HELLO! I was searching online as I have this issue. It's now April 2025 and this issue has been happening since Mac OS Ventura which is why I rolled back to Monterey on all my Macs as since I work with PDFs every single day in my music teaching/playing job, THIS is a deal breaker and unacceptable.
However, since Monterey no longer gets Security updates, I HAVE to update and, just like the Snow Leopard days when Lion - High Sierra came out, I hope it won't take Apple NINE 9/OS Updates to get things "working". I literally suffered through until Mojave came out and at that time, I had to do a fresh install and I've kept ALL of my Mojave Macs (5 Minis, 2 MBA's, 2 MBPs, 1 MacTrashCan) to use as work machines (as I did for YEARS with my Snow Leopard MBP's, MacMinis and MacCheeseGraterPros).
When Mac Lion came out, there was an issue with Preview back then which is why I didnt upgrade until Yosemite (which had/has) the iCloud insanity loop!
I've had to resort to using ForScore (on my both my iPad and Mac <<<< YES, it works on Silicon Macs!) or I use another PDF Reader (
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pdf-reader-pdf-editor-convert/id6443466990?mt=12) via the App Store. BOTH of these do NOT have the black cropping backgrounds but they aren't free apps either.
Hopefully there's a fix in Sonoma or Sequoia's future? Maybe in 9 years?
