Disable tabs in Preview?

Since upgrading to High Sierra, double-clicking on a PDF opens that PDF in Preview as a new tab in the same window as an already-opened PDF. (And, annoyingly, it opens the new PDF without giving it focus, but that's mostly beside the point for this question.)


I would like to go back to the way Preview previously worked, where double-clicking a PDF opened it in its own Preview window. However, while I've been able to find plenty of information online about how to get Preview documents to open in tabs in one window, I've found no information that worked to get PDFs to open in separate windows. (I know that I can use Window>>Move Tab to New Window, but that's extra mouse clicks, and when I'm using several PDFs at once it's a lot of clicking that just slows me down.)


Based on things I found online for different but related issues, I've already tried going into Preview's preferences>>images and switching "When opening files" to "Open each file in its own window", and going to the Dock panel in System Preferences and changing "Prefer tabs when opening documents" to "Manually". Neither of these changed anything.


So: Is there any way to open PDFs in separate windows, or am I stuck with this new behavior?

MacBook Pro (Retina, Mid 2012), macOS High Sierra (10.13)

Posted on Nov 30, 2017 4:45 PM

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11 replies

Nov 30, 2017 5:24 PM in response to dialabrain

Nope. After closing Preview, PDFs that were open in separate windows reopen in their separate windows, but then double-clicking another PDF opens it in a background tab in whichever window is frontmost.


Interesting thing, but I don't know what if anything to make of it: If I close Preview and then reopen it by double-clicking a PDF that wasn't previously open, all the previously open PDFs open in their own windows, as does the just-double-clicked PDF.

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Disable tabs in Preview?

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