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Preview, the Mac app people forget about

fourth-wall.co.uk

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Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#81

Post by _moof »

em-bee wrote: post #58

every time i open a document with preview, it insists on opening all the documents i had open before. i must be doing something wrong, and find a different workflow, maybe instead of closing the app, i need to manually close each document that i don't need anymore. i guess it's not an issue if you use preview often and keep it running all the time, but i rarely need it since most of what i do is either terminal or br…

This is an OS-level thing where apps can act more "iOS-like" by saving and restoring their state when they're closed/opened. I agree, it's annoying.

There might be a way to turn it off but in the meantime you can press command-option-W to close all windows.

EDIT: You can disable this globally in System Preferences, or on a per-app basis by writing to the app's defaults:

  defaults write com.apple.Preview NSQuitAlwaysKeepsWindows -bool false

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#82

Post by robin_reala »

kevinsundar wrote: post #18

People also forget that you can use Preview to scan documents from your scanner rather than using whatever shitty software came with yours. Also, Preview > File > Import from iPhone > Scan Documents gives you a virtual scanner instead of having to install one of those "scanner" apps on your phone. Its built into your iPhone already! I also use it frequently to change image file types. You can also make a digital vers…

Oh wow, I use iPhone Notes to scan documents when out and about quite often, but I had no idea Preview could connect to it. Thanks!

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#83

Post by RaoulP »

yasoob wrote: post #20
dry_soup wrote: post #17

The title would be much more clear with a comma after "Preview" IMO.

Yes! I was wondering which app it is asking me to preview. These are the times when I wish HackerNews allowed OPs to edit post titles after submission.

Agreed. In this case the modified title was extra hard to parse because "Tips" is also an iOS app.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#84

Post by 0898 »

Love Preview, but the markup features are seriously confusing. It isn’t clear how the shapes and the colours relate to one another, so even after 12 years drawing a filled box is much harder than it needs to be.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#85

Post by ask_b123 »

kevinsundar wrote: post #18

People also forget that you can use Preview to scan documents from your scanner rather than using whatever shitty software came with yours. Also, Preview > File > Import from iPhone > Scan Documents gives you a virtual scanner instead of having to install one of those "scanner" apps on your phone. Its built into your iPhone already! I also use it frequently to change image file types. You can also make a digital vers…

For scanning there's also Image Capture.app which also comes with the OS. I haven't tried using it with the phone though, just a normal printer/scanner.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#86

Post by saagarjha »

Question: Preview used to have automatic detection for "lines" and stuff so you could click on one and it'd create a text box for you to start typing, correctly sized and everything. For some reason this seems to no longer work for me. Has anyone else had success with this in the recent past?

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#87

Post by kergonath »

pimlottc wrote: post #10
jitl wrote: post #7

Preview is one of those essential things that sets macOS apart from the other operating systems, and contributes to that “Mac has good UX” vibe. Last time I opened the Windows equivalent, it tried to sell me on Microsoft’s PDF-alike format… and asked me to connect Office365. Another tiny macOS feature I love is that you can drop a file icon on any Open or Save dialog to select the file in the dialog. On other OSs, th…

Another great related feature is how easy it is to “print” to Preview and save as PDF. It makes it very easy to save copies of confirmations, payment receipts, etc when sites don’t provide a PDF link. If you haven't tried it, make sure you are printing using the system dialog, and select "Open in Preview" in the drop-down list in the lower-left corner.

> Another great related feature is how easy it is to “print” to Preview and save as PDF.

It's an OS-wide feature. Any application can print to PDF without specific support from that app.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#88

Post by data-ottawa »

Tarragon wrote: post #5

It's mentioned heavily in the article but I want to emphasize... Preview is the easiest way to slice up and merge PDF files.

Preview and Automator are a powerful duo.

When applying for mortgages I needed a lot of paperwork and it was so nice being able to point Automator to a folder of pdfs and documents and quickly set up a little workflow that collated everything, then it opened the documents in Preview, I fixed a few minor tweaks, signed the forms, and sent them off. It felt like I had superpowers.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#89

Post by jhasse »

dev_tty01 wrote: post #50
junglistguy wrote: post #24

Still don't know how to preview all photos in for example "downloads" Osx UX is a messsssss

Sort Downloads by Kind. Select the group of photos. Double click. They will all be opened in one Preview window and you can scroll through all the photos. Or, select the first, touch the space bar and you will see the Quick Look preview. Use the arrow keys to move between the different files. Not really seeing the messssss, but to each their own I guess.

> Select the group of photos.

Not that easy depending on the number of pictures and the folder content.

> Use the arrow keys to move between the different files.

Won't work correctly in grid view.

Also: I don't want to mess with the way I set up Finder to display/sort the folder just to view the pictures.

Re: Preview, the Mac app people forget about

#90

Post by deepspace »

ollien wrote: post #6
Tarragon wrote: post #5

It's mentioned heavily in the article but I want to emphasize... Preview is the easiest way to slice up and merge PDF files.

This feature is one of the few things I miss dearly since moving to Linux as my daily-driver OS. There are command-line tools but nothing compares to Preview from what I've found.

My cross-platform goto for manipulating PDF pages is PDFsam: https://pdfsam.org/
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