8

One thing I dislike about Preview.app in Lion is its defaulting to Continuous Scroll as the view option when a new PDF document opens. My recollection is that previous behaviour was for the last-used view state to be honoured subsequently, and I would prefer if this applied in Lion also (my personal preference being for Single Page), or if the default could be changed.

Elsewhere, I have seen reference to a Terminal command which was stated as addressing this, but it does not work for me. The command in question is defaults write com.apple.Preview PVPDFDisplayMode 1 (with a suggested variation of defaults write com.apple.Preview PVPDFDisplayMode -int 1), which is supposed to change the default to Single Page. As I say, this does not work for me, and Preview stubbornly continues to default to Continuous Scroll.

Can anybody help?

Scott Willeke
  • 63
DublinJimbo
  • 314
  • Wow - I had not spotted this - you are right. Continuous scroll can only be disabled in fullscreen mode. – dan8394 Aug 07 '11 at 05:25
  • DublinJimbo - Can you even switch to Single Page mode at all? I can only do this in Full-Screen mode. – dan8394 Aug 07 '11 at 05:28
  • @dan8394 – Yes, I can switch to Single Page using the menu. It's a pain having to do this every time, however. – DublinJimbo Aug 07 '11 at 07:51
  • Ah yes - I can too. I don't know what I was doing before. Sorry about that. – dan8394 Aug 07 '11 at 10:25
  • I started FindAnyFile instead of using Spotlight for obvious reasons and looked for "com.apple.Preview" string. Among other files I found: 1. /Users/username/Library/Safe Preferences/com.apple.Preview.plist (apparently not a Lion version, probably an older one). 2. /Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.plist 2. /Users/username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.plist.lockfile 3. /Users/username/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.plist 3. /Users/username/Library/Containers/com.apple.Previe –  Sep 04 '11 at 10:45
  • A little late to the game, but I just needed the same solution. Regarding your "Elsewhere" tip to change the default view to single page, that command does work, but you have to quit Preview.app before issuing it. If you change the defaults while an app is running, said app does NOT read in those changes except at launch. And, when said app quits, it overwrites any changes you made with what it thinks is the current state of affairs. That's why you have to do it when the app is closed. – randallmeadows Apr 30 '12 at 16:40
  • @randallmeadows - I can't believe that Preview has been open each time I've tried this before, but now when I ensure I've quit Preview before applying the Terminal command is does indeed work. – DublinJimbo Jul 08 '12 at 23:36
  • 2
    @randallmeadows again - I spoke too soon, I'm afraid. I thought at first it had worked, since I successfully opened a number of PDF documents in single-page mode after applying the Terminal command with Preview not running. But I still wasn't absolutely sure that the change had stuck, since I'd opened all of these PDFs previously and wondered if they were honouring my having changed them to Single Page. Now, having sourced a PDF which I hadn't previously opened, Preview still stubbornly opened it in continuous scroll. – DublinJimbo Jul 08 '12 at 23:47
  • I figured this one out: There are a set of additional preferences in files at ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preview.* (e.g. com.apple.Preview.LSSharedFileList.plist, com.apple.Preview.SandboxedPersistentURLs.LSSharedFileList.plist, etc.). Delete them, re-run defaults write com.apple.Preview PVPDFDisplayMode 1 (just to be safe) and then the 'Single Page' mode started working by default all the time. Wish I could answer, but I don't have the rep here yet for a locked question! – Scott Willeke Jul 12 '12 at 19:48

2 Answers2

4

A preference for changing the default view mode was added in 10.8:

I don't know any way to change the default view mode in 10.7.

Lri
  • 105,117
3

I can suggest a workaround - there is an excellent PDF viewer called Skim, which does allow you to turn off continuous scroll mode. However, sadly it does not support any Lion features yet (although has its own (good!) fullscreen implementation.

http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/

dan8394
  • 3,605