Preview opens Annotated PDF as black box, sometimes.

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Preview opens Annotated PDF as black box, sometimes.

I am a musician and use the app forscore on my ipad. Everything is up to date with operating systems and app updates. In the app, I use the apple pencil to annotate the pdf with things I need. From the app, you can share a pdf with the annotations, which I do frequently, as I need to provide music for others. I typically air drop to my macbook air. Sometimes (key is sometimes), when I open the pdf on my computer, pages or portions of pages turn black. It is only sometimes, and typically happens only after I scroll or zoom. Sometimes I can see the thumbnail without issue and its only the large PDF that turns black. Occasionally, it will be fine if I close and re-open the pdf. This has been an issue for multiple years, and I am just getting tired of finding extremely annoying workarounds. I know there are other PDF viewing programs available, but I would prefer to stick with preview if possible.https://youtu.be/UCc89NojErQ

Posted on Oct 7, 2025 10:28 AM

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Answer 1

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VikingOSX

Level 10

124,106 points

Oct 7, 2025 11:17 AM in response to shstkvchvlnst

Depending upon the application doing the PDF annotation, these may be written into the PDF in a manner that is not ncessarily compatible with another PDF reader (e.g. Preview). If you cannot provide those annotations using Preview, then your other recourse is to use Adobe Acrobat Reader on both i/Pad/OS and Mac for viewing the PDFs. Adobe provides better PDF handling for those edge cases that may foil Apple's Preview.

Apple is not here and as fellow users, we cannot fix how Preview interprets the PDF annotations from a third-party application.

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