Very slow scrolling when reading pdf file.

Wow. Was having this same problem and the "Print"-> "Save as PDF" fixed it! Scrolls super fast now.

THanks!

For the people still interested: the reason for slow scroling is high compression rate (e.g. compatible with Adobe Acrobat 10 and later) that is CPU demanding. Preview's own compression is inferior (larger files, lower quality) but it has the benefit of playing nice with the CPU.

For the Preview only users with large enough HDD capacity the Preview - Save As is a decent solution. As mentioned, the difference in size can be up to 500% for similar quality.

For most the "sweet spot" could be Acrobat's compression "Compatible with Acrobat 8.0 and later" or, obviously, a custom compression solution. For those of us lagging hundreds of GBs of PDFs there's not much else to do but suffer the slow performance.

Cheers

Ben

Scrolling in Adobe Reader 11.0.03 on my MBA Mountain Lion 10.8.3 (8GB/SSD) was awfully slow (indepenent of file size and any other programs running).

I could improve scrolling speed and "smoothness" by disabling the option "Use page cache" under "Page Display".

However, the Mac OS X built-in Preview 6.0.1 is still scrolling significantly smoother.

I've been having the same issue. Here's what I did, and it seems to work - (for now). We'll see.

Let me know if it works for you -

This was a very interesting discussion. I had been having the same problem. I followed the advice in one of the posts and set adobe to show one page at a time inestead of continuous scroll, and it worked! Thanks a lot.

P.S. 'Saving as pdf' sounds like a sound idea. But my files were downloaded from the net and password protected, so 'saving' was not allowed.

I have the same problem using my Macbook Air '13. As a 'solution' I open the pdf in my browser (I use Chrome). Unfortunaly making annotation's isn't possible. Even then you can consider using a chrome plug-in.

I'm on a speedy 3.4Ghz Core i7 iMac with an SSD and yes scrolling thru a 7.5MB pdf was painfully slow. Using Acrobat Reader XI 11.0

Thanks to etrol77, turning off "page cache" in Page Display made scrolling normal. Single page scrolling gets even better, but I prefer continous scrolling.

This is working for me. Thanks.

Not working anymore! How come?

Hey all,

I have a MBP Retina 2012 with SSD. I had the same issue, but solved it by setting Preview.app as the default application for opening all pdf files.

For everyone else new to OS X (Like me):

> Go to "Get Info" on a pdf file

> Go to the "Open With" drop down box

> Select "Preview.app"

> Click on "Change all..."

> Click "Continue"

You will still be able to open with Acrobat if you really need to, but you will have most of the same functions on the "Edit Bar".

Smooth, lightning fast scrolling at your finger tips... 😉

Nothing works for me, tried saving from Preview, the unchecking cache, etc. I'm on imac, played around with unchecking a few features, and it makes a bit of difference. Looks like the issue resides in how pdf recognizes words as images (even though there are no images), due to how the book or file was originally scanned. Like HendrikV, I've decided to go with Preview. One best thing about Preview is that two page scrolling has a flashy effect. On pdf, the instant scroll works poorly with the apple mouse, as it scrolls several pages. Very frustrating! In the future, adobe should just make two page scrolling the same as the one in Preview.

I bought a MB Pro 15-inch Retina. Core i7, 512GB SSD and 8GB RAM to replace a two year old Lenovo X1 running Windows 7 Pro. And I can't read a PDF smoothly. It's slow, clumsy and extremely frustrating.

Calling a spade a spade. This is the reason that enterprises can't embrace Mac OSX as a regular business tool. Two ages of posts, with 30,000+ views, on how to read a PDF file. I could fire up a Windows XP VM on my MBP and open the same document in Acrobat, and it'd work 100%. Without adjusting settings, spending hours fiddling with preferences etc.

So, two years after the original post, and apple still haven't mastered pdf viewing. Nice. Why can't the mac just use as much cache and disk space as it needs so i can read a god **** pdf file smoothly?

I must partially disagree. It would be one thing if Apple didn't improve in 2 years but with Yosemite the Preview is almost unusable for me. It crashes on PDF's that I create either with ABBYY FineReader Pro or with Adobe Acrobat Pro and in some cases it even corrupts the existing files. In other words, Preview has gone from annoying to downright useless for reading PDF's that use advanced compression techniques (anything other than JPEG compression is beyond Preview's capabilities).

It is sad to see Apple going down like this😟: one can only read certain PDF's (unless using 3rd party software), cannot read gmail (unless using 3rd party software), one has problems connecting to Wi-Fi, ones computer slows down when one has a lot of 3rd party software installed (to read the PDF's and email etc.). Sounds familiar? Windows 10 years ago?

A Work-around that works

I came across this thread due to the crazy-slow browsing of Architectural PDF plans in Preview. Just to let you know that I found a work-around on "MacRumours" that is working for me....

"A workaround for those of you who haven't found it - at least for viewing - is just to use Quicklook. Just find the file you want to see in Finder and hit the spacebar."

Zooming scrolling and panning of the PDF plan files is way better and completely useable when done through "Quicklook"

I hope you have a similar experience. This may also help Apple figure out what the bug is...