How to edit PDF files on Mac

Have you received some PDFs via email, you would need to edit them to add notes and highlights to them but you don’t know how to do it because you have recently switched to Mac and are not yet very familiar with Apple computers? Believe me, you have absolutely nothing to worry about! You can count on a wide range of applications that allow you to freely alter the content of PDF documents, often for free, in an extremely simple way.

Whether you need to add a simple highlight, a writing or need to alter the text of a PDF document, you are spoiled for choice: on macOS there are editing tools suitable for all tastes and needs. If you want, I can recommend some of the best and explain  how to edit PDF files with Mac using them.

Do you like the idea? Well, then take five minutes of free time, take a look at the list of applications that I am about to provide you, choose the one that seems to you the most suitable for your needs and use it by following the instructions that you find below. Regardless of your computer skills and your familiarity with macOS, I assure you that you will be able to get the desired result and edit your PDFs in no time. Happy reading and good work, or good fun, depending on your point of view!

Index

• Preview
• LibreOffice
• PDF Toolkit +
• Other programs for editing PDF files on Mac

Preview

If you are looking for solutions to  edit PDF files on Mac, know that you don’t have to look too far. One of the best applications that allow you to alter the content of PDF files for free, is in fact  Preview , which is pre-installed in all versions of macOS and with which the Apple operating system opens PDF documents by default.

To edit a PDF with preview, all you have to do is open it and click on the pen icon   located at the top right. A toolbar will open containing all the tools to edit the document: the Aa icon   allows you to select the text already present in the document; the serrated square allows you to select portions of the document; the fountain pen to draw a “sketch”; the square and circle icon allows you to add arrows and geometric shapes to the PDF; by clicking on the [T] icon it is possible to insert customized texts, while the signature and post-it icons they allow you to insert a handwritten signature (drawn “by hand” or scanned via the Mac webcam) or a note to the PDF.

At the bottom of the toolbar there are, then, the icons to determine the thickness of the edges of the elements inserted in the document (e.g. geometric shapes), the border and fill colors of the latter and the style of the text to be entered in the PDF. (font, size and color). To insert an element in your PDF, all you have to do is select it from the toolbar and click on the point on the sheet where you want to insert it. Later, you can move, rotate and resize it using the mouse.

You can also  highlight the text  contained in the PDF document and  rotate its pages  in any direction. In the first case, just activate the Aa tool , select with the mouse the steps to be highlighted, right click and select the color of the highlighter from the menu that opens. To turn pages, on the other hand, you can use the Rotate Right  and  Rotate Left commands   in the  Preview Tools menu  . Read my tutorial on how to rotate PDF files  if you want to learn more.

Changes made to PDFs will be automatically saved to the original files. If you want to save a PDF as a new file without overwriting the original one, select Export as PDF from the File menu (top left) and choose the name to assign it and the folder in which to save it.

LibreOffice

Preview allows you to make a lot of changes on PDF files, but does not allow you to alter the text already present in them. If you need a feature of this kind but don’t want to spend money, you can turn to   LibreOffice , an excellent free and open source productivity suite considered by many to be the best free alternative to Microsoft Office. It is able to edit PDF documents freely, as if it were Word files. It also allows you to insert additional text, highlights, images and much more.

To download LibreOffice on your Mac, connect to  the program’s website and click on the Download Now button  . Then, on the page that opens, click first on the  Download version [version] button to start the program download and then on the Translated user interface button  to download the language pack needed to translate the LibreOffice interface into Italian.

When the download is complete, open the suite installation package ( LibreOffice_xx_MacOS.dmg ) and drag the LibreOffice icon   into the  macOS Applications folder  . At this point, enter the Applications folder, right-click on the LibreOffice icon and select the Open item   from the context menu to start the program bypassing the macOS restrictions for applications from non-certified developers.

After starting LibreOffice for the first time on Mac, close it completely by pressing the combination of keys  cmd + q and proceed with the installation of the Italian language pack. Open, therefore, the LibreOffice_xx_MacOS_x86-64_langpack_it.dmg file  , right-click on the  LibreOffice Language Pack executable contained within it and start it by choosing the Open item   from the menu that opens.

In the window that appears on the screen, click the Open  and  Install buttons  , select  / Applications / LibreOffice.app  and click Install again  . If necessary, then click on the Yes button  , identify me , type the   Mac administration password and press  OK  twice in a row to complete the installation of the language pack.

Perfect: now you have LibreOffice in Italian and, therefore, you are ready to edit your PDFs with it! Then start LibreOffice by selecting its icon from the Launchpad, from the Applications folder or by searching for it in Spotlight, click on the button to open file located on the left and select the PDF to edit . Alternatively, if you prefer, you can select the PDF with the mouse and drag it directly into the LibreOffice window.

Once the PDF you want to edit is open, double-click on an existing piece of text to edit it. If, on the other hand, you want to insert additional text, you must first click on the [T] icon located at the top right and then on the point on the sheet where you want to insert the text box. The same goes for adding images, which you can do by clicking on the photo icon located at the top right.

Once you have made all the changes you are interested in, you can save your PDF by selecting the Export to PDF format item from the File menu (top left), adjusting the preferences relating to the output document (e.g. the compression or reduction level resolution of the images ) and clicking on the Export button . If any of the steps aren’t clear to you, take a look at my tutorial on how to write to a PDF file , where I have detailed how LibreOffice works and other solutions for editing PDFs.

PDF Toolkit +

If you need to  edit PDF files on Mac  by working on multiple documents at the same time, I recommend that you turn to  PDF Toolkit + . It is one of the best applications in the industry that allows you to merge and split PDF documents, compress them, extract text, images and much more. You can find it on the  Mac App Store  at a price of 2.29 euros.

Using PDF Toolkit + is a real breeze (also because it is completely in Italian). All you have to do is select the software tab for the function you want to use ( Concatenate  to merge multiple PDFs into a single document,  Split /  Extract Pages to split or extract pages,  Compress to reduce the weight of the files, etc.) , drag the documents to be modified into the application window and click on the button to start processing the files (eg.  Concatenate ,  Process , etc.). Each function can be calibrated to your preferences for highly accurate results.

Other programs for editing PDF files on Mac

By taking advantage of the solutions I have given you in this post, you should be able to edit PDF files on Mac without any problem. In any case, for the sake of completeness of information, below I propose other useful solutions that could be right for you.

• Adobe Acrobat– the professional software par excellence dedicated to creating and editing PDF files. It allows you to alter the content of PDF files in various ways, modifying and inserting writings in them, adding highlights, underlines, notes and so on. It costs 18.29 euros / month (comes as a subscription service), but you can try it for free for 7 days.
• Notability– is a well-known tool for annotating existing PDFs or creating new PDFs. It is also available in the form of an app for iPhone and iPad, where it is among the best solutions of this kind (on macOS, however, it still has several aspects to file). It costs € 10.99 and can be downloaded directly from the Mac App Store.
• ShrinkIt– this is a small free application that allows you to compress PDF files by simply dragging them into its main window. I told you about it in more detail in my tutorial on how to compress a PDF file on Mac .
• iLovePDF– is a great online service that allows you to merge and split PDFs, rotate their pages, convert them to various formats, compress them and much more. It does not require registration to be used, but it has limits that can be overcome through paid subscriptions: I told you about it in numerous tutorials, such as those on how to merge two PDF files , how to extract images from PDF and how to convert PDF to Word.