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Preview is one of the Mac’s most underrated apps. At first, you’ll likely only encounter Preview when you try to open images or PDFs, but there’s much more to the app than just opening files. I began exploring Preview’s advanced features a decade ago, and I’ve found it’s one of the best free PDF editors for the Mac. And, if you have an iPhone or iPad, you get many of the same benefits with Preview’s mobile version. If you’d like to make the most of Preview, here are 10 hacks you should know.
Use this shortcut to view files without opening them in Preview
It might seem paradoxical, but one of the best Preview hacks is avoiding using Preview when you don’t need to. If you’re opening every single app on your Mac each time you want to quickly view something, you’re probably wasting a lot of time. Instead, you can preview files without opening them. Start by locating the file you wish to preview, then select it and press the spacebar. This action activates Quick Look, which taps into Preview to view the file without opening it. To close this preview, you can press the spacebar once again. I use this regularly to view images, PDFs, or even to check how many files are inside a folder. If you’re annoyed by Preview’s limitation of not showing the contents of a folder in Quick Look, then you can use an app called Folder Preview to add that feature to your Mac.
Change this setting to use Preview’s hidden PDF dark mode
Credit: Pranay Parab
Preview can open PDFs for you, but those files often have a bright white background—even when your device is in dark mode. If, like me, you dislike reading documents with bright backgrounds, there’s good news: Preview allows you to use a dark background for PDFs. To try this, open a PDF in Preview, select View in the menu bar, then click Use Dark Appearance for PDF. This will switch the PDF to a dark background with white text, and Preview will remember your preferences for all PDFs that you open in the future. This feature also works in Preview for iPhone and iPad. Just open a PDF in the app, tap the three dots in the top-right corner, and select Dark Background.
Use “Open Image from Clipboard” to edit photos without saving them to your Mac
Most of us save images to our Macs before opening them using Preview. However, you can bypass this step by opening images directly from your clipboard. This way, you can copy an image from any app, including browsers or messaging apps, and have Preview open it for editing instantly. Copy any image to your Mac’s clipboard, open Preview, and press Command + N to open the image for editing. Alternatively, you can open Preview and select File > New from Clipboard.
Use this hidden Preview setting to remove image backgrounds
Most people turn to image editors for relatively simple tasks such as removing the background from a photo. Preview can actually handle this task well, but the feature isn’t obvious when you start using the app. You can check it out by opening an image in Preview and pressing Command + Shift + K, which should remove the picture’s background.
There are two other ways to use this feature in Preview. You can either click Tools > Remove Background from the menu bar, or select Remove Background in the app’s toolbar, which has a camera icon with diagonal lines within the borders. (This was a recent discovery for me, as I didn’t know what this icon did until I accidentally left the cursor on the button and read the tooltip.)
Open PDFs and images in Preview to copy their text
Preview also makes it easy to copy text from images and PDFs. While most PDF documents make it easy to select text, I’ve come across quite a few where each page is a scanned image, which prevents you from selecting text. In these situations, Preview can help you extract text from images easily. To use this feature, open an image, screenshot, or PDF in Preview, move the cursor over the text, and double-click or drag the cursor over the text to select it. Feel free to copy and paste it as you like. This feature works in Preview for iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Use this setting to turn your iPhone into a dedicated document scanner
Credit: Pranay Parab
Preview for Mac allows you to use your iPhone as a document scanner. Open the app and go to File > Import from iPhone > Scan Documents. As long as your iPhone and Mac are signed in to the same iCloud account, this should open the Camera app on the iPhone, automatically set to scan documents. Point the camera at a page, and your iPhone will automatically identify borders and scan the page. It’s set to keep scanning until you press the checkmark button in the top-right corner. Once you’re done, the document is automatically imported into Preview for Mac, where you can edit the scan before saving it. The same scanning mode is available in Preview for iPhone and iPad. Open the app and tap Scan Documents to get started.
Metadata, like EXIF data, allows you to identify important details about a photo, such as when it was captured, which camera and lens were used, where you shot the image, and so on. Preview lets you view this metadata easily. Just open any image in Preview, and tap or click the i button in the app. On iPhone and iPad, this reveals a long list of all metadata for the photo. On Mac, you’ll see these details organized into two tabs. Click the i tab to view the rest of the metadata in Preview for Mac.
What do you think so far?
This can be a great way to learn more about how your photo was shot. (There really is a lot of data here.) But I also recommend reviewing this data before sharing the image with others, or on the internet. If you find too many personal, sensitive, or identifying data points within, take steps to remove the EXIF data before sending the image out into the wild. Before sending a photo on Mac, right-click it in Finder, choose Quick Actions > Convert Image, then uncheck Preserve Metadata.
Combine multiple PDF pages into one document with Preview
Preview is a good free PDF editor for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. You can use it to combine multiple PDF pages into a single document, or to remove pages from a PDF file. To use this feature, open a PDF file in Preview. If you’re doing this on a Mac, click the sidebar button, located to the right of the green full-screen button in the toolbar. Select Thumbnails, and click the tiny + button in the bottom-left corner. Then, choose Insert Page from File… If you wish to delete a page from a PDF, simply select its thumbnail in the left pane, and press the delete key on your Mac’s keyboard.
In Preview for iPhone and iPad, open a PDF, and swipe right from the left edge of the screen to show page thumbnails in a pane. Tap the three dots on any page, and select Insert from File to combine pages from another PDF. In the same menu, tap Delete Page to remove a page from the PDF file.
Use Preview’s “Signature” feature to avoid printing out documents
Preview allows you to digitally sign documents, which can be a big help. If someone asks you to send a signed copy of a document, you don’t have to print it, sign the file, and scan it again to send it back. Instead, you can open the file in Preview, and click Form Filling Toolbar (the rectangle with three dots and a pencil). This appears in the toolbar up top in Preview for Mac, and in the bottom bar in Preview for iPhone or iPad. Then, you can choose Add Signature to create your digital signature, and sign the document quickly.
Edit a PDF’s permissions to password-protect your documents
Preview for Mac is also a good tool to add or remove passwords from your PDFs. To add a password to your PDF, open a document in Preview, and select File > Export. Click Permissions, and you’ll be able to add a password to open the document, and even an owner password for the file, which lets you stop people from editing, printing, or copying text from your PDFs without the password. To remove a password from a PDF file, open it in Preview on your Mac, and go to File > Enter Password. Once you enter the owner password in the right pane, select Edit, which will let you edit the permissions for the document. You can use this settings pane to remove all passwords from the file, and save it to your computer.
