4 ms·

Preview.app is actually one of the few first-party Apple apps that I really miss when using a non-macOS computer.

benjaminclauss 1y ago
and now on iPad... finally
dylan604 1y ago
that plus the quick look from smashing the space bar in Finder. selecting a file and hitting space is muscle memory for me, and the first time I do it on a non-macOS computer it just feels broken to me.
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  Preview as someone who work in media production is borderline a must-have at this point. Fastest spot checks one could hope for.
- kennyadam 1y ago
  Microsoft PowerToys has this functionality, called Peek: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/peek https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/peek
  - dylan604 1y ago
    Is that something that comes built-in or installed?
    - wlesieutre 1y ago
      Installed, but includes a lot of other handy features and is highly recommended
      - dylan604 1y ago
        you see my point though, right?
        makeitdouble 1y ago
        Being baked in or not is a tradeoff. In this case I'd say it would better if it was in, but having a one time download from a trusted source isn't the end of the world either. I'd make the parallel with browsers: there's an argument for them to stay decoupled from the system.
        wlesieutre 1y ago
        I suspect being an optionally installable tool for power users gives their team more flexibility to make it a good product in an attempt to keep those users on Windows, if it had big user numbers they’d have to turn it into PowerToys 365 Copilot and make it so opening anything with the launcher tool somehow involved a round-trip through Edge and Bing
        dylan604 1y ago
        I'm sorry, but are you saying pressing the space bar is a power user move? Really? MS cannot include it, as that'd be admitting someone else came up with a better move. Having it as an installable option just says, yeah, it's cool, but only for those worthy. WTF? They just as easily could have had it be ctrl+windows+spacebar, and then it would be just a natural windows user shortcut. Maybe throw in +alt so that it's just smash all four bottom buttons in an angry move. even Apple didn't require it to be OpenApple+spacebar or ClosedApple+spacebar. It's just spacebar right out of the box. No secondary installs or buttons required.
        wlesieutre 1y ago
        I'm saying the features in PowerToys as a whole are. It includes weird things like a hotkey to crop a live thumbnail out of another window, or to force any window to float always on top, bring up a small thumbnail of all of your screens and click anywhere to teleport the mouse cursor. Most people shouldn't have a hotkey to lock the active window on top of everything else. If they accidentally press it without knowing what they did, then they have a window stuck in the way and can't even get to The Google to ask it how to unstick it because they can't switch to their web browser window. And yeah, there are also some features like Peek (the quick preview thing) that would make sense as being pulled out of PowerToys and included as native Windows features, but then they'd get fucked up by whoever is making all the godawful decisions about Windows development lately so I'm glad they haven't. If Peek were part of Windows they'd do something dumb like implement it as "Show this file in Edge" instead. Compared to PowerToys where apparently the developers have been tasked with making something good that people would want to use.
    - makeitdouble 1y ago
      To pile on wlesieutre's point, it's a separate app but should be part of every user install IMHO. Keyboard manager for instance is plenty powerful while keeping a very simple interface, and will paliate the need for AutoHotKey for most people. There's a flurry of other stuff that I guess Microsoft employees felt are tremendously helpful but couldn't convince management to bake into the system.
donatj 1y ago
I came here to say how spoiled we are as Mac users. Preview is genuinely the best PDF reader. Full stop. Unchallenged, and for something like 20 plus years running.
- hollerith 1y ago
  Interesting. I personally never liked Preview. No way to configure it to open maximized, so every time I open a Preview window, I have to maximize it manually.
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    But... why? Anyway, you're on a Mac. Fix it yourself. Run the Shortcuts app and create a shortcut called something like "Maximize Preview". Set it to run an AppleScript: on run {input, parameters} tell application "Preview" to activate tell application "System Events" to set value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of front window of (first process whose frontmost is true) to true return input end run (Download that from https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/96b7c0fef90a408ba3c3bcaedfb2bbc9 https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/96b7c0fef90a408ba3c3bcaedfb... if you trust me — which you probably shouldn't — and you don't want to type it in.) Now in Shortcuts create an automation that runs when Preview is opened, and select that shortcut you just created as its action. You may have to go into System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility and let Shortcuts and siriactionsd access to control your desktop. Basically, you're doing something very uncommon for a Mac desktop, so it's not going to help you with that by default. It doesn't mean you're powerless to change it, though!
    - hollerith 1y ago
      Thanks. Will give that a try.
      - kstrauser 1y ago
        Did it work? I’m dying of curiosity!
russellbeattie 1y ago
The reason Preview works so well is because deep inside Apple's Quartz libraries used to render, rasterize and composite graphics such as windows, docs and images is a version of "Display PDF". Basically, PDF is a native macOS protocol. The best of my understanding is that NeXT considered Display PDF the successor to Display PostScript and OS X inherited it. I have no idea how much or how little the latest macOS and iOS rely on PDF encoding for their GUIs now, but I know at one point it was an integral part of the windowing and drawing system and is still in there for processing PDF docs.
- BearOso 1y ago
  It was never an integral part of the windowing system of either operating system. That idea never panned out. Quartz's drawing functions included what was needed for postscript, but the UI was done solely with bitmaps and cached bitmaps. There's PDF APIs in there, but they're not anything special, like being super fast, efficient, or hardware-accelerated.
sings 1y ago
Preview is genuinely very good, but it doesn’t handle annotations made in Acrobat very well. When navigating between annotations, they can become stuck open in Preview, and it is not possible to view insertions. Whether that is the fault of Acrobat or Preview, I’m not sure. Unfortunately, though, it means I frequently need to move across to Acrobat when addressing edits that someone has marked up in that software. And that acts as a constant reminder of how sluggish, awkward and nagging Acrobat can be. Even quitting the app is slow!

and now on iPad... finally

that plus the quick look from smashing the space bar in Finder. selecting a file and hitting space is muscle memory for me, and the first time I do it on a non-macOS computer it just feels broken to me.

Forgeties79 1y ago
Preview as someone who work in media production is borderline a must-have at this point. Fastest spot checks one could hope for.
kennyadam 1y ago
Microsoft PowerToys has this functionality, called Peek: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/peek https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/peek
- dylan604 1y ago
  Is that something that comes built-in or installed?
  - wlesieutre 1y ago
    Installed, but includes a lot of other handy features and is highly recommended
    - dylan604 1y ago
      you see my point though, right?
      - makeitdouble 1y ago
        Being baked in or not is a tradeoff. In this case I'd say it would better if it was in, but having a one time download from a trusted source isn't the end of the world either. I'd make the parallel with browsers: there's an argument for them to stay decoupled from the system.
        wlesieutre 1y ago
        I suspect being an optionally installable tool for power users gives their team more flexibility to make it a good product in an attempt to keep those users on Windows, if it had big user numbers they’d have to turn it into PowerToys 365 Copilot and make it so opening anything with the launcher tool somehow involved a round-trip through Edge and Bing
        dylan604 1y ago
        I'm sorry, but are you saying pressing the space bar is a power user move? Really? MS cannot include it, as that'd be admitting someone else came up with a better move. Having it as an installable option just says, yeah, it's cool, but only for those worthy. WTF? They just as easily could have had it be ctrl+windows+spacebar, and then it would be just a natural windows user shortcut. Maybe throw in +alt so that it's just smash all four bottom buttons in an angry move. even Apple didn't require it to be OpenApple+spacebar or ClosedApple+spacebar. It's just spacebar right out of the box. No secondary installs or buttons required.
        wlesieutre 1y ago
        I'm saying the features in PowerToys as a whole are. It includes weird things like a hotkey to crop a live thumbnail out of another window, or to force any window to float always on top, bring up a small thumbnail of all of your screens and click anywhere to teleport the mouse cursor. Most people shouldn't have a hotkey to lock the active window on top of everything else. If they accidentally press it without knowing what they did, then they have a window stuck in the way and can't even get to The Google to ask it how to unstick it because they can't switch to their web browser window. And yeah, there are also some features like Peek (the quick preview thing) that would make sense as being pulled out of PowerToys and included as native Windows features, but then they'd get fucked up by whoever is making all the godawful decisions about Windows development lately so I'm glad they haven't. If Peek were part of Windows they'd do something dumb like implement it as "Show this file in Edge" instead. Compared to PowerToys where apparently the developers have been tasked with making something good that people would want to use.
  - makeitdouble 1y ago
    To pile on wlesieutre's point, it's a separate app but should be part of every user install IMHO. Keyboard manager for instance is plenty powerful while keeping a very simple interface, and will paliate the need for AutoHotKey for most people. There's a flurry of other stuff that I guess Microsoft employees felt are tremendously helpful but couldn't convince management to bake into the system.

donatj 1y ago

I came here to say how spoiled we are as Mac users. Preview is genuinely the best PDF reader. Full stop. Unchallenged, and for something like 20 plus years running.

hollerith 1y ago
Interesting. I personally never liked Preview. No way to configure it to open maximized, so every time I open a Preview window, I have to maximize it manually.
- kstrauser 1y ago
  But... why? Anyway, you're on a Mac. Fix it yourself. Run the Shortcuts app and create a shortcut called something like "Maximize Preview". Set it to run an AppleScript: on run {input, parameters} tell application "Preview" to activate tell application "System Events" to set value of attribute "AXFullScreen" of front window of (first process whose frontmost is true) to true return input end run (Download that from https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/96b7c0fef90a408ba3c3bcaedfb2bbc9 https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/96b7c0fef90a408ba3c3bcaedfb... if you trust me — which you probably shouldn't — and you don't want to type it in.) Now in Shortcuts create an automation that runs when Preview is opened, and select that shortcut you just created as its action. You may have to go into System Settings > Privacy & Security > Accessibility and let Shortcuts and siriactionsd access to control your desktop. Basically, you're doing something very uncommon for a Mac desktop, so it's not going to help you with that by default. It doesn't mean you're powerless to change it, though!
  - hollerith 1y ago
    Thanks. Will give that a try.
    - kstrauser 1y ago
      Did it work? I’m dying of curiosity!

russellbeattie 1y ago

The reason Preview works so well is because deep inside Apple's Quartz libraries used to render, rasterize and composite graphics such as windows, docs and images is a version of "Display PDF". Basically, PDF is a native macOS protocol. The best of my understanding is that NeXT considered Display PDF the successor to Display PostScript and OS X inherited it. I have no idea how much or how little the latest macOS and iOS rely on PDF encoding for their GUIs now, but I know at one point it was an integral part of the windowing and drawing system and is still in there for processing PDF docs.

BearOso 1y ago
It was never an integral part of the windowing system of either operating system. That idea never panned out. Quartz's drawing functions included what was needed for postscript, but the UI was done solely with bitmaps and cached bitmaps. There's PDF APIs in there, but they're not anything special, like being super fast, efficient, or hardware-accelerated.

sings 1y ago

Preview is genuinely very good, but it doesn’t handle annotations made in Acrobat very well. When navigating between annotations, they can become stuck open in Preview, and it is not possible to view insertions. Whether that is the fault of Acrobat or Preview, I’m not sure. Unfortunately, though, it means I frequently need to move across to Acrobat when addressing edits that someone has marked up in that software. And that acts as a constant reminder of how sluggish, awkward and nagging Acrobat can be. Even quitting the app is slow!