Preview Freezing and Messing with Pinch to Zoom HELP

[Greeneagle01]

Hello all! So I recently got the new 2017 MacBook Pro with TouchBar and I am extremely concerned about the lag in Preview. Whenever I try to open a large file (such as over 30 MB) preview works for a bit and then the color wheel of death appears and the whole application freezes. During this time, if I try to use another program (while I wait for preview to work) the pinch to zoom feature does not work throughout the whole MacOS UI. However, if I let the color wheel run for a bit, preview works again and I am able to pinch and zoom all throughout. This is extremely annoying and I am wondering if there is any fix to it. Thank you!

 

[New_Mac_Smell]

As far as I know this isn't a bug or fixable as such, it's just preview. It takes a moment to open large files (I notice this if I accidentally try preview a .RAW file instead of the .JPG versions I keep). It will cause gestures to hang as it's using the same animation set.

The best practice is just to use preview for literally previewing thumbnails, anything large you want to open directly. Like a big PDF or large image. Hopefully Apple will improve the speed one day but at the moment that's just the way it is.

Here's an article discussing it http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-mh-apple-users-really-hate-apple-software-20160208-column.html I only had a scan and it seems more "Raww Apple suck!" than constructive or helpful. But it's a known problem anyway.

 

[Greeneagle01]

I agree that preview is not as polished as it should be. However, there is something very weird going on. I actually checked the activity monitor as this occurred and preview jumped to 99% usage of the cpu. Also, even after I close preview, my pinch to zoom no longer works throughout the rest of MacOS.

 

[New_Mac_Smell]

I agree that preview is not as polished as it should be. However, there is something very weird going on. I actually checked the activity monitor as this occurred and preview jumped to 99% usage of the cpu. Also, even after I close preview, my pinch to zoom no longer works throughout the rest of MacOS.

Hmm that's interesting. I just tested it on a 25mb .raw file I had and noticed it spiked to 50%, wasn't too much of a delay in opening however and no difference in pinch to zoom.

Just to help you out could you say which MBP you got 13/15" and which version of macOS you're using. Also if you've noticed any difference between large files. For instance is it only .pdf's over 30mb, or raw/jpg etc. If it's only affecting .pdf's it at least gives you something to go on. It may require a chat to Apple but gives them a starting point, otherwise you'll spend ages faffing. Note that I predict the first thing they'll say is "Reinstall the OS"...

Edit: I found a 100mb .tiff file whilst looking and that was only 15%. So it could be an indication of how preview is handling certain files.

 

[Greeneagle01]

Ok so essentially I tried booting in safe mode and that did not work. I also ran an Etrecheck (report attached below) and as you can see, preview went up to 99%. When I run a 30 MB file it goes to 30% usage and runs buttery smooth. Also I'm running MacOS Sierra on a 2017 13" MacBook Pro TouchBar KabyLake model.

 

[watermeloncrack]

Download the 7 day free trial of PDF expert and see if it handles the document better. Preview always crashed for me when I viewed too many large PDFs which I can't avoid as a student having multiple "textbooks" open. You can also try a free program called 'Skim' that I noticed is much better at managing large files.

 

[New_Mac_Smell]

Ok so essentially I tried booting in safe mode and that did not work. I also ran an Etrecheck (report attached below) and as you can see, preview went up to 99%. When I run a 30 MB file it goes to 30% usage and runs buttery smooth. Also I'm running MacOS Sierra on a 2017 13" MacBook Pro TouchBar KabyLake model.

I'm no expert on this stuff and hopefully someone is around with better information. But from that I would look at Paragon as a potential, as it'll be doing something with the HDD. "EmbeddedOSInstall Service" was a curious one too and from Google it looks to be something to do with the TB update failing during instal, which may well require a reinstall to correct but could be something you want to look up. If you've only had the machine for a couple of days (Which it looks like) just ensure everything is 100% up to date.

Also if you have any raw/tiff files if you could check them. As I said mine was peaking at 50% with a raw, so if yours is still hitting 100% with one then there's a better indication of a problem. If it's only affecting pdf's however it's a different story as they're notorius for causing lag.

If it's easy for you, what I would do personally is start un-installing apps one at a time to rule them out (Starting with Paragon). If that still didn't resolve anything I'd do a complete fresh instal of the OS (If you've migrated it can sometimes cause an issue). But again if it was just large pdf's then it's more likely to just be the way preview works, if it's everything then it's likely to be a software conflict somewhere.

 

[Greeneagle01]

Download the 7 day free trial of PDF expert and see if it handles the document better. Preview always crashed for me when I viewed too many large PDFs which I can't avoid as a student having multiple "textbooks" open. You can also try a free program called 'Skim' that I noticed is much better at managing large files.

Same! The issue here is actually occurring with a Physics textbook. Anyways, I tried using skim and adobe acrobat reader and the problem persisted as well with those two other applications.
[doublepost=1498271278][/doublepost]

I'm no expert on this stuff and hopefully someone is around with better information. But from that I would look at Paragon as a potential, as it'll be doing something with the HDD. "EmbeddedOSInstall Service" was a curious one too and from Google it looks to be something to do with the TB update failing during instal, which may well require a reinstall to correct but could be something you want to look up. If you've only had the machine for a couple of days (Which it looks like) just ensure everything is 100% up to date.

Also if you have any raw/tiff files if you could check them. As I said mine was peaking at 50% with a raw, so if yours is still hitting 100% with one then there's a better indication of a problem. If it's only affecting pdf's however it's a different story as they're notorius for causing lag.

If it's easy for you, what I would do personally is start un-installing apps one at a time to rule them out (Starting with Paragon). If that still didn't resolve anything I'd do a complete fresh instal of the OS (If you've migrated it can sometimes cause an issue). But again if it was just large pdf's then it's more likely to just be the way preview works, if it's everything then it's likely to be a software conflict somewhere.

I completely agree, however I realized this problem before installing Paragon so the issue definitely has to do with something else. Also, as I mentioned earlier, the problem occurred with other applications so it might have to do with the file itself.

 

[Greeneagle01]

**UPDATE**
So after doing some testing with the help of a friend, I came to two conclusions. When we tried opening the same file on his MacBook Pro touch bar (2017 version) using Preview, the same issue occurred. The color wheel of death appeared and then the pinch to zoom feature ceased to exist throughout the whole MacOS. Keep in mind that this also happens when using programs like Skim and Adobe Acrobat Reader. Yet when we open the document in Chrome, there is no issue. However, Chrome opens documents in a sandbox matter so that the file doesn't have access to other parts of the OS. In turn, the problem lies within MacOS and there seems to be a weird link between the crashing of PDF applications and the loss of functionality with the trackpad. This is quite concerning and I am going to try to contact Apple directly so that such a bug can be fixed.

 

[New_Mac_Smell]

**UPDATE**
So after doing some testing with the help of a friend, I came to two conclusions. When we tried opening the same file on his MacBook Pro touch bar (2017 version) using Preview, the same issue occurred. The color wheel of death appeared and then the pinch to zoom feature ceased to exist throughout the whole MacOS. Keep in mind that this also happens when using programs like Skim and Adobe Acrobat Reader. Yet when we open the document in Chrome, there is no issue. However, Chrome opens documents in a sandbox matter so that the file doesn't have access to other parts of the OS. In turn, the problem lies within MacOS and there seems to be a weird link between the crashing of PDF applications and the loss of functionality with the trackpad. This is quite concerning and I am going to try to contact Apple directly so that such a bug can be fixed.

So it was a large .PDF file then? As we said they are notorious for causing issues, depending on how well they have been compressed. A 30mb PDF is huge though and will have had next to no compression applied, meaning there's a lot of high res images it's trying to load. Sometimes you get issues with fonts too if the creator has used a none-standard one and not included it within the PDF, so the system will try convert all the text.

If it is just those PDFs though, get yourself a few different files of similar size to see if it's just one specific or all. As I said though this is largely just an issue with Preview that's been about for years.

 

[Greeneagle01]

So it was a large .PDF file then? As we said they are notorious for causing issues, depending on how well they have been compressed. A 30mb PDF is huge though and will have had next to no compression applied, meaning there's a lot of high res images it's trying to load. Sometimes you get issues with fonts too if the creator has used a none-standard one and not included it within the PDF, so the system will try convert all the text.

If it is just those PDFs though, get yourself a few different files of similar size to see if it's just one specific or all. As I said though this is largely just an issue with Preview that's been about for years.

Yes, however, this occurs with programs other than preview.

 

[Greeneagle01]

**UPDATE**

I actually ended up contacting Apple directly! So it seems to be that this is an issue that lies deeper with the optimization of pdfs in MacOS. The engineers over at Apple are trying to fix it as we speak. Thank you all for the help and support though!