Preview hangs briefly on opening a file

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Level 1

23 points

Preview hangs briefly on opening a file

Running macOS Catalina 10.15.3 (19D76) on a 2019 MacBook Pro. Problem described below is NOT new to 10.15.3, occurred in Catalina before this week's update.

When I open a file in Preview, it hangs for approx 2-3 seconds - coloured spinning wheel. If I open Preview NOT opening a file, it's fine - when I then open the file from the running program, the hang occurs. Regardless of file type, size. After the couple of seconds everything is absolutely fine.

Occurs too in safe mode, but NOT when using another account.

I've tried removing /Users/account/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview but still persists.

Any suggestions?

Many thanks!

MacBook Pro 15”, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jan 30, 2020 5:09 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Ryo_ryomac

Level 1

31 points

Feb 3, 2020 2:08 AM in response to eludlow9876

Confirmation, are you using Dropbox ?

A similar problem occurred in my environment.

My workaround is as follows.

Uncheck the "Dropbox" setting in "System Preferences > Function Extensions > All ".

However, please do so at your own risk.

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Answer 2

BreeZee_17

Community Specialist

Feb 1, 2020 4:12 PM in response to eludlow9876

Hello eludlow9876,

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. I understand that upon opening Preview, it becomes unresponsive between two to three seconds. I'll be happy to help.

Excellent job with the troubleshooting steps that were performed. Since this seems isolated to your user account on the Mac, I recommend using Activity Monitor. This can help determine what is impacting the performance level on your Mac when you use Preview. Here's two helpful articles with additional details and the proper steps to take: See how apps affect Mac performance, battery runtime, temperature, and fan activity and How to use Activity Monitor on your Mac

Kind regards.

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Answer 3

Feb 21, 2020 7:18 PM in response to Ryo_ryomac

Dropbox v91.4.548 seems to have largely improved.

(with Finder Extension ON)

Spinning Wheels no longer appear.

However, there is still some delay until rendering converges.

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Answer 4

eludlow9876 Author

Level 1

23 points

Feb 3, 2020 6:26 AM in response to Ryo_ryomac

That's brilliant, thanks @ryo_ryomac. Hopefully this will get fixed as losing the Dropbox functionality is annoying - but I'd rather put up with not having that given it's solved the annoying hanging.

Thanks again.

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Answer 5

Feb 3, 2020 9:04 AM in response to eludlow9876

I'm glad it seems to be a workaround for you too.

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Answer 6

eludlow9876 Author

Level 1

23 points

Feb 22, 2020 3:01 AM in response to Ryo_ryomac

Indeed. Though I surprised myself how little (at all!) I missed the Finger extensions. I thought I used them more than I clearly do!

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Preview hangs briefly on opening a file

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