18

The Preview application currently hangs when it opens (it doesn't crash - it becomes unresponsive). Since Preview opens the files that were opened at the last invocation - killing and reopening Preview doesn't help.

Switching to the guest user proves that the Preview application works.

Where does the Preview application store the list of files to open at startup?

Excellll
  • 12,847
Jens Axel Søgaard
  • 375

2 Answers2

22

Quit Preview.

Navigate to ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.Preview.savedState/

Quick way to get there…

  • From Finder...

  • Cmd ⌘ N for new window

  • Cmd ⌘ Shift ⇧ G for Go To…

  • Copy/paste ~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.Preview.savedState/

  • Hit Enter

Delete the entire contents of the com.apple.Preview.savedState folder.

Late Edit: I've noticed the Preview saved state folder is now an alias in more recent OSes; in which case when deleting the contents, don't also delete the alias. The original is in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Preview/Data/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.Preview.savedState

Tetsujin
  • 50,917
20

There are two options for doing this without having to touch config files:

  • To do this one time only, you can hold down Shift ⇧ while opening any app to temporarily disable the "reopen windows on launch" feature
  • To disable this behavior for all apps indefinitely, open System Preferences, go to General, and check "Close windows when quitting an app" near the bottom.
gntskn
  • 300