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Services menu is empty in Sierra Preview App

In the Preview App, there is no "Services" menu item in the contextual menu. In the main menu "Services" the list of services is empty even though I have many services enabled in preferences.


What has happened? Is this a bug in the Sierra Preview App?

Posted on Oct 9, 2016 2:25 AM

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16 replies

Jun 5, 2017 6:09 PM in response to andersvernerolsen

A partial solution is to use Safari when it can open whatever the type of document you're trying to work with. PDF's being a prime example. Just "Control + click" on the PDF to bring up the context menu and then choose:


Open With -> Safari.app


User uploaded file



Safari's Services menu remains available and will properly send any highlighted text to a Service.


User uploaded file


This works great on Sierra 10.12.5 running Safari 10.1.1

Dec 30, 2017 2:34 AM in response to Al 9000

Dear all,


I am very happy to report that upgrading from Sierra to High Sierra (macOS 10.13.2) reintroduced the text services in PDFKit and therefore Preview.app (Screenshot of a German macOS where "Preview" is "Vorschau" but you'll get the idea):


User uploaded file


Classical Apple giveth, Apple taketh away and giveth again cycle I guess...


Maybe this also leads to a more functional PDFKit on iOS.


Cheers everyone


Dennis

Oct 17, 2016 6:13 AM in response to paulo555

paulo555 wrote:


Same problem with pdf files... No Services menu in Preview, Skim, Bookends, ... A PDF Kit problem? (another one...)


The Services available depend on the context - e.g., Services that receive Files in Folders in Finder only show when you're in the Finder; Services that receive text only when you are editing text, etc.


Even in Safari, as I'm typing this, I can see only four; but as soon as some text is selected, a large number of Services (all that receive text in any application) are readily available.


Most of the Services that I have do not appear in Preview, but that makes sense.


However, text Services never appear in Preview. Whether they used to in previous OS, I cannot say, as don't recall using those with Preview, ever.

Oct 17, 2016 10:13 PM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Obrigado Luis pela resposta.

Sou um novato no mundo mac mas conheço o 'básico' 🙂. - falo do menu contextual (seleccionar texto> right-click> Serviços).

O que está aqui em causa são serviços que claramente funcionavam em algumas aplicações de leitura de pdf - Skim, Preview, Devonthink, etc. - e que, desde a actualização do mac OS, simplesmente deixaram de funcionar.

A título de exemplo, eu utilizo o Devonthink e o Excerptor. Como pode verificar na imagem deste link (https://raw.githubusercontent.com/guoc/excerptor/master/screenshots/excerpt_to_p asteboard.gif) [imagem relacionada com a ferramenta Excerptor], existem diversos serviços disponíveis no Preview relacionados com o Devonthink e o Excerptor. No meu caso, todos esses serviços estão activados nas Preferências do Sistema e não aparecem nas aplicações referidas (não faço referência ao Acrobat porque esta aplicação nunca funcionou com os "Serviços").

Mesmo desconhecendo o que está em causa, já constatei que vários programadores alertam para os diversos problemas do designado PDFkit no macOS sierra. A título de exemplo, vários softwares de referências bibliográficas que utilizam visualizadores de pdf's (Endnote, Bookends, etc), assim como o Devonthink, apresentam diversos problemas relacionados com os pdf's. A própria Endnote desaconselha o upgrade para o sierra!

User uploaded file

Oct 18, 2016 12:18 AM in response to andersvernerolsen

It depends on the Preview panels where the focus currently is.


When I select text in a PDF document in Preview or nothing at all, the Services are empty:

User uploaded file


But when I open the Inspector panel in Preview (Tools > Show Inspector) and select text in one of the Info panes, there are suddenly plenty of services available: So Preview on Sierra supports services, but not for text selected from a PDF document.

User uploaded file

I am using the "Edit > Speech" menu in Preview to speak the selected text and to save it to iTunes.

Oct 18, 2016 2:38 AM in response to paulo555

There seem to issues, probably with PDFKit, that affect the capability of text services to work with text selected inside a pdf.


But the Excerptor case may be different: I looked it up, and it requires installing SIMBL, which can only be installed by disabling SIP (System Integrity Protection), as it makes changes inside /System. It seems quite likely that in updating the OS these hacks may have been disabled, so if you requires this you may have to install SIMBL again. I do not recommend disabling SIP, but you can do so at your own risk.

Oct 18, 2016 8:45 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Hi Luis,


About the Excerptor, I need to clarify this:

- I installed it after the macOS sierra update;

- After the SIMBL/Excerptor installation, I restored all the computer (via TimeMachine) to a date before the installation...

Excluding the Acrobat (never worked with "services"), all the apps I use with a pdf viewer integrated - Skim, Devonthink, Bookends, Endnote, Scrivener, ... - missed the contextual "Services" item on selected text!

Dec 20, 2016 2:23 AM in response to léonie

Léonie wrote on Oct 18, 2016:

"It depends on the Preview panels where the focus currently is."

This does not make any difference at all, and the problem is far from being solved. The green dot ("Solved") and your post should be deleted, because they are misleading.

It's true, on your second image one could select "1.5" (after 'PDF version') and then text services will indeed appear in the Services menu, albeit only as long as "1.5" is selected. But that's useless, because if you then execute a particular text Service, only "1.5" will be dealt with (because it's selected), NOT text that is selected in the PDF document itself. The original problem still persists.

Services menu is empty in Sierra Preview App

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