Stop Preview from opening PDFs in a tab "behind" the current tab?

[Makosuke]

Google and DuckDuckGo have failed me on searching for an answer for this, so I'm hoping someone here knows the trick:

If I have a PDF open in Preview, then open another PDF (from the Finder or direct from a web browser), the PDF opens in another tab in the existing window. Which is fine, and what I want.

My complaint is that the frontmost tab in Preview remains the previously-open document. That is, the new PDF opens to the right of the old one, but the old one is still selected so I have to manually click over to the tab of the file I just opened if I want to see it. (It also does the same thing with images and the sidebar preview--the new images open below the already-open one, but the view remains of the already open one).

I work with a LOT of PDFs, and this drives me absolutely nuts. I've got the same behavior on two work computers and a home computer, so I guess it's supposed to work that way? Nothing else does--any other app I can think of, if I use the Finder to open a new document, that document gets focus.

Is there a hidden setting or something to fix this? I haven't checked Sequoia yet, but it's done that through so many past macOS versions I assume Apple has no intention of changing it.

 

[zevrix]

My complaint is that the frontmost tab in Preview remains the previously-open document.

I also find this behavior idiotic and annoying. You can submit a bug/feedback to Apple - but it's not going to change anytime soon.

Other than that, you can just use a different PDF app. The free Adobe Reader will open a file in an active tab automatically. There are several other free PDF readers with basic editing capabilities, if the free Acrobat won't do everything you need.

 

[Makosuke]

The free Adobe Reader will open a file in an active tab automatically. There are several other free PDF readers with basic editing capabilities, if the free Acrobat won't do everything you need.

Thanks for replying. I have a full Acrobat Pro license through work and use both it and Reader when necessary, but the suggestion to use either Adobe Reader or Acrobat Pro in lieu of Preview because I don't like how it opens tabs is kind of like suggesting I drive a 1973 Pinto instead of a 2023 Mustang because I don't like the way the door locks work.

Yeah, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but Adobe's Acrobat software are probably the worst large-company, mass-market pieces of software in existence. They're so bad it beggars belief--I cannot fathom how a company the size of Adobe, with a piece of software as theoretically mature as a PDF reader or editor, can do that bad of a job with its basic functionality.

It's so bad that at work that even though we have full access to Acrobat Pro, other folks on the team have paid substantial amounts of money for Bluebeam because it's more usable, and less likely to absolutely destroy the document being marked up, than Acrobat Pro.

At least the new rendering engine Adobe is trialling now produces screen display that doesn't feel like I'm living in 1992, but I doubt they've fixed anything else.