deactivate the opening of PDF files in tabs in preview in Mac

Question

How to deactivate the opening of PDF files in tabs in preview in Mac OS Catalina.

I want a pdf file by window

Thank you

Answer 1

I first noticed this in macOS Mojave. I opened a ticket they have not responded to or closed yet here:

Setting this option in Desktop & Dock:

to Never works until you have open more files than your "Recent documents, applications, and servers" setting.

In my case that is frequent, as the maximum is 50 and I often exceed that total.

Answer 2

There is no option in Preview, but there is a general option to favour windows over tabs in System Preferences > Dock, which will apply to every app.

The choices are "Always"; "Full Screen Only"; and "Manually".

(In Ventura, this is now in System Settings > Desktop & Dock and the choice is now reversed - it is "Prefer tabs when opening documents" : Never, Always or In Full Screen.)

Answer 3

You can use WindowTabbingMode with defaults write to set the "always open in new tab" parameter false and therefore always open the file in a new window. Run this in Terminal :

defaults write com.apple.Preview AppleWindowTabbingMode -string never