Recommended Pdf Editor For Mac

Business • Updated on May 31, 2019

Editor’s note (May.31, 2019): Recently PDFpenPro turns 11. The big upgrade we have tested, and we are confident it’s still our upgrade pick since the core functionality hasn’t changed, and add more features and improvements than ever!

PDF is a necessity in macOS. Without PDF, you can’t easily create & share portable documents. In fact, almost every native macOS application lets you export content into PDF.

Best PDF Editor For Mac 1. Skim is a free PDF editor/reader for Mac and it is also called note-taker for Mac OS X. It is very helpful in reading PDFs due to its design. Note: the programs are for Mac users only, if you use a PC, see our review of best PDF editors for Windows. How to Edit PDFs on Mac: Online Tools vs Desktop Software? There is no absolute answer, but here's our take. If you are in a hurry, and you only have several non-confidential PDFs to alter, go for online PDF editing tools. Simply open a web browser, Google 'free online PDF editor' and click one to enter its website, upload your PDF file and start editing.

Unfortunately, dealing with PDFs can be a pain at times, especially if you need to sign them, merge them or anything else.

That is why a fully-fledged PDF editor for Mac is a necessity indeed! Unlike the common thought, there is an impressive variety of PDF editing programs to choose from.

Best 10 PDF Editor for Mac OS X/macOS. PDF, as one of the great format for sharing files, is widely used in daily life. You can print a file and copy the text from it. Note: the programs are for Mac users only, if you use a PC, see our review of best PDF editors for Windows. How to Edit PDFs on Mac: Online Tools vs Desktop Software? There is no absolute answer, but here's our take. If you are in a hurry, and you only have several non-confidential PDFs to alter, go for online PDF editing tools. Simply open a web browser, Google 'free online PDF editor' and click one. MasterPDF editor is a cross-platform PDF editor which works in Linux, MacOS, and Windows Operating System. The free version of MasterPDF editor has all the features that any home users might need and allows you to comment, annotate, split or merge PDF files. I have been looking for an easy to use and not so expensive fully-featured PDF editor on MAC and finally found Qoppa’s “PDF Studio Pro” the most suitable one. It’s a great piece of software for quickly editing / creating PDF’s and very straightforward.

And, Adobe Acrobat Pro is most people’s go-to option.

We know Adobe Acrobat Pro DC is great, but…

Adobe Acrobat Pro DC has been the standard for PDF editing for quite a long time. Considering that Adobe built the format, it’s quite common too. Anyway, that’s not really a great reason to keep using Adobe Acrobat Pro DC as the macOS PDF editor.

The Good: Acrobat Pro DC is undoubtedly one of the powerful PDF solutions out there. You are linked to the Adobe ecosystem as well. If you are someone who uses Adobe Reader for opening PDF format, you can have the benefits of a uniform UI as well.

The Bad: Even then, Acrobat Pro DC does not offer the best User Interface in town. Sure, it gets the job done, but that’s not enough. We would not recommend Acrobat Pro DC when you want to edit multiple documents and manage everything with ease.

The Ugly: Acrobat Pro DC is damn expensive. It comes with a monthly subscription charge of $14.99. Adobe Pro 2017, an older, standalone version, is available for a hefty price-tag of $449. These rates are way beyond what a normal user can afford.

We believe these reasons are enough for anyone to look for an Adobe Acrobat alternative — or one better PDF editor for Mac.

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A word on online PDF editors

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Online PDF editors are the next best choice that people make when they can’t afford Acrobat Pro DC. It’s an awesome option too — until you lose the internet connection. The problem with online editors is that you’d need a constant Internet connection.

There are also some security concerns. You basically have to upload the PDF document to a third-party server for editing it. It’s not the ideal option when you are dealing with confidential files either. Also, not all online PDF editors are offering satisfactory features.

Personally speaking, I think online PDF editors are just good for page management of PDF documents. If you need deeper editing or bulk editing, you can’t count on them. More importantly, most people like to edit their files in a native environment.

So, it makes sense to check out some of the actual native macOS PDF editors out there.

TL;DR – These are the Best Mac PDF Editors available for desktop right now:

  • PDF Expert (fastest and easiest to dive in)
  • PDFpenPro (most powerful)

Choosing the best PDF Editor for Mac – Acrobat Pro DC alternative requirements

As we said, there is a huge number of PDF editors for macOS. As always, we wanted to picks the best ones. As we do every single time, we had a proper criteria as well.

  • The PDF Editor must have a simple User Interface. It should be non-distracting as well as focused. We always recommend a UI that works well with single-document and multi-document management.
  • Easy Editing: The PDF editing process should be as smooth as it gets. Automated selection recognition is one of the features we love. It’s not just about the text. The program should be powerful enough to edit other components like images, boxes, shapes and signatures.
  • Integration: the PDF editor must integrate well with your macOS system. Everything can be buttery-smooth that way. You may also consider using this PDF editor as the default PDF viewer.
  • An built-in PDF Viewer is one of the coolest features you have. This way, you don’t have to check out other software for reading PDF documents. It can save you a lot of money and resources too.
  • Markup and Annotation features are also required in the package. It must be easy to add comments and other elements to the PDF document using the tool, you know.
  • Feature-rich: Yes, the PDF editor must have enough features as well. This includes basic options for editing and advanced features like Optical Character Recognition. You may, however, prefer an editor with minimal features.
  • Cloud Storage: It’s great to have a cloud storage feature in the optimal PDF editor. This way, you can save your documents to services like iCloud and keep everything in sync.

So, we have chosen the best Mac PDF editors based on this criteria.

The pick: PDF Expert (fastest & easiest to dive in)

As the developers say, PDF Expert is a fast, robust and beautiful PDF editor. We tested on different PDF files and read feedbacks from other PDF users online, we came to know how PDFpen beats its rivals.

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Without further ado, let’s share our experience with PDF Expert.

The user interface

As you can see, PDF Expert offers a clean and intuitive User Interface. You can simply drag-and-drop a file to get started. Once added to the interface, you can decide what type of editing you want — Annotations and Editing.


On the left, top side of the screen, you have viewing mode controls. For instance, you can enable the sidebar for accessing features like Bookmarks, Thumbnails, Annotations and Outline. This sidebar is a great feature when it comes to navigating within the PDF document.

PDF Expert offers different Viewing Modes as well.

1. You can display one or two pages in the same-screen. This is great when you want to compare pages and make the edits.
2. PDF Expert has a Split View option as well. In this view, you can view/edit two PDF documents at the same time. You can arrange the documents side by side either horizontally or vertically.

This is a helpful feature when it comes to document management.

Free Pdf Editor For Mac

PDF Expert has a dedicated option for changing the page order of the PDF document. We’ll discuss that later.

In short, we are really impressed by the intuitive UI of PDF Expert.

Reading experience

PDF Expert offers a blazing fast PDF reading experience. The app opened the document in 1.5 seconds. Meanwhile, it took almost 10 seconds to load it with Acrobat.

As you select between PDF pages, all the pages are well displayed with fast speed, even, there is no stop when I switch between different pages.

As PDF Expert also offers iOS version, I uploaded a file into its iOS version, and the file fit in the device well, I got the same good reading experience as than on my Mac.

Editing PDF files

There are actually four main options in the toolbar — Text, Image, Link and Redact.

One thing we love about PDF Expert is that it automatically detects the type of content you’ve selected. If you’ve selected an image, for instance, you will see options to rotate, replace, export and crop the photograph.

Like the same way, you can add/manage links within the PDF document. You can set up links to the web and other pages in the document. If you ask us, PDF Expert has kept this section as minimal as possible. Even when the PDF file is complex, you won’t have trouble in making edits.

The Redact feature is also quite helpful. In a single click, you can white out sensitive content in the PDF file. I’ve found this feature really useful while sharing confidential data with friends.

Annotating PDF files

Annotating PDFs is probably the second most popular thing you do with PDFs after viewing and reading. Whether you’re a student annotating a book or an architect, marking up a blueprint, you can highlight, underline, strikethrough, add shapes, lines or your own stamps, and export all your annotations with ease. Once again, you can count on the toolbar to access a top-class collection of tools.

It’s very easy to add signatures to PDF Expert. You can do it using text, trackpad or even upload an image of the actual signature. Either way, you get awesome results. Other annotation features also work great in this PDF editing suite.

Managing pages in PDF

As we mentioned earlier, PDF Expert has a dedicated viewing option for managing pages. When you want to take care of a big PDF document, this is a great feature.

This section offers a bunch of options such as Add Page, Append File, Copy, Paste, Rotate, Delete and Share. You can easily arrange multiple pages by dragging and dropping them. You can also extract individual pages from a complete PDF document.

Last but not least, PDF Expert offers an option to add page numbers on the header and footer areas as well.

Multi-platform support

PDF Expert is available for both macOS and iOS. It also enables content-sync between the devices, you know.

If you want to access documents that you created using PDF Expert for macOS, you can easily do it from an iPhone or iPad. The app can be downloaded from App Store and everything is kept in sync. It’s a great way to access cloud storage: everything is done via iCloud.

It’s as seamless as it gets.

Additional features in PDF Expert

There are a few advanced features that we should talk about.

PDF Expert has an in-built method for password-protecting PDF files as well. This is a great way to secure your PDF file without further complication. It’s so simple that you can go to File Set Password, and pick the password of your choice.

PDF Expert also has an option to reduce file size of a PDF file. While doing so, you can adjust the image quality as well. When we checked, PDF Expert was able to reduce the file size by 75%, which is quite a great deal.
Last but not least, PDF Expert comes with Touchbar support as well. So, if you have a compatible MacBook, you’ll love it.

What could be better

There are a few things that we didn’t like in PDF Expert. We understand that PDF Expert is a minimalistic PDF editor but it has left out some basic features as well.

  • You cannot create PDF documents using PDF Expert. You can technically add a new page in the PDF file and add text, but that’s something inefficient. We’d have really loved to see some additional set of PDF creation features in the program.
  • PDF Expert could have included a basic version of Optical Character Recognition. It’s disappointing that the program does not even support plug-ins, which can bring in the feature. It lacks other types of plug-ins as well.
  • There are only four editing options in PDF Expert. At times, these may not be enough for most people. We’d have loved to see some extra toolbars in there.
  • It’d also be better if PDF Expert had better options for bulk actions. As of now, that’s NIL.

Also, PDF Expert lacks options for customization and control. Everything is basic – too basic, at times.

Availability & pricing

PDF Expert is available for macOS and iOS. You can download the Mac version from the official website and the iOS version from App Store.

PDF Expert for macOS is priced at $79.99 while the iOS version can be bought for $9.99. If you ask us, both apps have been priced quite reasonably. The PDF Expert license actually lets you run the app on 3 Macs.

Verdict

PDF Expert, according to my repeated tests and collected feedbacks from other users, it is faster than Preview. It allows you to edit & manage PDF documents with ease, never compromising the performance as well. It’s true that it lacks advanced tech like OCR but that’s something you should be convinced about. Overall, for the price you’re paying, PDF Expert is worth it.

Upgrade pick: PDFpenPro (most powerful)

There are times when you need more than a basic PDF editor. PDFpenPro is the best choice for that occasion. It comes with a great set of features inside, including the option to create awesome PDF files. If you can spend more for a comprehensive PDF suite, PDFpenPro could be a potential option.

Now, let’s have a look at what this PDF suite has to offer.

The interface

PDFpenPro has been designed to create PDF files with precision. The UI has been optimized for professionals. When you open the program, you can see the blank screen where you can insert content like text, images, shapes and others. Like we saw in PDF Expert, PDFpenPro too offers different viewing options. It has a multi-tabbed UI for managing multiple files as well.

The latest version 11 offers the possibility to see different parts of a document simultaneously with split view. Just as you can in, for instance, Microsoft Word, you can have two views on the same document. Either alongside or below your main view, you get this second window pane on the document.

We should admit that’s useful because it means you can be making some fine edits to page 9 of a PDF while referring to page 99 at the same time.

Editing & annotation

PDFpenPro checks all the boxes when it comes to editing PDF files. You can take care of a wide variety of content like text, images and others. All the editing options are included in the same toolbar. It’s also easy to navigate between multiple pages of the document.

The new Font Bar extends PDFpen’s Editing Bar downward, which provides the same kind of text formatting you’d get in a word processor. Select text and then you can change the font, size, justification and so on.

We also loved the Precision Edit tool in PDFpen, which recognizes the parts of the page and removes them intelligently.

There are also a few features that you can’t find in the standard version. For instance, you can use PDFpenPro to turn websites into PDF in a single click. Thanks to the wider compatibility, it lets you export PDF files to Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint formats as well.

Scanning & OCR

Optical Character Recognition is perhaps the best feature inside PDFpen. It has been designed to extract an impressive variety of data from sources like a scanned image. To use this feature, you can open the image in the software and click an Perform OCR button and you’re off the races. In a few minutes, PDFpenPro will help you convert the content into editable text. You can go about your business, including editing other PDF files, or create interactive forms that you can send to recipients, and PDFPenPro will continue to perform OCR on your files in the background.

It’s quite a time-saver and PDFpenPro happens to have great speeds too. PDFpenPro offers much control over the batch OCR process. The app was able to recognize text in hundreds of pages of documents in a few short moments, making them searchable, editable, and correctable. And you can decide the quality and resolution with ease.

Furthermore, the developer Smile has added both medical and legal terms to the English OCR dictionary in the latest PDFpen 11, making the apps even more attractive to professionals in those fields.

Some other features

PDFPenPro has a few features that have been around for awhile that are worth a mention here. For instance, you can use it to sign digital documents. As we did see in the case of PDF Expert, you can easily add and manage different signs and images. It basically goes like clockwork.

A Form field recognition tool scans your PDFs to see if there are any spaces on a page that are meant for users to add information to. When found, PDFPenPro adds a form field to that location where a user can click and enter text.

It also has support for audio annotations and redaction of PDF document. While the first one allows you to include worthwhile comments, the second feature will allow you to prevent sensitive data from exposure. It can come in handy at many times.

Last but not least, PDFpenPro offers multi-device syncing. Because both macOS and iOS versions are available, you can easily manage documents across platforms. All these features work hand in hand to make PDFpenPro one of the most professional-friendly PDF editing suites out there.

What could be better?

The only thing we think of is this: the UI.

It’s a powerful software, we do understand. It’s made for professionals, we understand that too. However, a slight change in the UI can make it all the more intuitive. This would make it easier for people to not just understand the software but also make awesome PDF documents in no time.

We think that’s something to be done soon.

Availability & pricing

PDFpenPro is available for both macOS and iOS.

PDFpenPro costs $124.95. Still, it’s a single license that can power only one Mac.

You can actually find its standard version, PDFpen, on Setapp.

Verdict

PDFpenPro is made for professionals, and there’s a steep learning curve. Even then, PDFpenPro offers solid OCR, a powerful new Precision Edit tool, and many features that give you better control everything in a PDF file. It is just that you should be ready to pay something extra.

Other apps we considered

Here are some of the top apps we considered as the best Mac PDF editor. They did not, however, make it to the top list.

Preview is the pre-built PDF and image viewer in macOS. It’s something that you can securely use for viewing and annotating PDF documents. The best part? It’s quite integrated to the system that you get the maximum level of performance. The main limitation here is that Preview does not actually let you edit the PDF files. It has a bunch of effective options for annotation.

You can do a few things like adding text and shapes to the document. Once done, Preview can neatly export the files to PDF as well. Considering that you are not paying anything to get this program, we’d love to keep it aside. So, if you just want to bring some annotations and text boxes to a PDF document — without affecting the existing text, Preview would be fine.

Preview is free and is built into macOS.

iSkysoft PDF Editor 6 Professional for Mac is one of the most well-priced PDF editing suites out there. It has made some compromises in performance and features, though. The best part is that the app comes with full support for OCR and PDF conversion. These two features are great when you consider the overall price tag of the app.

If you ask me what matters the most here, it’s Batch Processing. iSkysoft PDF Editor 6 Professional for Mac is one of the very few editors that allow complete support for batch processing. You can convert and deal with a lot of PDF files at once. The User Interface actually imitates that of PDF Expert, but we wish it had an enhanced level of performance.

iSkysoft PDF Editor 6 Professional is available for macOS and Windows, priced at $99.95.

Foxit PhantomPDF is one of the smoothest PDF editors we’ve seen so far. It packs so many features into a smaller-looking tool. Nevertheless, compared to other PDF editors we’ve covered, Foxit PhantomPDF comes with a larger footprint. Multitasking is not easy when you have Foxit PhantomPDF running in background. It also checks the boxes of OCR and automated recognition.

It’s comparatively easier to do PDF editing in Foxit PhantomPDF. We think, however, that the AI could be an impressive one. As of now, the User Interface looks so rudimentary and you will need some time to get used to the deal. Keep that aside, Foxit PhantomPDF is a great PDF editor for teams as well. It has options for real-time collaboration features.

Foxit PhantomPDF is available for Windows and macOS. It has a hefty price tag of $99.95 for Mac.

Are you looking for a fully-fledged suite for OCR? Then, ABBYY FineReader Pro for Mac is a great choice for. The problem is that you cannot expect standard features here. The whole program has been made for OCR needs, an area in which you can expect the best results. In just a few seconds, the program would convert a scanned image to editable text.

As far as OCR technology is concerned, ABBYY FineReader Pro for Mac works just great. It was able to do the OCR for even some of the low-quality images we’d tried. But, of course, if you have a better-quality image, the results would be better. We would not recommend the program for standard editing needs, though. The price tag is relatively higher too.

ABBYY FineReader Pro for Mac is available for $119.00.

The bottom line

So, these are the best Mac PDF editors you can find today. We have tried to suggest PDF editors that work well for particular needs. We hope it helps you choose the right one. If you are still confused and want a PDF editor for Mac that’s easy and effective, you can go with our pick, PDF Expert. If you are looking for a powerful solution that provides similar capabilities as Adobe Acrobat, then it is the time to evaluate the upgrade pick – PDFpenPro – as your Adobe Acrobat alternative.

Editing a PDF file isn’t that easy as compared to Word files or images. In simple PDF readers like Adobe PDF Reader, you can only highlight the text with different colors and attach comments with the text. But for other purposes, you need some dedicated software to edit PDF files which can add, remove or change all the content. So, here is the list of best edit PDF software available in 2018. They are mostly paid software and you can decide the best one by taking a trial for free.

Top PDF Editor Software For Windows And Mac

1. Wondershare PDFelement

This is the best edit PDF software available for almost all platforms — Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. It has a very simple, minimalistic and easy to use interface. There a lot of things that this software is capable of doing. Firstly, choose to edit the PDF in Line Mode or Paragraph Mode. You can add, remove and edit the text content and images in many ways. You can change the font, size, color or alignment of the text. Existing or added images can be cropped, overturned, rotated or deleted.

Apart from adding images and text, links can be set for other pages of the document, other documents or any webpage. Amazingly, there is also an option to remove a watermark from the page and add your own. You can remove the background and add an image or colors as a background.

You can even set a thumbnail for your document. The software lets you crop a page and also remove or add header and footer to it. Unlike the other editors or PDF readers, PDFelement has the option not just to add comments, but also attach files like images, Word pages, App setups etc.

The use of this software is not limited to just editing a PDF file. You can convert PDF files to Word, Powerpoint, Ebook, image, Excel files etc. And any file type can also be converted to PDF. You can also combine two or more files types and create a single PDF document out of them. If you want to create a PDF file of your own, there are hundreds of PDF templates available under the categories like Business, Legal, Life etc. You can also see the detailed review of PDFelement which we did back in 2016.

PDFelement has two versions — Standard and Pro. The features mentioned above are present on both the versions. The Pro version is best for professional users and it has other amazing features like OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and Form Recognition, Batch Processing PDF files and File Size Optimization. PDFelement Pro has also got Extended Compatibility Support for many file formats that can’t be processed on other PDF editors or readers. The Pro version supports PDF/A format for archiving of files for future use.

2. ApowerPDF

This is also one of the best edit PDF software to edit files easily. I think this is the only software in this list that you can use for a long time without upgrading to premium but there will be a watermark of ApowerPDF on your files. This app is like the first one but with limited features and less costly. In content editing, you can add or remove text as well as images. You can choose from innumerable fonts and colors to enhance the text. The images can be cropped and repositioned.

You can crop the pages, replace them, delete or even insert a new one in between. There are also options to add, update or remove the watermark, background and header and footer. ApowerPDF also lets you set a password to your PDF documents for better security. PDF Files can also be converted to GIF, JPEG or Word files.

3. PDF Expert

Free Pdf Editor For Mac

This is another good PDF editor Software for Mac. If you are not into heavy usage and can do with fewer features, this will be very suitable for you. You can edit more than one file at a time in different tabs or view two pages at a time by changing the layout. PDF Expert lets you add text and images to the page or draw over it with the brush. Using different colors, you can highlight, underline or strikeout the texts.

There are other things that you can do with this software. Add signature as a watermark for your documents. You can type the signature with nice available fonts, draw one using the trackpad or upload an image from your gallery. You also have the option to add the available stamps which can also be customized.

4. Xodo PDF Reader & Editor

Xodo PDF Reader & Editor is the best free pdf editor software available on Windows Store and iTunes. It is not for professional use as it lacks advanced editing tools. But if you want to do some basic editing on your files like marking, adding images, text or drawing over it etc, then go for this tool. You can add text to the pages in different colors and fonts.

There are also options to strikethrough the written text or highlight it by coloring, underlining or making a box around it. For full utilization of the screen, you can crop the pages and also set a thumbnail for your file. It can be a wonderful PDF reader as well because it has features like Night Mode, Full screen, Rotation etc.

Download Xodo PDF Reader & Editor: For Windows

5. Cisdem PDF Converter OCR For Mac

As the name suggests this software isn’t completely a text editor, rather it is a PDF files converter. But you can use it for editing purpose too. And editing this way can be more convenient for some people. Drag a file to the software or click on the ‘+’ sign to add the PDF file. After adding the file, convert it to Word or other desired file type.

After the conversion, you can easily edit, remove or add text and images in the PDF file. Once you edit it, go to the creator tab on the software, add the edited file and convert again to PDF file.

So, What Is The Best Edit PDF Software?

I have been using PDFelement for few days and I really liked it. It has more features than any other software. If it is okay to manage with fewer features or the price is the concern, go for the trial versions and choose the best one for you. All of these PDF editors are too useful in one or the other way. ApowerPDF is also a fair tool and iSkysoft PDF editor is similar to PDFelement.

So, this was the list of some good software to edit PDF texts and images. If you face any problem with these tools, you can share with us in the comments.