Preview Sidebar

Have the same problem. Also, every time I search a document, the side bar pops up. There seems to be no way to change this.

I don't see the point of this behavior? Can't work split-screen with sidebar as it blocks half the searched text.

Rip,

I can duplicate your observations, and will also be interested in a solution.

.

Hopefully this will help you ☞ OS X El Capitan: Customize the Finder toolbar and sidebar:

https://support.apple.com/kb/PH22175?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US

HeyRip52 Oct 1, 2015 8:02 PM

sidebar keeps coming up on pdf files I've saved and then look at using Preview.

No preference, but you can set the precedent by

open a PDF in Preview and use command shift \

to show the tool bar and the left icon dropdown>>Hide Sidebar

leroydouglas wrote:

No preference, but you can set the precedent by

open a PDF in Preview and use command shift \

to show the tool bar and the left icon dropdown>>Hide Sidebar

AFAIK, that is new behavior in El Capitan.

Whenever I open a PDF for the first time, I get the sidebar. Then I use (command/shift/1) or choose View>Hide Sidebar, or as you describe choose Hide Sidebar from the tool menu to eliminate the sidebar.

Upon subsequent openings of that PDF document the preference to hide the sidebar sticks, but all new PDF's require the Hide Sidebar to be reinvoked for the new PDF.

Every time Apple "improves" Preview it becomes less usable. (Comments in Yosemite, the sidebar in El Cap.) If they improve it much more, I won't be able to use it at all. Acrobat is getting more and more work.

This is *really* annoying when one needs to repeatedly open multiple pdf documents for reference. It seems like the software people have simply lost their way.

I checked for a ~/Library/ plist, and found this, but it doesn't look helpful --

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">

<dict>

<key>NSWindow Frame NSMovePanelAutosaveName</key>

<string>156 871 334 120 0 0 1680 1028 </string>

</dict>

</plist>

Just get in the habit of using the Option+Command+1 key combination to hid the side bar. It's quite quick.

Add the following key to the plist: PVPDFSuppressSidebarOnOpening

<key>PVPDFSuppressSidebarOnOpening</key>

<string>true</string>

You can use the defaults write command to do this in Terminal.

cd ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Preferences/

defaults write com.apple.Preview PVPDFSuppressSidebarOnOpening true

Thanks much! That did the trick! Now if I could get Preview to stop generating spurious security alerts every time it sees a PDF it didn't generate, it might be useful again. Is there a handy fix for that one too? (change of subject, obviously)

Thank you so much for posting this information. Worked for me in most cases.

Perfect!! Everything is back to normal now.

Cannot thank you enough!🙂

To user2200044 -

You, if not a genius, are at least a savior. I was really getting annoyed with the sidebar always opening, especially when opening multiple pdf docs. Closing an open sidebar left an overly large document, so simply closing the sidebar was not enough. I can now open a pdf the way I want to ... without the sidebar and in normal size. Thank you.

Thank you very much!

I review about 40 PDF files a day and the sidebar opening automatically was driving me crazy!

Great job.

BTW, where do you find these use tips?

Brendan