Preview in macOS Tahoe: Problems with Text Selection

Since the release of macOS Tahoe, many users have reported issues when using the built-in Preview app to select text inside PDF documents. Instead of selecting single words or short passages, selection often expands to large, invisible structural blocks (for example, regions that contain underlying table or paragraph tags). That behavior can break copying, annotating, or exporting small portions of text from PDFs.

Symptoms

• Selecting a word or sentence often results in a much larger selection.
• Selections appear to follow invisible structural elements (tables, paragraphs, form fields).
• Copying or annotating small fragments becomes difficult or impossible without additional editing.

Possible causes

The behavior appears related to how Preview interprets PDF internal structure (tags, forms, or layout regions) in the new macOS version. PDF files can contain hidden structural metadata that some viewers use to determine selection boundaries; a change in Preview’s handling of that metadata could produce the observed behavior.

Workarounds

• Try opening the PDF in another reader (Adobe Acrobat Reader, PDF Expert, Firefox, or Chrome) and selecting there.
• Export the PDF as plain text or use a PDF-to-text tool (many apps and command-line tools like pdftotext can help).
• Take a screenshot of the region and run OCR (Text Recognition) if you only need the visible text.
• Try copying smaller selections or switching selection modes (if available in the app).
• Report the issue to Apple via the Feedback Assistant or Apple’s Feedback page and include sample PDFs that reproduce the problem.

What to watch for

Look for Apple updates or Preview app patches that mention PDF or selection behavior. If you rely on precise PDF text selection for work, consider keeping an alternative PDF reader installed until Apple addresses the issue.

Credits

The issue was reported by readers on various tech sites and forums following the macOS Tahoe release (original excerpt provided from a German report on ifun.de).

If you can share a sample PDF that reproduces this, or notes about which macOS build you’re running, add them in the comments below — that helps debugging and bug reports to Apple.