There’s a frustrating issue with macOS, where the app you’re using stops working and spits out an error message saying it isn’t open anymore. This mostly happens with Preview, but it can affect any app on your Mac, including Finder, Safari, the App Store, and others.
When this error occurs, the app you’re using becomes unresponsive and the following alert pops up:
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Despite the error message, your app still appears as though it’s open. There may be a dot beneath it in the Dock or it may still have open windows. But you’re unable to use it. With Preview, that means you can’t open PDFs, screenshots, or other images anymore!
This article explains how to fix this error and get your apps working again. We’ve even gone so far as explaining how to fully reinstall macOS, in case this issue keeps cropping up again and again.
Presenting Apple Music on Mac. The new Apple Music app is the ultimate music streaming experience on Mac. 1 Explore a library of 60 million songs, discover new artists and tracks, find the perfect playlist, download and listen offline, or enjoy all the music you’ve collected over the years. And find it all in your music library on all your devices. In this article we'll run through the steps necessary to create a bootable installer of the Mac operating system, whether it's so you can install the latest version of the macOS on multiple Macs. Apr 23, 2018 Preview also provides an easy path to creating a JPEG from any app. Select Print/PDF/Open in Preview. Then, in Preview, select File/Export. You can set the DPI and a compression slider to control. After checking the App Store to verify the app is still available, delete the problem app from your Mac and reinstall it from the App Store for a clean approach. Contact the app developer. Visit the app developer's website and see if there are any notes about compatibility with your version of macOS or OS X or other apps or services you use. 'Mac Basics: Preview app views and edits images and PDFs' AppleInsider review from 2003; MacProNews article: PDF and Panther: The Hidden Role of PDF in Mac OS X 10.3 from July 2004; Sams Publishing sample chapter on Preview from Mac OS X Panther Applications and Utilities. Includes some instructions for use, with screenshots.
Contents
Quick Tips
Here are the basic steps to fix Preview when macOS tells you it’s not open anymore, we’ve explained each step more fully in the article below:
Related:Step 1. Force Quit Preview
The first thing to try and do — although it doesn’t always work for this error — is to close the unresponsive app. Despite the error message telling you Preview “is not open anymore,” it usually is. But it has frozen and needs to be reopened.
There are two ways to Force Quit an app in macOS: using the Force Quit window or using Activity Monitor. If either of these methods works, make sure you reboot your Mac before opening Preview again.
How do I close Preview using the Force Quit window?
How do I close Preview using Activity Monitor?
Step 2. Reboot your Mac
If it’s not possible to close Preview using Force Quit or Activity Monitor, you can close it by rebooting your Mac instead. This forces any apps that macOS says are not open to restart, bypassing the error message.
The safest way to reboot your Mac is using a soft reboot, but that may not be possible if the unresponsive app cannot close. If that’s the case, you have no choice but to use a hard reboot. We’ve explained both reboots below.
How do I soft reboot my Mac?
How do I hard reboot my Mac?
Step 3. Remove your Preview preferences
If you still get the same error message — ‘The application “Preview.app” is not open anymore’ — you may need to remove some of your preference files.
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These are small files that macOS automatically creates to store your settings for each application. You can usually remove them without losing any data or causing problems, but we recommend you back up your Mac first just in case.
Follow each of the suggestions below, testing Preview again after each one.
We advise you to move the preference files to a new folder on your Desktop for safekeeping, that way you can always put them back if something goes wrong. If this works and your issue is fixed, go ahead and delete those preference files.
How do I remove my Preview preferences?
Step 4. Update or reinstall macOS![]()
Hopefully, that’s all you need to resolve the ‘“Preview.app” is not open anymore’ errors. But if you’re still experiencing problems, there might be a bug in your operating software. You can fix this by updating or reinstalling macOS.
We suggest you update your Mac to the latest version of macOS first. Apple frequently releases patch updates to fix bugs like this, but you can’t benefit from them if you don’t keep your machine up-to-date.
If you’re already running the latest version of macOS or if an update doesn’t solve anything, you need to reinstall macOS using Recovery Mode. This shouldn’t affect your data — although we recommend you back up your Mac first anyway.
Reinstalling macOS rewrites every line of code in the operating software on your Mac.
How do I update to the latest release of macOS?
How do I reinstall macOS?
Fingers cross, that’s the last of the ‘“Preview.app” is not open anymore’ messages. Check out this post if you need more help with crashing apps on your Mac.
And let us know in the comments if you found these suggestions helpful!
Dan is a freelance writer based in South West England.
He spent two years supervising repairs as a Genius Admin for Apple Retail and uses that knowledge to keep our troubleshooting guides up to date.
Long before that, Dan turned to Apple products from a musical background. Having owned iPods for years, he bought a MacBook to learn sound recording and production. It was using those skills that he gained a first-class Bachelor of Science in Sound Technology.
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