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           TipBITS: Disable Live Text for Easier Selecting in Preview

   Adam Engst

   I hope I'm not alone in using Preview for many basic graphic
   manipulations. As Josh Centers and I outlined in [1]Take Control of
   Preview, the app has a surprising amount of power for cropping
   screenshots, resizing images, adding annotations, and even editing
   pixels. (For instance, I frequently copy a rectangle of a screenshot's
   background color and paste it over something I'd like to 'delete.')

   Alas, cropping, which is one of the most common things I do in Preview,
   became harder in Monterey, thanks to the addition of Live Text. That's
   because Preview sometimes thinks I want to select text in the image
   rather than drag selection handles. Annoyingly, this problem is not
   predictable'I can run into it with a particular screenshot but have
   trouble reproducing with the same screenshot later. Plus, the frequency
   with which I experience the problem has been falling, perhaps due to
   Apple improving the logic behind selecting.

   If you're suffering from a click-and-drag giving you a text selection
   when you want a rectangular selection, I've found a trick for
   increasing your chances of being able to use the selection handles.
   Resize the window so you can see the canvas on the edge where you need
   to grab the selection handle. Then, approach the handle from the canvas
   side so macOS sees your click and drag as happening just outside the
   area where there's text.

   If that trick isn't sufficient, there's a way to return Preview to its
   normal selection habits. It requires turning off Live Text entirely,
   but as much as I think being able to select text in images is
   tremendously cool, I rarely need it, whereas I frequently crop images
   in Preview. I didn't even realize that disabling Live Text was an
   option until I opened the Language & Region pane of System Preferences
   for another reason. But there it was, a checkbox labeled 'Select Text
   in Images.' Deselecting that ensured that I could always drag selection
   handles in Preview once again.

   I started this article feeling quite pleased with myself for
   discovering this oddly placed checkbox for disabling Live Text, but my
   enthusiasm waned with my inability to reproduce the selection problem
   reliably. Most people probably aren't having any issues with Live Text
   taking over selections, but if you are, I hope my discoveries above
   help.

References

   Visible links
   1. https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/preview/?pt=TIDBITS

   Hidden links:
   2. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2022/07/Preview-selection.png
   3. https://tidbits.com/wp/../uploads/2022/07/Live-Text-setting.png

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