I Accidently Deleted Preview... How Do I Get It Back?

OSX is not windows. Unlike windows that slows down with each program you install, having 100 apps have minimal impact on the performance of OSX.

You messed it up. Read the guides or contact apple care.
https://forums.macrumors.com/forums/78/

Consultant said:

OSX is not windows. Unlike windows that slows down with each program you install, having 100 apps have minimal impact on the performance of OSX.

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The OP said they did it to create more disk space, not to speed up their machine, so in this instance they are correct - deleting unused apps will increase disk space.

winterfolk said:

So I deleted some unnecessary applications a month ago using Appedelete, to get some extra space. However, I think I may have deleted Preview, so now whenever I want to view a picture, Preview opens in my dock but then immediately shuts itself down. Help please, I've been new to Macs just since February!

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I would have thought that if you had deleted preview then you would just get a "app not found" error message if clicking on the dock icon.

Did you do a spotlight search for Preview?

If it's opening up and disappearing, I don't think you deleted it, but rather broke it.

Either way I think you can install it back with a 'Archive and Install'

There is a 3rd party app available out there that will help you fix this, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it is called.

This app opens up the install .dmg's on your install disks and allows you to install single apps back onto your system from your Mac OS X Install discs. Does anyone remember what this app is called? It's saved so many systems for me in the past from botched upgrades and accidental deletions.

If you can find this app, you can throw in your install disc, find the package that 'Preview' is in, and reinstall preview.

Pacifist?

Pacifist is exactly what I was trying to remember. Thank you.

Odds are one of Previews dependancies were broken while you were cleaning up unused apps, or preview.app was somehow corrupted. Pacifist will allow you to reinstall preview off of your Mac OS X discs.

You need to instakll pacifist and then insert your Mac OS X Install Disc. Pacifist will open the disk and show you what is inside all the install .pkg's. Then you just have to find where Preview.app is on the disk (Should be in the Applications pkg) and reinstall it.

You could also try repairing disk permissions.

Step by step as i did it

I did the same thing so i will explain what i did step by step, i apologise if this sounds patronizing, but i hope this helps...

download pacifist
http://pacifist.en.softonic.com/mac
Install pacifist
Drag pacifist to applications folder and open.
When you open it read the instructions,
insert Mac OS X Install CD 1
then click the button 'Open Apple Install Discs'
A list will pop up and if it shows your mac install disc in the list click 'Choose'
Then let it load, you may need to insert disc 2 as well, then disc 1 again.
When the next window opens follow these instructions

Click on 'Contents of OSInstall.mpkg'
Click on 'contents of essential system software'
Click on 'Contents of essential system software group'
Click on 'Contents of Essentials.pkg'
Click on 'Applications'
Click on 'Preview.app'
And finally click on the 'Install button on the top left of the window, big yellow arrow looking thing.

I really hope all this helps and that i didnt miss a step.... i just did this 20 minutes ago and it seems to have worked fine, thanks to everyone who pointed us in the right direction!

Good to know everything is fixed!

Lost PREVIEW

I did the same thing! I'm also a "novice" at computers.
I don't like Macs because they're too sensitive.
I know Mac users will jump all over this but with Windows you can go back to a past date and restore your computer. If that could be done with a Mac everything would be perfect! (Maybe it can be done, but I don't know how.)
If you find out how to get Preview back, please post your solution.
Thank you...

MiraMar111 said:

I know Mac users will jump all over this but with Windows you can go back to a past date and restore your computer. If that could be done with a Mac everything would be perfect! (Maybe it can be done, but I don't know how.)

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This is what Time Machine is for. Strictly speaking having a external disk isn't a requirement to take advantage of it provided you have local snapshots enabled.

MiraMar111 said:

I did the same thing! I'm also a "novice" at computers.
I don't like Macs because they're too sensitive.
I know Mac users will jump all over this but with Windows you can go back to a past date and restore your computer.

Click to expand...

Thats not strictly true. First of all, you can only go back and restore your windows files, not your data.
Secondly, the main reason that capability was added was (ironically given what you state) is that Windows (the registry mainly) was so fragile that capability became almost a necessity. Of course, if you decide to delete a few apps instead of buying more disk capacity (because deleting a few apps will generally get back a trivial amount of disk space) and then use an application to automatically delete files, well you'd get the same fragility on OSX or Windows. Thats not teh OSX being fragile, its PEBKAC.


And, as said up thread, with OSX as long as you are using Time Machine, (which is included free) you can restore almost any file to any given date (disk space depending), and with the latest release of OSX you can restore many applications files data to a highly incremental degree even if you arent using TM.