Slow PDF Viewing in Yosemite

@arjun.mehta: I just tried your suggestion...genius!

I have the same problem with sluggish Preview on largish PDFs. I have a close to top-of-line iMac 5K/retina, and still not good. This is why I had previously installed Adobe Reader, which does seem to work OK.

The only problem with the Quick Look approach or Reader is that I can't mark up, which is the very handy feature of Preview.

I am using a 2012 Mini i7 Quad Core with 16GB RAM. The problem with largish PDF documents in Preview 8 under Yosemite has been causing me a great deal of frustration.

Eventually I have dragged Preview 7 onto my desktop from another disc. If I open the a document in Preview 7 and then let it sit there the program registers 155.8MB of Memory usage in Activity Monitor.

If I open the identical document in Preview 8, under the same conditions, it registers 2.97GB.

Although that should not be enough to stop the computer - it does. Memory Clean App shows that Preview 8 is using near 9GB (at the same time as Activity Monitor is showing the lower figure) so something is clearly wrong.

I am now using Preview 7 again but cannot get it to operate as the default PDF program and so I have to open documents from within Preview which is certainly both bad for workflow and annoying.

I cannot get Preview 8 off my computer. This looks like an Apple problem.

I am using a 2012 Mini i7 Quad Core with 16GB RAM. The problem with largish PDF documents in Preview 8 under Yosemite has been causing me a great deal of frustration.

Eventually I have dragged Preview 7 onto my desktop from another disc. If I open the a document in Preview 7 and then let it sit there the program registers 155.8MB of Memory usage in Activity Monitor.

If I open the identical document in Preview 8, under the same conditions, it registers 2.97GB.

Although that is should not be enough to stop the computer - it does. Memory Clean App shows that Preview 8 is using near 9GB (at the same time as Activity Monitor is showing the lower figure) so something is clearly wrong.

I am now using Preview 7 again but cannot get it to operate as the default PDF program and so I have to open documents from within Preview which is certainly both bad for workflow and annoying.

I cannot get Preview 8 off my computer. This looks like an Apple problem.

So, I stumbled across something that made a significant improvement. I had the same issue as described with PDF rendering in Preview (since the Yosemite upgrade) that was unbearably slow. I turned off Smooth Text and Line Art (in the Preferences->PDF menu) and this helped significantly. I still feel that Preview is a little sluggish, but this is usable. I can imagine that you might find a document that unchecking this could degrade the quality of the fonts/art rendering, but so far for me I haven't found this. And, now I can go back to using Preview...

I'd be curious to hear if this helps out others.

wow! You solved my issue!

Turning off Smooth Text and Line Art is like night and day.

I opened up a call at apple support and they couldn't help me: statement was to wait till a fix comes out since it's a known issue.

Opening some PDFs made my entire Macbook Pro totally unresponsive: I had to hard power off the mac. Couldn't even kill the process locally.

Thanks a lot

Glad to hear it worked for you!

The last few OSX "upgrades" have not been up-to-Apple's previous standards. Very frustrating experiences like this have been far too common.

just tried with 10.10.2

still not solved so I need to use your workaround.

Going to contact apple again.

Same here, 10.10.2 doesn't solve the problem… Apple is becoming the new Microsoft…

Here my standard workarounds (if anybody is interested):

tip1:

Delete /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.plist

Delete ~/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.windowserver*.plist

Shutdown OSX

Startup, immediately press and hold the P and R keys while holding down the option (⌥) and command (⌘) keys before the gray boot screen appears, which resets the PRAM

tip2:
Turn off "Smooth Text and Line Art" in the Preferences. Of course, that's really sad, because PDFs then look terrible, but at least they are easier to work with.

tip3:

For just viewing, use QuickLook: in the Finder, select the PDF and hit [SPACE]. Strangely, QuickLook isn't affected by the bug.

Using QuickLook for viewing PDFs has become a second nature to me – argh, Apple, quo vadis?

I think I've found a *parcial* solution:

- Preferences > General > Show scroll bars > Always.

It made the scrolling much, much smoother on most of the PDFs I've been using. Why? I have no idea!

I'd love to know if it works for anyone else...

Cheers

LP

Thank you, luigipirex!

I tried your solution on my MBP Mid 2014 and it works! Scrolling is significantly smoother now - not perfect but absolutely okay.

This also seems to improve scrolling in Safari on sites like Google+ with a long stream ...

Strange thing indeed ... hopefully it lasts ...

Cheers

Sorry folks,

This doesn't do a dern thing for my ratcheting, herky, jerky scrolling issues with PDF files in Preview or Acrobat in Yosemite. Neither did upgrade to 10.10.2. I have one Mac still on Mavericks and there is absolutely no such problem with it. I know that Apple is aware of this problem in Yosemite. I am awaiting a true fix.

the only operating system in the history of the earth that cannot read pdf files

including Windows,Android,windows mobile,windows phone,Tizen,Web os,ubuntu,palm,firefox and others

great job Tim!

at the same time Tim Cook wins CEO of the year award!

still no fix in 10.10.2

Unacceptable. I have been reporting to Apple support, feedback and Genius Bar -- no one is able to help. They just keep telling me to reinstall the entire OS which I've done and no fix. Pinwheel of death viewing pdf's of any size on new rMBP and 11" air

Still no fix on Sun 22 Mar?

Does anybody know whether Apple is dealing with this annoying issue or not?

Is there any official workaround from Apple?

I have to manage pdf files on a MS Windows machine: really frustrating :-(

seems no fixed. What kind of mac do you have?

on my macbook pro 2010 big issues. On a macbook air 2014, no issues at all.