tables." Here is the response:

"I want to inform you that, our engineering teams are investigating an issue when opening a PDF that has two columns of texts and Preview sees it as boxes and doesn’t allow any annotations/highlights.

Workaround: In Preview, via Tools → Text Selection, or via the Markup Toolbar → Text Selection.

The current solution while this is being investigated is to edit the PDF document with a different PDF editor for macOS like Adobe Acrobat, PDF Expert, or Foxit PDF Editor but please note that these are not supported by Apple."

Their workarounds didn't work for me. Exporting to a PDF/A or printing to a PDF also didn't work. And the PDF wasn't locked or manipulated in anyway. This is a known issue.

Make sure you have Tools > Text Selection active. Seems to work fine for me.

Copied the selected text in the screenshot, it goes to the Clipboard as expected.

It seems that this issue is solved in macOS Tahoe 26.3.1 !!!

At least, it is working for me and I can highlight text on Preview app. It is correctly saved and displayed in Adobe Acrobat.

Happy to see that Apple took care about this problem.

I think this bug belongs to the mode set in apperance also in 26.1. I always use dark mode, not automatic or light.

In dark mode highlight or mark text does not work for preview, but when I switch to light mode I see the 'grey' highlighted text. Behaviour is also the same in dark liquid glass mode and set to tinted.

Anyone else?

UPDATE: it solved the first time I opened the file, but when I opened again Preview started showing the "blue boxes" again and now I'm not able even to select text! Really buggy behavior!

I exported the PDF with the option of "Create PDF/A" and it solved the issue for me.

But it's really annoying and a big disappointment, I use this feature a lot with many files, and having to export each of them is just unacceptable. It seems like Mac OS is degrading in quality progressively, which makes me wonder which OS to go next.

No solved in 26.3,

Additionally I had to solve the selection itslelf not working since first time I installed Tahoe, I found the solution only some weeks ago:

1. Recreate the Missing Caches Folder

Since the system cannot find the "Caches" folder, you must manually ensure the path exists:

1. Open Finder.
2. In the top menu, select Go > Go to Folder....
3. Type ~/Library/ and press Enter.
4. Look for a folder named Caches.

• • If it's missing: Create a new folder (Shift+Command+N) and name it exactly Caches.
  • If it's an alias (it has a small arrow icon): Delete it and create a real folder named Caches instead. 

2. Reset the Finder and Sidebar

Sometimes the Finder sidebar points to a corrupted "broken link" for system folders. 

1. Right-click any folder in your Finder Sidebar that is giving you this error and select Remove from Sidebar.
2. Relaunch Finder: Hold the Option key, right-click the Finder icon in your Dock, and select Relaunch.
3. Try to navigate back to ~/Library/Caches to see if the error is gone. 

3. Restart

If the mediaanalysisd process is still not appearing in Activity Monitor:

1. Shut down your M1 Mac.
2. Press and hold the Power button until you see "Loading startup options".
3. Select your disk, then hold the Shift key and click Continue in Safe Mode.
4. While in Safe Mode, try selecting text in an image. Then, restart normally. Safe Mode clears and rebuilds system caches automatically. 

dogrocket wrote:

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.

I don't see Preview as a product to provide feedback. I submitted a bug report through the Feedback Assistant app back in December 2025. It still says I'm the only one reporting this bug. Please submit this problem there so Apple may take notice. I made the subject "Can't highlight text in some PDF's". Assign it to Preview. Under description put "I cannot highlight text in PDF’s made from bank statements. When I try to highlight a blue box appears around the text as if it was a field entry for filling out forms even though I’m not trying to fill, out a form."

Not sure if anyone mentioned it but in Language and Region in System Settings the Live Text has to be enabled

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.

An update and this is also mentioned by others, the problem appears to be with text in a table such as a bank statement. Outside of the table on the same document the highlight feature works. Also when you look at the document properties, preview shows that there is a highlight, but it is not visible. It will sometimes allow you to highlight text on a PDF document until you close and reopen a document or you select a different but similar document.

just upgraded to the 26.3 and the highlight bug still exists, I have to print save as PDF all the time to highlight my credit card statements because they are locked.... so that fix still doesn't really work. This is super annoying thats it's been an issue for 3 versions now.

Found a soluction -> Adobe Reader