MacOS – Disable autosave in Preview

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Preview, by default, persists edits to the underlying file immediately. (i.e. if you crop something, the underlying file becomes cropped). I find this behavior very irritating.

I tried enabling Settings->General->"Ask to keep changes when closing documents". With this, Preview still persists the change to disk, but asks if I want to keep the change when I close the app.

A 2012 answer to a similar question suggested

defaults write -app 'preview' ApplePersistence -bool no

This does not seem to have any effect.

Is there any way to make Preview behave like a normal application? I want my changes unsaved and transient until I specifically hit save.

Best Answer

Per Turning Off Auto Saving In TextEdit And Other Mac Apps on the "Mac Tricks and Tips" website:

  1. Open System Preferences
  2. Go to "General"
  3. Enable "Ask to keep changes when closing documents"
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