Preview opens multiple pdf's in same window

Hey everybody, I too have been plagued by this bug for YEARS. Today, I figured out the issue. Lets say you have a directory with 10 files in it. You drag all 10 to Preview icon. 6 open in the same window, 4 open in another. Now, open Terminal and navigate to your directory. Type "ls -lah". In the left column, you will see some files have an "@" sign after their permissions entry. This means they have extended attributes. For whatever reason, these files are treated as a separate drag and drop operation, hence they open in their own window. For the affected files, you need to strip the extended attributes, using "xattr -c file.jpg". Voila.

Upgrading to Preview 9.0 introduced this bug for me.

Opening a new PDF file adds it to an existing / already open window in Preview, where the new file gets added to an already open PDF file. ANNOYING!

Do a backup, preferable 2 backups on 2 separate drives.

Quit Preview.

Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Remove the following. You may not find them all. Restart and test.

Containers/com.apple.Preview

Containers/com.apple.quicklook.ui.helper

Preferences/com.apple.Preview.LSSharedFileList.plist

Preferences/com.apple.Preview.SandboxedPersistentURLs.LSSharedFileList.plist

Saved Application State/com.apple.Preview.savedState

Credit Linc Davis for this solution.

Preview Reset automatic download - 3rd party solution

Has anyone been able to figure this out? It's driving me nuts. It's definitely a new behaviour. Also starts opening in same window after 16 files. Does the same thing in safe mode. Tried prohtex2's tip in terminal, no luck. I remember this happened about a year ago and I managed to fix it by resetting Preview to factory settings but it hasn't helped this time. Maybe there's some other app that allows you to open in different windows?

So, it's 2017 I'm running Mac OS Sierra 10.12.6 and it doesn't matter if my Preview Preference has "open separately" checked (unchecked, restarted preview, rechecked) I still get a new PDF opening in an already open window. This is a real drag because it makes it difficult to print the newly opened PDF. Is there a solution or do we just get to hope someone at Apple notices?

I also find this BUG anoying.

I have not been able to figure out what triggers this, except it seems to happen more when a lot of pdfs are open.

Same problem here, but with opening images, not necessarily .pdf's. I have one Preview window open now with a pdf in it, plus numerous .jpg's. I want separate windows. Prefs does not work!

Without this radio button in Preview's preference selected files are opened in separated windows:

If you don't want groups opened at the same time to be in the same window unselect the radio button below it.

OR, select the last radio button.

Yeah, I know about that pref pane, but it doesn't always work the way it should. Numerous files will open in separate windows, and then all of sudden they start opening in the same window! No clue why.

As a test log into another user account on your Mac and test to see if Preview has the same problem or not. Report back with the results.

Well, right now Preview is working as I want it to (new window for each file). I might try your suggestion when Preview is not behaving properly. I'm the only user, and I know I can create guest users, but that seems like a pain for something simple that should be working correctly. Thanks.

From my testing it looks like Preview will open a maximum of 16 PDFs in their own windows. After that Preview will start reusing an existing window. It's annoying.

Thanks, Tom, that's kind of what I figured out myself, although I never bothered to count the number of items I was opening...till today, when it happened again and you were right. BTW, I'm usually opening .jpg's, not .pdf's, but the result is the same. Frustrating and annoying like you said, but at least I won't go looking for a way to fix it anymore. Thanks.

Paul

Yes, this seems to be the cause of the fault.

"Open each file in its own window" doesn't when there are are than 15 windows open.

You can circumvent the bug by selecting "Open groups of files in the same window".

But if you don't want that behaviour you are stuck.

I will file a bug report and maybe Apple could fix this ...

This fragrant problem comes on the heels of spending 3 hours trying to get headphones to work. Oy!! I'm pulling up around 30+ images from preview right now. I want to see them in separate windows, not one window. I checked in preview preferences to be sure I had the right box ticked and I do. SO why is preview opening my images in the same window!!!! It's really just started happening recently (I reckon). It's a pain in the arsenal, lemme tell ya!!