Preview app no longer works in High Sierra

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Preview app no longer works in High Sierra

Preview seemed to work fine at first. I don't know if it's related, but I noticed Preview refused to open anymore after the latest Firefox Quantum browser update.

For some reason, High Sierra suddenly set "Grab" as the default image viewer, and that's an aggravating substitute.

Both my old (late 2009) and new (2017) Mac had problems with Preview (and TextEdit) after the last Sierra update. Then it refused to open most files located anywhere other than the built-in hard drive. Now Preview won't open at all on the old Mac no matter where the file is. (Works fine so far on the new one).

I've tried Preview Reset and the other fixes suggested in these forums to no avail.

I would try trashing the prefs but they don't exist: there is nothing here: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview

Posted on Nov 15, 2017 5:03 PM

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spectre2_91101 Author

Level 1

110 points

Nov 15, 2017 5:29 PM in response to spectre2_91101

I think I have this issue temporarily fixed. I say temporarily because who knows anymore. My Apple experience isn’t what it used to be, and High Sierra is causing all kinds of strange behavior.

I took the working Preview app and the preference file from my Macbook Pro and copied them to my iMac. Preview still wouldn’t open files, but at least the app itself seemed to open, which is more than the original does. Next I made an arbitrary change to the preferences to get it to update the pref files, then quit. Upon reopening, now it seems to work and opens images normally.

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