Viewing PDF documents in Mac OS X with Preview

Many Apple products include manuals in Portable Document Format (PDF). You can read these and other PDF documents with Preview.

If you double-click a PDF file and a different application opens, you can use these steps to tell Preview to open PDF documents:

  1. Select the PDF file in the Finder.
  2. From the File menu, choose Get Info.
  3. In the Info window that appears, click the disclosure triangle next to "Open with."
  4. Set the pop-up menu to Preview.
  5. Click the Change All button that's immediately below the pop-up menu.
If you like to use shortcut menus (Control-click), you can use the alternate method shown in this movie. To change from "Open with" to "Always open with," as you see in the movie, press the Option key.

Related documents

25732 Mac OS X: Preview wants a password to open an unprotected PDF file

Published Date: Feb 17, 2012