Edit PDF Free on Mac
macOS ships with Preview — a surprisingly capable free PDF tool. For heavier editing, combining Preview with browser tools covers most tasks without any paid software.
What Preview can do (free, built-in)
- Annotate: highlight, add text boxes, draw shapes, add sticky notes
- Sign: create signatures with trackpad, camera, or typed text
- Fill forms: click and type in PDF form fields
- Reorder pages: drag pages in the sidebar
- Merge PDFs: drag pages from one PDF's sidebar to another
- Export: save as PDF, JPEG, PNG, TIFF at different quality levels
What Preview can't do
- Edit existing body text (it's not a word processor for PDFs)
- Compress PDFs significantly (its 'Reduce File Size' quartz filter is poor quality)
- OCR scanned documents
- Batch process multiple PDFs
Fill the gaps with browser tools
| Task | Best free option on Mac |
|---|---|
| Compress PDF properly | Irreva Compress PDF (browser, no upload) |
| OCR a scanned PDF | Irreva PDF OCR (Tesseract in browser) |
| Convert PDF to Word | Irreva PDF to Word |
| Add page numbers | Irreva Add Page Numbers PDF |
| Merge multiple PDFs | Preview sidebar drag (built-in) or Irreva for large batches |
Frequently Asked Questions
Does macOS Preview compress PDFs well?
Preview's Quartz filter compression is notoriously bad — often increases file size or severely degrades quality. Use Irreva's compressor instead.
Can I edit PDF text on Mac for free?
Preview can't edit existing body text. Convert to Word/Pages with Irreva, edit there, then export back to PDF.