I have a bunch of small PDF files, which are a few hundred pages but generally less than 2 MB or so in size. Scrolling is perfectly smooth in Preview.app, but if I click anywhere inside the PDF, macOS freezes for a couple seconds. The issue is perfectly reproducible and happens every time for certain PDF files.
I'm running the 2016 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar. This really shouldn't be a hard task for the CPU, so I suspect there's some deadlock going on, like trying to contact some random cloud service. Does anyone know a fix for this issue?
Best Answer
Though I never figured out what caused the problem here, and none of the proposed fixes worked, I was able to avoid the problem by switching to Skim, which is generally less buggy than Preview.
The problem likely has something to do with LaTeX, since all the affected files were built with it. Unfortunately, the problem described here is now moot, because a new bug causes both Preview and Skim to freeze whenever almost any document made with LaTeX is opened.