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I am facing a super stupid problem which is completely killing my productivity.

I have my laptop attached to an external monitor. Desktop 1 is on the laptop and desktop 2 is on the external screen. From desktop 2, I open a PDF file with preview.

Instead of opening it inside desktop 2, it automatically switches whatever is full screen on my laptop monitor and opens the PDF on desktop 1.

This is driving me mad. Why isn't the default behavior the obvious one? (namely open the window exactly where the open command comes from)

Is there anything I can do to make it behave in the logical way?

Thanks!

ps: MacOs 10.14.4 Mojave

edit: adding picture regarding comment enter image description here

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  • 1) Is Preview already running when you do this? 2) Right click Preview's icon in the Dock & tell us what is selected in Options>Assign to...
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jun 4, 2019 at 19:51
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    @Tetsujin The behavior is the same wheter preview is already open or not. Weird I don't have 'assign to' in the options list in the dock ( I have 'keep in dock', 'open at login', 'show in finder', none checked)
    – ClonedOne
    Commented Jun 4, 2019 at 19:53
  • All apps have an assign to [desktop]; I've never seen one without.
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Jun 4, 2019 at 19:56
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    @LvcasX1 thanks for the tip! now I can see the option. However that's not really answering the question, I would like preview to just open where I am working, not in a fixed place. If for instance I was working on the laptop monitor I would want it to open there
    – ClonedOne
    Commented Jun 4, 2019 at 20:09
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    I think your title should say "... in current desktop when on second monitor". Because on the primary monitor it does open in the current desktop. But I agree, it's super frustrating, I have had the exact same issue and it seems this is a bug in Previews behavior. It's truly annoying. I open PDFs in Skim by default unless I need to modify the PDF (Skim uses the underlying PDF viewer of the OS, so the experience is similar to Preview and it has much better annotating features – but it can't do stuff like add or delete pages etc.)
    – jan
    Commented Mar 4, 2020 at 12:23

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
0

You want to go to setting > your external monitor > Use as, and set it to be main display. Then files you open will open on the external monitor.

display-settings

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    Commented Jul 19 at 18:59

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