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LostinME Author

Level 1

9 points

Slow PDF Viewing in Yosemite

Hello,

Since Yosemite Beta, Safari makes viewing PDF very slow. I don't have the problem if I download the PDF and use Preview app.

I have a rMBP late 2013 i7 16GB. It's even slow when having a few pages open. Firefox doesn't have this problem.

Also it seems that randomly Safari starts to use the discrete graphics.

This is very very very annoying.

Any ideas? Or we have to wait Apple to fix this ****.. they must be pretty idle knowing how the "new" ipad is the same as before.

iPad, iOS 8.1

Posted on Oct 21, 2014 4:21 AM

Top-ranking reply

sanpitch

Level 1

0 points

Posted on Oct 21, 2014 6:15 AM

I actually have the problem with Preview. It uses an entire CPU and makes PDF viewing unworkable.

View in context

86 replies

zBernie2

Level 1

34 points

May 13, 2015 7:34 PM in response to LostinME

It is now May 13, 2015. I am running Yosemite 10.10.3, and still this infernal PDF scrolling problem persists! I have a $2,200 Macbook Pro Retina, and I cannot read PDF files! I tried a couple of the fixes in this thread, and it helped some:

1. Select System Preferences > General > Show scroll bars > Always.

2. In Preview preferences, uncheck "Use smooth text and line art".

This is unacceptable! Way to go Apple!

May 15, 2015 8:03 AM in response to LostinME

The only way I can view large PDF files is with Acrobat running a VM windows in parallels. I have tried every reader imaginable, nothing else works. This has been going on for too long.

rha_

Level 1

0 points

May 15, 2015 8:35 AM in response to accepthim

Try to use Command+0 to zoom to 100%. This might help.

Other zoom levels causing sluggish scroll on my MBP.

May 16, 2015 3:01 PM in response to rha_

This issue was reported on October 2014, May 2015 and still isn't fixed.

May 16, 2015 7:11 PM in response to Marcelo NS

Apparently the only fix is to not use Preview. Use a web browser or Acrobat.

XavierX

Level 1

4 points

Jun 11, 2015 12:21 AM in response to Mark Dollop

It seems to be working nice on el capitan. Big pdf files opens as fast as before.

Luffff

Level 1

0 points

Jun 23, 2015 10:45 AM in response to XavierX

It does has some improvements on El Capitan, but not as good as Mavericks. Meanwhile, if a PDF contains some pictures, graphs and annotations, the performance is still bad in El Capitan. I am so doubt 'there is 8 times faster in opening PDF' which said by Apple. Maybe Apple is trying to make the time in opening PDF from 0.1 second to 0.1/8 seconds, which is nearly useless.

winglet

Level 1

27 points

Jul 4, 2015 1:33 AM in response to alls0rts

alls0rts

Don't remember where I found this solution, but running this works for me. I do find that I have to run it every so often (possibly after updates). I'm on 10.10.3 and just had to run it to return speed of preview to its former self.

sudo update_dyld_shared_cache -force

I just updated to 10.10.4 and the slow PDF issue returned (it had been there, then gone away in 10.10.3).

Running this sudo command solved the issue for me. Working fine now. Thanks!

2013 MB Pro Retina, 16GB RAM.

Russ205

Level 1

4 points

Jul 11, 2015 3:23 PM in response to LostinME

I am thrilled to report that PDF viewing is finally fixed in El Capitan 10.11! I just installed the beta and it was smooth as glass. Now just don't break it again!

Badunit

Level 7

28,222 points

Oct 2, 2015 4:03 AM in response to Russ205

I came here to post the same thing. I can view PDFs again!

Dec 2, 2015 7:09 PM in response to LostinME

Preview 8.0 seems bad in a number of ways (eg., annotation is now awful). Fortunately, if you are on Yosemite you can just download Preview 7.0. It runs fine, annotates properly, and can sit in the machine alongside 8.0 without any problems I've seen.*

Get it here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6pukWg8y-JBT2ZraVFuay1PdzA/view

Something has gone wrong at Apple. I've just bought a new Macbook Pro with Yosemite and already I've spent hours returning the system font to something I can read (Lucida Grande), getting back the old version of Preview, and I'm now looking at downgrading Mail, if I can. Apple has made a bunch of decisions about what they think people should want, imposed much difficulty opting out of those choices, and this time they've made a lot of bad calls.

* Correction: it can behave erratically when cropping. Still better than the new one, though.

Slow PDF Viewing in Yosemite