Is it possible to somehow default the OSX preview window size on open for PDF files

defaultspdfpreview

I have had this bug-bare for a while where preview always opens documents too small, I'm visually impaired and want them to default to open with two options

Default width to nearly 100% of screen, last used would be perfect
Default PDF display to "Single Page Continuous"
Default the mouse tool to "Move"

No matter what I do it always opens in a window 1/3 of my screen size to what I assume is "100%".

Best Answer

Customize Preview (easy)

Have you looked under Preview preferences? You can set Initial Document Scale to 100% or larger if you want. You might need to adjust the option below that, defining size equal to screen or print sizes.

Use a better PDF viewer

If Preview.app can't do what you want, look into Skim.app

Skim has an option to open PDFs as Default, Maximized, or Fit. One of these ought to improve.

Customize Preview (complex)

If you want all three points requested above and want them in Preview.app, I would do the following:

Turn on Universal Access so you can script applications via the GUI
Make a new app in Automator that accepts PDFs. Replace Preview with this (open with this by default, put it in your dock so you can drag-and-drop onto it, etc.)
The new app should simply take the input PDF and pass it to Preview, so it displays there
The new app should then use Universal Access commands to
1. Maximize the window
2. Set to "Single Continuous Page"
3. Select the mouse tool you want.

Related Solutions

Keep Preview from autoresizing print output

I would use Terminal commands slightly different from @Bart's above, although those work just fine.

To disable Preview's default print scaling:

defaults write com.apple.Preview PVImagePrintingScaleMode -bool false

To restore Preview's default print scaling:

defaults write com.apple.Preview PVImagePrintingScaleMode -bool true

That way, the default stays in Preview's plist, so I don't need some external reminder about that default if I'm poking into it next year when I've forgotten I did this.

Incidentally, the first time I started up Preview after disabling its print scaling, it seemed to hang on launch, so I force-quit and then tried again and it was fine.

Hmm. Tried to edit to make the code lines show...

Change default Preview window size

You might want to check out this question: What window management options exist for OS X?

My recommendation, if you want it to be fully automatic, is to use Slate.

Slate is no longer in active development, but it still works and is highly customizable. Put this code in a .slate.js file in your home directory:

var rightHalf = slate.operation("move", {
   "x" : "screenSizeX/2+screenOriginX",
   "y" : "screenOriginY",
   "width" : "screenSizeX/2",
   "height" : "screenSizeY"
});
slate.on("windowOpened", function(event, win) {
    if (win.app().name() === "Preview") {
        win.doOperation(rightHalf);
    }
});