[Catalina] Preview appears to abruptly stop working

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[Catalina] Preview appears to abruptly stop working

[Catalina] Preview appears to abruptly stop working. There is no particular pattern for replicating the behavior. After opening and closing multiple documents, switching to/from full screen, splitting the full screen with Word or other Preview instances, it simply stops responding. You have to quit and restart Preview. There is no need to 'Force quit'. In other words, Preview is very unstable in Catalina.

Has anyone experienced similar behavior? Any suggestions?

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Oct 20, 2019 1:31 PM

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Answer 1

Teddy_B

Community Specialist

Oct 26, 2019 1:57 PM in response to ofg007

Hello ofg007,

I see that you're having an issue with Preview not working properly on your Mac after updating the software. I'd be happy to provide you with some steps that can help.

Since Preview is an application, take a look at the following article with some great troubleshooting steps that can help with this issue.

If an app freezes or quits unexpectedly on Mac

Thank you for using Apple Support Communities.

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Answer 2

Nov 9, 2019 1:51 PM in response to Teddy_B

Actually, as someone with the most recent software update (10.15.1) - the problem is that Preview will NOT open either pdf or jpg files. It is not a question of an app freezing - I just get an error message saying "the file xxx.pdf could not be opened"

My challenges with this issue did not start until after the most recent software update.

I am back to using non-Apple products to fix an issue that Apple has created.

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