Four great uses for Preview’s Full Screen mode
Mac OS X, Tips & Tricks, OS X Apps, How to
Preview is the default application to open just about any image or PDF file on your Mac, it’s a great program that blows anything comparable in the Windows world out of the water. One of the greatly underused features of Preview is the ability to view images and PDF files in full screen mode. Entering full screen mode is very easy, it’s just a matter of hitting “Command-Shift-F” while a document is open in the Preview app. If you’re wondering what to do next, here’s some more information and four great uses for Preview’s slideshow capabilities:
Using Preview’s Full Screen slideshow mode:
- Open an image or PDF file in Preview
- Hit “Command-Shift-F” to enter the slideshow mode
- Navigate a series of images, or pages in a PDF document by using the arrow keys
- Exit full screen mode by hitting the Escape key
Four great uses for Preview’s Full Screen Slideshow mode:
- Create an instant and very attractive slideshow of an image collection
- Browse through large amounts of images quickly
- Read lengthy PDF’s at a higher resolution and in a distraction free environment
- Use Full Screen mode to create a quick and simple presentation using a PDF file or collection of images
This screenshot shows what a series of images looks like:
The screenshot below demonstrates what an individual image in Preview’s Full Screen Slideshow mode looks like:
Here’s what a PDF file in full screen mode looks like:
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Comments:
Comments: 11
Comment from Tony Ward
Time: April 19, 2007, 1:58 pm
I LOVE this feature of Preview. I use it frequently to proof layout and sheet music projects in PDF before sending; makes for a cheap, simple and focused environment for giving everything the pre-flight looksie.
Comment from Sugarcoated
Time: April 19, 2007, 8:19 pm
Oh, please. I love my Macs, but I can think of at least half a dozen free programs for Windows that absolutely destroy Preview. FastStone Image Viewer, Picasa, and IrfanView to name but a few.
http://www.faststone.org/FSViewerDetail.htm
http://picasa.google.com/
http://tinyurl.com/27j9v8
In fact, I’ll go so far as to say Preview is one of the most disappointing and anemic programs on the Mac platform compared to its Windows (and even Linux) counterparts. I mean, Hello! It’s 2007 — how hard can it be to add dual monitor support?
Hopefully Preview’s many shortcomings will be addressed in Leopard. Until then, I’ll continue to use the slower, but much more effective Aperture.
Comment from anon
Time: April 19, 2007, 9:39 pm
I love preview. it’s replaced acrobat reader for me full time. It’s also been the perfect Keynote companion. Until PowerPoint is faster (read: universal or written for intel), my Preview.app presentations are fast, simple, and straightforward.
Comment from anon
Time: April 19, 2007, 9:39 pm
I love preview. it’s replaced acrobat reader for me full time. It’s also been the perfect Keynote companion. Until PowerPoint is faster (read: universal or written for intel), my Preview.app presentations are fast, simple, and straightforward.
Comment from Cole
Time: April 20, 2007, 12:30 pm
But you can’t zoom (can you?) once you are in full screen mode?
It fits the PDF by height to the screen.
I want it by width, otherwise it is too small.
Comment from geber
Time: April 21, 2007, 9:50 am
Nice feature 
- Does anyone know how i can delete a picture during the Slideshow?
Comment from orville
Time: April 22, 2007, 12:16 am
Preview is good for some things but it is no replacement for Aperture in terms of managing massive amounts of photos and tweaking them
Nice idea about using it for presentations
Comment from Hans
Time: April 22, 2007, 3:30 am
This is a nice feature, but you can do this in the Finder as well.
Select some images in the Finder, right click and choose “Slideshow”.
Move the mouse to access the controls.
Works identical for all image formats that the Finder can render previews for.
Comment from Bah
Time: May 6, 2007, 1:07 pm
Please. Even Windows’ built-in image viewer kicks Preview’s ass. I love OSX, but Preview blows. You should be able to go through all images in a given directory and navigate through them easily, rather than having to select every image you need to view before loading Preview. Booooo.
Comment from Mohammad
Time: October 29, 2007, 9:49 am
I love my mac also and I love preview. it’s much faster than windows image viewer, but one of the big problems is the leek of showing animated gifs! even the iPhoto doesn’t show the animated gifs. it’s really disappointing 
and one of the other things which I always face it is the ability to zoom in the slideshow (or full screen) mode.
I hope they fix them in the Leopard.
Comment from MingLiu
Time: November 15, 2007, 3:59 pm
Try Xee! It opens entire directories of images (but not PDF’s it seems…) and lets you zip through them with pretty good controls, none of which are on-screen, ruining the image for you. Read more here:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/19978
I think of it as IrfanView for the Mac, at least in the viewer capabilities — I know IrfanView has a lot more to it than mere viewing.
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