Open Any Man Page as a Printable Document in Preview
Pipe a formatted man page straight into Preview as a rendered document you can zoom, search and save.
Run man -t rsync | open -f -a Preview to view the rsync manual in Preview; swap in any command name.
01Command
Command
$ man -t rsync | open -f -a Preview02What it does
man -t typesets the manual page into a printable PostScript/PDF stream, and open -f feeds that standard input to Preview, which displays it as a paginated document. It works for every installed man page, and you can print or save the result directly from Preview — far kinder on the eyes than a monospaced terminal.
03Risk
!Warning: The document is generated on the fly, so keep the pipe on one line; long sections produce many pages, and this needs the groff formatter, which macOS includes by default.
04Undo
✓No undo needed — this command does not change persistent state.
05Sources
- man - Format and Display the On-line Manual PagesEvidence: Documents the -t option which formats the manual page with troff/groff for printing (output on stdout).
- open - Open Files, Directories and ApplicationsEvidence: Documents open -f, which reads input from stdin and opens it with the specified application (-a Preview).
Last verified: 2026-09-19 · Category: Files & Folders