Q: Services menu is empty in Sierra Preview App

Open an Applications > Utilities > Terminal window and paste the following command:

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.finder.plist

rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.preferences.extensions.FinderSync.plist

and reboot. Is the services menu still empty?

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

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.

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!

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:

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.

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

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.

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!

I had the opportunity to look at my wife's mac (still on Yosemite). I can confirm that text services work there for a selection in a pdf file, and they do NOT work in my mac (running Sierra).

Finally I do not feel alone...

The question is not "solved"!!!

There is many apps' programmers claiming for the amount of broken/missing features of Sierra's PDFKit, including the missing of services support to PDF views!