Preview crashes on El Capitan

Thanks Eric for your suggestion.

Although this thread is for El Capitan, I am still using Yosemite 10.10.5 and was desperate to find a solution to my problem with Preview suddenly beachballing when any PDF or image opened in Preview. I used your suggestion and it has worked.

It does seem that Preview continues to 'store' previously opened files in memory and after time it gets clogged up hence the never-ending revolving beachball. I'm not a techie so I've no idea why this happens. I wonder if it has anything to do with the Dr Cleaner App. Although I can't be 100% certain, but the App recently updated and my Preview problem started shortly afterwards.

Anyway, thanks again.

@aoakua try acrobat it doesn't have the same problem. It seems they don't use the same rendering engine. Acrobat's annotation feature is quite cool as compared to preview. They've changed the UI and it's much less resource greedy as it used to be. Skim is even better but Skim shares Preview's problems. Only problem with Acrobat is that it does not update the PDF file on the fly (i.e. when you typeset). So unless you're producing PDFs with Latex, Acrobat is fine.

In general the "cleaner" apps do more harm than good. Often they remove files that are needed by the Mac. The forums are full of users with computers that no longer work correctly after running these so call 'cleaners' (Memory Clean, CleanMyMac, and MacKeeper). Do not install any third party so called Mac cleaning utilities. They can do harm to your Mac.

I suggest at a minimum you run the OS X Yosemite 10.10.5 Combo Update

https://support.apple.com/kb/DL1832

MORE INFO ON WHY RUNNING COMBO FIXES ISSUES

Apple updates available from the Software Update application are incremental updates. Delta updates are also incremental updates and are available from Apple Downloads (software updates are generally smaller than delta updates). The Combo updates contain all incremental updates and will update files that could have become corrupted.

Combo updaters will install on the same version as they're applying--no need to roll back or do a clean install.

"Delta" updaters can only take you from one version to the next. For example: 10.10.4 to 10.10.5. If somehow the 10.10.4 is missing something it should have, and that something isn't changed between 10.10.4 and 10.10.5 it will still be stale after the delta update.

Download EtreCheck and paste results here for help troubleshooting.

http://www.etresoft.com/etrecheck

Hmmm...that's a something new to note dianeoforegon. I use Disk Cleaner on my Mac and to be honest, have never had this preview crashes prior to using this software so you might be on to something here. Do you have a link on this? Disk Cleaner has been very good in saving me tons of GB but if this is the downside, i have to consider another solution as this is eating away at my research productivity.

Thanks

I don't use any cleaner apps - I still have tons of problems.

And the ppl who have this issue with brand new computers probably don't use such apps either...

I don't think there is any link in this case.

Pleased to report that 10.11.2 update, released to the public today, seems to have resolved the issue for me!

At least thus far, I probably won't be confident now until it goes a week without a hang (I spent about fifteen minutes attempting to stress test it with activities that used to cause hangs pretty readily and then did some more normal work involving PDFs in Preview, TeXShop, and Safari for a further hour).

No mention of this in the release notes.

(I also have never used a "cleaning" tool, I'm sure they can cause problems but I doubt this particular bug is related)

Search this for for "clean my mac" and "Mackeeper"

I suggest running the combo updater. This might help with your issues.

I have also not experienced this issue since the 10.11.2 update - but again, this isn't based on a lot of testing, but I was getting this error consistently after opening 2 or 3 PDFs in Preview and scrolling through them, so far it has not happened after the update.

Solved the problem on my new MacBook Pro also! Finally able to open my PDFs!

Susan

Hi everyone,

Sadly to say, I still have the former problem, even though I thought it had gone after I upgraded to OS 10.11.2.

I haven't encountered the unresponsive phenomenon when I just open PDF files.

But today, after I inserted a file to an opened PDF file (opened PDF file size 1.1M with 15 pages, inserted file size 2.4M with 6 pages), when I try to save or close the file, the Preview app froze up and I got the spinning beach ball. I tried to insert other files, but the results were the same.

It seems that Apple hasn't solved this issue thoroughly.

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013) .

Yeah, for my sake, I haven't had any more crashes, but I have noticed that PDF pages are very slow to render . . . So, for me, there has been some improvement, but the slowness is irritating

I'm using:

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Late 2013)

2.6 GHz Intel Core i7

16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3

NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M 2048 MB

Also happy to report so far, no crashes or freezes. I've had 11 pdf's open at full screen, put my Mac to sleep more than 4 times and coming back with no crashes. They usually crash or freeze after being in full screen then waking the Mac from sleeping. So far it seems the last update fixed it but i can't say till i run this for at least a month.

Make sure you report to Apple.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

I would suggest that you sign up for the beta so you can send detailed reports via the feedback app. It allows you to upload files with your report.

https://beta.apple.com/sp/betaprogram/welcome

Unenroll how to leave beta no more updaters

You are lucky!

I have a 2015 15 inch MBP-r where preview still continues to crash with a 2Gb PDF even after updating to 10.11.2 (using the combo updater). I don't have MacKeeper or any "cleaning" programs installed.

I was really hoping this update would provide a fix but it hasn't. I've had to resort to opening PDF files with Acrobat Reader DC for the meantime.

Vishal

Same issue here. I do not get a crash report... I just have to shut everything else down, force quit the apps that are not responding, and restart my computer. It's not always Preview that crashes - often it's Mail, sometimes Chrome, and lately Calendar. Sometimes Preview crashes when I'm trying to view or edit a PDF or picture (all types) but usually the crash occurs some time after. And it's not consistent enough where I open something in Preview and the crash occurs immediately. I had my laptop in the shop for 2 weeks while they tried to replicate the issue and they were unable so I've been documenting every crash for the last couple of weeks. I'm noting which app crashed, what I was trying to do, what other apps were open, and whether the Force Quit menu indicated that the app was not responding. I've also been noting when there are apps listed in the Force Quit menu that, by looking at the dock, do NOT appear to open and Preview is almost always listed.