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How do I stop Preview from quitting when I close all windows?

This is driving me mad! I work with Preview a lot. If I dont keep one window open the the App quits! So when I go to open a new file I have to wait for the App to relaunch! Crazy!

Posted on Aug 9, 2011 9:56 AM

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9 replies

Aug 9, 2011 10:28 AM in response to William Martin1

is the app actually quiting on just vanishing from the dock?


A few of the apps in Lion now use auto termination (preview is one of them)


what should happen


you have finished for now in preview and close the document

preview is still running but not showing on the dock


if you dont use preview for a while and the system needs it's resources, it will be terminated

otherwise it will just resume from background state and go back onto your dock

Aug 9, 2011 10:32 AM in response to paulsalter

The Icon remains in the dock - but it looses it's white dot that indicates that it is running. To describe the situatiuon in another way - I close the only open Preview window. I want the App to remain running so that it is ready to open my next document. The App quits, as if I had hit CMD-Q, but I did nothing to quit it! I dont want to quit it - I want it to remain open ready for my next document.

Aug 9, 2011 10:39 AM in response to William Martin1

losing the dot sounds normal, just tested here and this is what happens


open an image in preview, close the document

when i navigate away from preview, dot disapears from dock (activity monitor still shows preview running)

open another image, preview instantly comes up (dot comes back)


if yours is actualy closing when you just close a document, then it sounds like a bug

Aug 9, 2011 11:28 AM in response to William Martin1

For more information about this new behavior, take a look at my reply in this discussion:


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3233318?answerId=15825415022#15825415022


For more than you want to know about this issue take a look at this page of John Siracusa's review of Lion:


Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: the Ars Technica review


I don't like it either, but it ain't going back to the way it was.

Francine

Sep 22, 2011 4:21 AM in response to William Martin1

Same here.

It seems it takes some time (too much) each time I open a new document and that's quiet annoying. So bad.

On the other hand, looking at Activity Monitor, it still shows Preview running.

Till now, I though an app having the white dot in the dock is actually running (may be idle with no cpu time, but still running, ie it's mapped in memory, even if maybe paged) and an app without the white dot MUST BE NOT running (thas is, it's just a file stored in the file system, not loaded in memory).

So I think I'm also missing something which I don't know/understand.

However TextEdit and other apps NEVER "quit" after closing the last open document. Why should Preview?!

I don't understand which is the difference of Preview behavior vs TextEdt, for instance.

At the moment the only rough solution I could think about is keeping one dummy preview document always open and keep it shrinked in the dock... ;-((

How do I stop Preview from quitting when I close all windows?

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