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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 ope

• brightball 5y ago
  Preview and OmniGraffle are the 2 apps that I really miss from OSX now that I’m on linux full time. That’s about it though.
• pimlottc 5y ago
  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.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Is there any reason it took so long for Microsoft to include print to PDF in Windows other than bad management?
    • dchest 5y ago
      I believe this was due to Adobe threatening them with a lawsuit https://betanews.com/2006/06/02/adobe-to-sue-microsoft-for-pdf-feature/ https://betanews.com/2006/06/02/adobe-to-sue-microsoft-for-p...
      • lotsofpulp 5y ago
        According to the article, Adobe helped Apple? But threatened to sue Microsoft? I wonder what the details are. >However, Adobe has freely offered the specifications on PDF to other companies. Apple’s Mac OS X operating system has built in support for reading and saving of PDF files.
  • jfk13 5y ago
    Or instead of "Open in Preview" (and then save it somewhere from Preview.app), you can directly use "Save to Web Receipts" from the Print dialog.
  • kergonath 5y ago
    > 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.
    • astrange 5y ago
      Well, you need specific support if you have custom views or views that draw bitmap images, otherwise it won't look great.
      • kergonath 5y ago
        But then it won’t look good in print either, right? The pdf is just a file with what would have otherwise gone to the printer.
        • astrange 5y ago
          Sure, but I think "export to PDF" might actually be a more common feature than printing at this point.
          • kergonath 4y ago
            Fair enough
  • bigtex 5y ago
    I think that has been a standard feature since at least OS X 10.2.
    • JKCalhoun 5y ago
      Yes, when Apple bought NeXT (I know, more like the other way around) they wanted the graphics model to follow something akin to NeXT's — which was based around Display Postscript. The modern equivalent was of course PDF. If you could render into a PDF context with your graphics engine (CoreGraphics) you would have a near print-ready document. (You still need to pass along additional info regarding whether to print duplex, number of copies, etc.) So anyway, Save to PDF, Open in Preview were basically free.
  • Anechoic 5y ago
    Another great related feature is how easy it is to “print” to Preview BTW, if you are trying to save a protected PDF from Adobe reader that won't let you save it in an unprotected format that's compatible with Preview, there is "print" document trick you can try since Adobe Reader blocks the system print dialog: pause the queue for your printer (if you don't have a printer, just "install" a network postscript printer), and print the document. The document is then saved to a non-secured temp PDF file in /var/spool/cups, to a filename starting with "d" (ls -l -t to find the most recent file). That file is normally deleted after being sent to the printer, but my pausing the print queue, the file is there long enough to copy somewhere. Rename the document, and you're good to go. This is a trick from the Mac OS X Hints days, and still works, as of at least Catalina.
  • mortenjorck 5y ago
    Such a great feature. I’ve been using it for years and have what is effectively a filing cabinet of documents in digital form.
• wlesieutre 5y ago
  I can't stand when I have to deal with a PDF on Windows on my office computer where I have the free copy of Acrobat. You can right click on a page and it's got "rotate" buttons up at the top. But when you click on one, it takes a second to think about it and then opens a popup to offer you a free 7-day trial of the Pro version. Rotating a page is too powerful a feature for Adobe to not try and sell it to you. https://imgur.com/a/oAYOoqG https://imgur.com/a/oAYOoqG What you can do is "Rotate View Clockwise" three times, way down at the bottom of the menu. It applies to the entire document instead of a single page, and it doesn't persist next time you open the file. Works in a pinch but it's deliberately shitty. Microsoft even had their own PDF viewing software with Windows 8, but instead of improving it to get their user experience one step closer to Apple's, they killed it off to make more people launch Edge by accident. I can only assume there's a KPI somewhere in Microsoft HQ tracking how many times Edge is launched, and making that graph go up and to the right has become their number one corporate priority. It would explain the taskbar's search screen, the "news and weather" bullshit, pressing F1 in Explorer opening a Bing search for "How to get help in Windows" instead of just giving you help, and most every other design choice they've made in the last couple of years.
  • abawany 5y ago
    I recommend trying SumatraPDF - it also supports epub.
  • samstave 5y ago
    What I hate about software like PDF viewers is that they are akin to: Here I printed your manuscript, but in order to read it, you need to pay me for these special glasses to see the ink. Oh you want a change? Pay me for these special gloves so you may handle the pages and reorganize them as you like.
    • wlesieutre 5y ago
      Agreed, on a Mac I feel like a PDF document is a stack of paper that I can rearrange, copy, rotate, and otherwise handle however I want to. On Windows it's more like a hardcover bound book that I can download and attach to an email to share with someone, but god forbid I want to change anything. They can make me use Windows in the office, but next time something dies in my home PC I'm just going to sell the rest of it for parts and replace it with a Steam Deck.
• deleted 5y ago
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• lostlogin 5y ago
  My passport application photo kept getting rejected as my eyes were ‘too dark’. I tried various things without luck, then in a rage, I copied my ‘light’ eye and stuck it over my shaded eye. I thought the passport photo submission tool would let me review before accepting an upload. Nope, off it went. The passport has worked in several countries, USA, UK and others. Thanks Preview.
  • wildrhythms 5y ago
    Ancient companies requiring I print out a form, sign it physically, scan it, send it back... I just open it in Preview, use the text annotation tool and some random cursive font, "sign it", re-export, done. I haven't owned a printer or scanner in 10 years.
    • luhn 5y ago
      It has a feature now where you can scan your signature and pop it into any document on demand. Super useful.
      • DanielleMolloy 5y ago
        Not just that, you can sign directly on the trackpad. And store that signature for later use.
        • cromka 4y ago
          Or with your finger on an iPhone, or a pen on an iPad.
      • dtgriscom 5y ago
        And "scan" means "hold up to the webcam and take a picture." No scanner needed.
    • 7speter 4y ago
      This isn't really too hard these days, at least in theory, since you can use your phones camera to scan the doc.
• maxwelldone 5y ago
  This is my wish list for preview: 1. Support for h265 video previews (not sure about technical or any other licensing hurdles) 2. Basic playback controls (via keyboard) when viewing video previews - just play, pause, skip would do. I review a ton of videos and I'd often like to pause to take a screenshot or skip to quickly see what's happening in the video. 3. Option to zoom on text files like json, csv etc. Not a big deal but would be a great addition especially on hi-res external displays. Edit: Looks like I mixed quicklook with preview. My bad.
  • saagarjha 5y ago
    I'm curious why QuickTime Player is not what you want?
  • kergonath 5y ago
    Quick Look does this, does it not?
• hnlmorg 5y ago
  > 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, this moves the file to the directory shown in the dialog, or does nothing. The reason other OS's don't support that macOS feature is because their open and save dialogue is usable on its own. In my opinion the open and save dialogue is one of the worst designed interfaces on macOS (and easily the worst open and save dialogue across all of the popular desktop environments). The fact that it's "killer feature" is having to use another file navigator to find the target and then drag that file into the first dialogue (ie dialogue that should have been used to find the file to begin with) is more damning than anything. If there were two things I wish Apple would add in macOS, it is: 1. draggable hotspots (like in Windows and KDE) 2. a completely redesigned open and save dialogue that works a little more like Windows and KDE I can live (and even like some of) macOS's idiosyncrasies. But those two irritate the hell out of me on an almost daily basis.
  • saagarjha 5y ago
    What do you not like about the existing dialog?
    • drcongo 5y ago
      • hnlmorg 5y ago
        I hate Windows! Just because I happen to think specific UI elements are better than macOS it doesn't mean I prefer Windows as a platform. In fact I consider such opinions as being more objective than the "apple can do no wrong" fanboyism that often gets posted.
    • hnlmorg 5y ago
      Navigating is a pain. eg you cannot navigate to any "hidden" directories and cannot you type paths in the "address bar" nor the file name input selector. There's a few other little annoyances but I can't recall them right now (currently awaiting delivery of a new MacBook Pro so I'm back to running Linux for the time being). The dialogue annoys me enough that I've just gotten into the habit of opening everything from the command line instead. In fact Finder is pretty poor for those things too (I've lost count of the amount of times I've ran `open .` to launch Finder in the path I want rather than navigating there via the GUI). But at least Finder does 90+% of what I want, even if I do have to turn to the command line a lot. Whereas I find the open dialogue to be almost completely useless.
• alsetmusic 5y ago
  > I’m hoping that the post-Ive Apple - an Apple more comfortable with “pro” users and beauty in utility versus form - will try to fix that one… and bring back all the good Mission Control stuff from Snow Leopard (which IMO is the greatest OS ever released). I wouldn't hold my breath. They've been gradually hiding controls behind buttons and popovers. The proxy icon (folder or document icon in the title bar of a window) was hidden by default in I believe Big Sur. There's a `defaults` command to make it visible at all times in Monterey, but hiding it is a foolish design choice on Apple's part. Look at the debacle with Safari last year. The software is form over function for the last few years. I can't remember the name of the guy everyone blames for this, but he talks about minimalism and reducing app UI in favor of putting content forward during OS feature reveals. The approach is completely backwards, imo. BTW: thanks for the tip about Listary. I'll check it out.
  • kitsunesoba 5y ago
    > There's a `defaults` command to make it visible at all times in Monterey, but hiding it is a foolish design choice on Apple's part. It's also a setting under Accessibility > Display > Show window title icons, so there's little danger of it disappearing since it's not a hidden setting.
    • jen20 5y ago
      You can also hover over the title to get the proxy to appear.
  • JKCalhoun 5y ago
    I worked on the Preview app for a number of years during a time when the app more or less flew under the radar. It was easy then to simply add features that "we" wanted as users of the app. At that time, the design team was less interested in Preview, more interested in Mail and Safari (of course). Design would come in and maybe tell us to put the thumbnail drawer on the right vs. the left. Honestly, I think the design team found Preview useful as well and didn't stand in our way when we wanted to add "instant alpha" or simple annotations.....
• matwood 5y ago
  Preview is great. Among the many other features, it's also what I use to sign PDFs. You can enter and save a signature using the trackpad or camera and then paste it into any PDF. It looks like you printed, signed, and scanned the PDF back in.
• solarkraft 5y ago
  > On other OSs, this moves the file to the directory shown in the dialog, or does nothing Apps on Linux (Gnome?) do it too.
  • jitl 5y ago
    Nice! The last time I used Gnome/Ubuntu as my daily driver (2019?) that wasn’t the case — or maybe wasn’t consistently the case.
  • rbanffy 5y ago
    I think it makes more sense than opening the file - you are looking at a place in the filesystem after all.
• Matl 5y ago
  > Preview is one of those essential things that sets macOS apart from the other operating systems KDE's Okukar is pretty similar imo.
  • EvgeniyZh 4y ago
    But supports more formats
• brundolf 5y ago
  I adore the fact that I can sign PDFs so easily from the system-default viewer (and save my signature for next time) Also love that I can do all the image-editing basics from the same app (enough to make memes anyway...) Though it does concern me a bit that most of the best UX features in Apple software are older; usually the newer an Apple UI is, the worse it is. Control Center and such are pretty nice I guess, but Apple Music on macOS is terrible
• Hammershaft 5y ago
  If Mac OS spent two OS update cycles just fixing the usability kinks that plague window management, context switching across apps, mouse support, multi desktop support, and finder, then it would be the most pleasurable OS to work with out of the 3. As it is, these flaws make up most of the interactions I have with an OS moment to moment, and as a result Mac OS frustrates me in ways Windows and Linux (using Pop OS with Gnome) don't.
• Rebelgecko 5y ago
  Absolutely. I recently tried switching to Linux, and realized how amazing Preview is. Tasks like "swap 2 pages in a PDF" or "crop this image" are much less intuitive and often require you to install a single-purpose command line utility, or fire up something like GIMP which has a steeper learning curve and feels like overkill
• wtetzner 5y ago
  Yeah, PDFs on Windows are a pain. I've set Firefox as my default PDF reader on my Windows box.
• 0898 5y ago
  I worry that not enough people are aware of these little touches, and that one day they'll disappear.
• uhuruity 5y ago
  > 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. As I read this I thought of another such feature - how pressing Space with a file selected (in either Finder or any 'choose a file' dialog window) presents a quick preview of the contents of the file. Extremely low friction way to quickly check out the contents of a file, almost like the GUI version of `head`
  • 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
    It also has better file puppet than Windows or Linux. I can hit space on an STL and it will show me a preview.
    • johnday 4y ago
      I believe that powertoys enables this.
• barbs 4y ago
  Been a while since I've used Windows as a daily driver but I used to use SumatraPDF for basic PDF operations. Small, lightweight, open-source. Looks like it'd still be useful today? https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free-pdf-reader
• secretsatan 4y ago
  I never thought about it, but I do use it a lot, some of the things in there I didn't even realise were difficult. I use it for resizing images all the time for sure, it's quick and easy The markup tools are nice as well to quickly annotate things for sharing in the team, although for some reason it always takes me a little bit figure out how to unlock the toolbar. I had no idea simple edits to PDF were such a pain for other people