Preview bug with Firefox.

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Level 1

67 points

Preview bug with Firefox.

Preview app cannot highlight PDF Text sourced from Firefox. But a PDF sourced from Safari works fine. Why? "Sourced" means I downloaded these thru respective Browsers, Saved as PDF (with different names), then opened with Preview to perform highlighting of Text. Attached is the "Get Info" on each file where the differences can be seen - but it is all beyond my level of understanding. I screen shotted the top part only for the differences. Everything below this is identical file information.

Posted on Feb 28, 2026 8:23 AM

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Answer 1

Al_Chance Author

Level 1

67 points

Mar 1, 2026 4:52 AM in response to VikingOSX

The only extension I have is Tranquility Reader, which blocks a lot of Ads. I turned it off, tested a new file with no change to problem.

I tried using the small upper right side toolbar Download icon to Download, instead of Print/Save as PDF, and the problem went away. Using the new Download file it now works as expected.

Thanks for helping me on this!

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Answer 2

VikingOSX

Level 10

129,082 points

Mar 1, 2026 3:03 AM in response to Al_Chance

I had no issues applying a highlight annotation to form i4562.pdf with Preview from Tahoe 26.3. Used the dual save procedures as I performed on Sequoia from Firefox 148.

The only two extensions I installed in Firefox 148 are 1) AdBlocker Ultimate, and 2) Dark Reader for Firefox. Perhaps you have other extensions in Firefox that may be interfering with the PDF save operation.

You can even directly apply proper yellow highlight annotations to the opened PDF while still viewed in Firefox 148.

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Answer 3

VikingOSX

Level 10

129,082 points

Feb 28, 2026 11:22 AM in response to Al_Chance

I just opened the 2025 instructions for IRS Form 4562 in Firefox 148 and then chose File > Save Page As… > Portable Document Format. That PDF opened in Preview, where I was able to apply a blue highlight to selected text. The same result occurred when choosing the hamburger ≡ menu > Print…> Save to PDF.

Tested Sequoia 15.7.4

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Answer 4

Al_Chance Author

Level 1

67 points

Feb 28, 2026 12:15 PM in response to VikingOSX

I have Tahoe, so that is the only difference in our experience. At least we have narrowed down the problem to Tahoe?

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Preview bug with Firefox.

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