Cutting the tight rope - getting rid of Acrobat as the default PDF viewer on OS X

Posted on Wednesday, March 05, 2008 @ 14:20 CET

After installing CS3 the second most annoying piece of Adobe software (the first being the all-might Updater, which seems to have become sentient), Acrobat decided to take over. If I needed to author, comment, annotate or do anything with PDF files other than just view them I might think otherwise, but I don't so I don't. Compared to Preview.app, Acrobat is a slow mofo that somehow decided to become my default PDF viewer.

Fixing this in the Finder is easy enough, right-click file > Get Info > Open with > select Preview > Change All and you're done. But what about Safari? Clicking on a link to a PDF takes me to a blank page where I'm then asked for a program to use to view the PDF. Selecting Acrobat saves that preference but there's still a 20 second wait every time you attempt to view a PDF, not the speedy response you become used to when using Preview.

Luckily getting rid of Acrobat as the default viewer in Safari is as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Close Safari
2. In the Finder, go to /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/
3. Delete AdobePDFViewer.plugin

Now empty the Trash to make sure that sucka doesn't come back :)

- paulo

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