preview.app stuck on first page of PDF when in single page mode

I regularly use Preview.app to view PDFs and like to use the "Single Page" feature to view an entire page at one time. I have "Single Page" view set as the default behavior.


Lately when I open PDFs, they open properly to the first page but I am unable to navigate to any other page via scrolling, page up/down, arrow keys. If the PDF has a table of contents, I am able to move past the first page via it and then proceed to navigate normally. If there isn't a table of contents, the only fix is to switch to continuous scroll mode and proceed to navigate past the first page.


This is very annoying! Unfortunately, I don't remember when this started happening. It could be when I upgraded to MacOS Sierra, but I cant confirm.


Anyone else see this behavior?

iMac, macOS Sierra (10.12)

Posted on Oct 7, 2016 7:56 AM

Reply
16 replies

May 29, 2017 10:26 AM in response to dbarbi1

What seems to be happening is that when we used to set Preview in "single page" as the default, a newly-opened document window was exactly the right size, and you could easily up/down arrow through the pages.


However, now it instead opens the document with the page ever-so-slightly too large for the window from side to side, so Preview switches into "Oh, you've zoomed in and you'd like to scroll around this ONE page", and so the arrow keys become the scrolling around that ONE page keys.


Except that since it's _vertically_ the right size, up/down doesn't scroll. Left/right arrows will, though.


If you slightly enlarge your window (or shrink the page) to include some space all around, you'll see the up and down keys work without the option/alt key.


And this behavior is still screwed up as of 2017-05-29 (OS 10.12.5). So <extremely bad swear word here>, Apple. You really haven't noticed this in your own work yet ?

Jun 6, 2017 9:28 AM in response to ricks56

Ricks56, I think you're exactly right about scrolling behavior. I bet you also have "Sys Prefs -> General -> Show scroll bars" set to "Automatic" or "Always". I found that switching the scrollbar display to "When scrolling" makes the problem go away. I think Preview isn't accounting for the width of the scrollbars when it opens a PDF. Since "When scrolling" is the default most people probably never encounter this. (Hiding the scrollbars except when actively scrolling is in itself a horrendous UI failure, but Apple seems to have really thrown away the good UI design handbook lately.)

Oct 24, 2016 5:09 PM in response to trevoz

I'm having the same problem and I really do not think it's the way Apple designed it but rather a weird "in-between" glitch.


Why I say that is that after you "release" the document from the in-between mode, you can go ahead and use the up/down keys (without ALT) again. You can notice that it enters this in-between mode when you have a fully filled scroll bar on the right.


Really hope this gets solved soon... I tried trashing the Preview prefs but to no avail...

Oct 25, 2016 2:09 PM in response to trevoz

This is the most BIZARRE behavior I've seen. The applications are getting more and more annoying trying to hide or eliminate obvious behavior (and yes, obvious as this is the way it worked forever in all previous versions). Also: the first page that opens actually does NOT open in single page but in some "in between" mode. Lastly: why does not preview open in the last size of a windows that was used (e.g., using ALL top-bottom space available). VERY ANNOYING.

Oct 31, 2016 9:09 AM in response to benjaminhoong

I agree with benjaminhoong. I believe this to be a bug. As further validation of this, the menu items Go->Up and Go->Down are available to click but do nothing when clicked until this "glitch" is unlocked after using Option-Arrow (or clicking on a different page in the thumbnails list.) If this was a purposeful (and baffling) "feature" from Apple those menu items would be disabled, I would imagine.


I will file a bug report with Apple and see what happens.

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preview.app stuck on first page of PDF when in single page mode

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