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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 run
by 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 agoInteresting. 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 agoBut... 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 agoThanks. Will give that a try.
- kstrauser 1y agoDid it work? I’m dying of curiosity!
- hollerith 1y agoI don't have a Mac: I've had Macs in the past and plan to get another soon. My "will give that a try" means that I put a link to your comment on a to-do list.
- kstrauser 1y agoI demand instant gratification, darn it! Heh, gotcha. I do hope it helps, though! Shortcuts is astoundingly powerful and I’ve used it for any number of personal nits like this. For example, combine it with Keyboard Maestro and you can add new commands to any app that’s scriptable via Shortcuts, like “if the current app is Notes, and I press F5, copy the current note and post its contents to Mastodon”, or whatever.
- bee_rider 1y agoI’m convinced it is impossible to do better than Evince, I’ve never found any deficiency or lacking feature in the program. But, if you think Preview is similarly perfect—maybe we should just come to the conclusion that PDF readers are in a pretty good state. Which makes Acrobat so confusing.
- unmole 1y ago> I’m convinced it is impossible to do better than Evince, I’ve never found any deficiency or lacking feature in the program. For me, Evince fails to accurately show the physical paper size. Okular manages to do this just fine.
- dunham 1y agoYeah, I've been very happy with it over the years. But my one minor nit-pick is that it uses a _lot_ of memory. I presume it is pre-rendering stuff for speed. On iPhone and iPad I've been using Notability.
- array_key_first 1y agoPersonally I think okular is better.