Preview to show Thumbnails by default on PDF

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Preview to show Thumbnails by default on PDF

Just upgraded my iMac from El Capitan to High Sierra. Before the upgrade I used to be able to select and open multiple PDF files at once and Preview would display it all within a single window, side bar would show all the thumbnails on the left and I could scroll up and down through 20-30 different documents with ease. Now I get all of them on separate tabs instead which is exactly the reason why I preferred Preview over Adobe Reader. I can obviously change it to thumbnail once opened but it always default back to the way I don't want. I've been through Preferences for Preview but there's not much in it, is there any way to change the default view?

Thanks in advance.

iMac with Retina 5K display, macOS High Sierra (10.13.4)

Posted on May 15, 2018 3:46 AM

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Answer 1

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leroydouglas

Community+ 2024

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183,888 points

May 17, 2018 9:05 AM in response to a_inacio

Any user changes can be made in Preview>Preferences

https://support.apple.com/guide/preview/welcome/mac

Any changes you would like to see, make your voice heard:

Apple Feedback http://www.apple.com/feedback

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Answer 2

May 15, 2018 5:44 AM in response to a_inacio

What I am experiencing with Preview 10 in High Sierra 10.13.4 (17E202) is that each concurrently selected PDF will open in its own window. One can merge these open documents to tabs via the Window menu, and each tab will need to be configured with its own thumbnail setting.

For instance, I opened two PDF, and merged their windows to tabs. I enabled thumbnails for each tab, and then quit Preview. On opening both documents again, the thumbnail views remained enabled for both documents. Upon quitting Preview, I could open a third PDF document and thumbnails were enabled by default. So, Preview has a memory based on its last settings.

There is no restoring the multiple PDF opening behavior of Preview 8.1 on El Capitan 10.11.6 (15G20015) in Preview 10.

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Answer 3

a_inacio Author

Level 1

9 points

May 17, 2018 8:58 AM in response to VikingOSX

Thanks for replying, I find it a bit annoying that a behaviour such as a user preference gets changed with a system update and we have no means of changing it, but hey it is what it is. I tried all known methods for Sierra but no luck, guess I'll have to wait for an update if there will ever be one coming for this.

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Answer 4

May 17, 2018 9:25 AM in response to a_inacio

Apple is continuously changing its applications and the frameworks (libraries) that they are based upon. A future version of an application (e.g. Preview) may be changed in such a way that it no longer uses a past preference setting that may have worked for years.

With Preview at least, there is a trend to remove Preference choices that proved useful in past versions of the application.

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Preview to show Thumbnails by default on PDF

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