Best Pdf Reader For Mac
Haihaisoft PDF Reader – One of the free PDF reader for Mac computers. Read Right for Mac OS X – Portable free PDF viewer. PDFLab – Free PDF viewer and editor which have tools to inset images, join two PDF files into one, etc. PDFView – One of the Mac PDF reader app. It is one of the best PDF Reader and especially editor for your PDF documents in mac. You can view, edit and add pages to your PDF document. You can view, edit and add pages to your PDF document. Also you can set rights and permissions to your PDF documents to secure it. How can the answer be improved?
There are plenty of ways to view and edit PDFs on a Mac, but Apple's built-in Preview application is phenomenal and often overlooked. While Lion didn't wow the crowd with most of its features, it brought some amazing additions to Apple's PDF viewer/editor that puts it over the top and makes it our choice for the best.
Note: There are a few ways you could define a PDF viewer/editor, as features can range from simple form-filling to complete PDF manipulation. For this post we're concentrating on the features the average person would use, meaning viewing, form completion, annotation, and so on.
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UPDATE: Wondershare is claiming we named their Product, PDF Editor, our top choice. We did not, and they are using a false award that claims our approval. Please do not buy their products as they are a dishonest company. We've left the original text (stricken out) about PDF Editor in the alternatives section so you can see how little of a recommendation we made.
Preview
Platform: Mac OS X
Price: Free
Download Page
No matter what type of ebook you have on file, you can read it on BookReader. It supports EPUB, MOBI, PRC, AZW, FB2, Microsoft DOC, RTF, RTFd, xHTML, Webarchive and TXT. 
It only supports DRM-free files, though, so make sure your digital books don't have digital rights protections before you try to use it.
Features
- View and edit images in addition to PDF files
- Annotate, highlight, and mark up PDFs in several ways
- Digitally fill out forms
- Sign PDF documents with your webcam (read on for more info)
- Super-fast performance
- Super-fast search
- Insert new pages into PDFs
- View and edit PDF metadata
- Add and edit hyperlinks in a PDF file
Where It Excels
Preview is fast. Mac OS X isn't exactly known for its speed and efficiency, so Preview's ability to blow through PDF documents is pretty impressive. But among its many handy highlighting and annotating features, which are all solid, its ability to fill out forms is especially impressive. This may seem like a mundane thing, but when you get to the signature line it is hard to eschew at least a little reverence. Preview (in Lion) has a feature where you can sign a piece of paper, hold it up to your computer's webcam, and it'll turn it into a high-quality signature you can place in a form. It can also save multiple signatures so you don't have to continuously repeat this process. Preview is solid all-around, but it's those sorts of features that make it amazing.
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Where It Falls Short
As incredible as Preview's webcam signature feature is, it seems kind of strange that there is no ability to sign with your trackpad as well. After all, Apple Stores let you sign for purchases with your finger on an iPod touch. Additionally, Preview wasn't exactly perfect prior to Lion and Lion isn't exactly perfect on its own. It's hard to justify upgrading to OS X 10.7 if Preview is the only draw. If you're sticking with Snow Leopard, your version of Preview isn't bad but it's certainly not the best PDF editor/viewer you can find. Apple fixed a lot of quirks in Lion, which make it a pleasure to use, but if you're not running Lion you're pretty much out of luck.
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The Competition
PDFPen costs $60 but is pretty great. If you need more features than Preview can provide, it'll get the job done. PDFPen makes page rearrangement, editing, multi-document assembly, and more very easy. While it's on the expensive side, consider it a cheaper alternative to Adobe Acrobat ($200). We've never loved Acrobat and it likely provides more features than you're going to need.
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Wondershare PDF Editor ($50) is another pricey option, but it has the ability to convert PDFs to Microsoft Word documents. We're not sure how well this works, but you might want to give it a try if that's something you need. Wondershare placed a false claim on their PDF Editor software that we considered it the best. They even created a fake Lifehacker approval image to act as if we provided them with an official award. We listed it as an alternative here, but as Wondershare has opted to falsely market their product with a seal of approval from us that we never provided, we ask that you do not buy from them.
Skim is a great choice if your primary focus is annotation as that's what it was design to do. It has an impressively long list of features to make annotation easy.
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Got any other favorite PDF editor/viewer apps for Mac that you love? Share 'em in the comments.
Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.
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Best PDF reader for Mac
Read on for our detailed analysis of each app
While it's easy to open PDF's these days, with most browsers and even office suites offering some form of built-in PDF reader, often it's not enough to simply be able to read a PDF.
The Portable Document Forum (PDF) was originally developed by Adobe in the early 1990's, as a way to share documents between users with different operating systems. Additionally, because it couldn't be edited, that meant the document's integrity could be preserved.
The problem for users nowadays is that PDF's now commonly form user agreements which require signing. On top of this, collaborative working means that having to convert PDF files into native documents for editing and then back again just isn't practical.
Therefore it helps to have a PDF reader that has extended features for editing and e-signing.
However, the prevalence of Windows PCs means that sometimes Apple Macs can seem left behind, especially with the continued development of macOS as an app platform.
We've therefore highlighted the best in PDF readers for the Mac, not least where additional features will allow macOS users to do more with the PDF files they have.
- We’ve also highlighted the best free PDF readers
- Want your company or services to be added to this buyer’s guide? Please email your request to desire.athow@futurenet.com with the URL of the buying guide in the subject line.
1. PDF Reader Premium
Available to download directly from the Mac App Store, PDF Reader Premium from Kdan Software is one of the most powerful and popular PDF management tools for Apple computers. It functions as a file manager, file converter and page editor.
With the software, you can easily edit PDF files by adding freehand writing, text boxes, sticky notes, hyperlinks and annotations. And to ensure that important documents don’t get mixed up, you’re able to label them by adding tags and color-coding. What’s more, to keep track of all your saved files, you can make use of an import history feature.
The app works with iCloud, too, meaning you can back up and access saved documents on an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. There’s even compatibility with Dropbox, so you can easily import documents from devices that run on other operating systems.
Overall, you should find the app smooth and quick to use. It’s powered by a proprietary rendering engine, which aims to ensure that large files are processed and loaded without any lag. Currently, the app costs $59.99 (£42), although there is a free version that you can try before you purchase.
2. Apple Books
Apple Books is more than just an app for reading novels-at the heart of Apple Books is the ability to read and organize PDF files. The only stipulations is that they must be DRM-free, which makes it somewhat limited by comparison to some of the more dedicated readers featured here.
However, as a simple PDF reader Apple Books-formerly iBooks-does the job exactly as it needs to. Better still, it's bundled for free with iOS 12 so if you're already up to date with the upgrade cycle then the chances are you already have it but perhaps didn't know it can be used to read PDFs as well as novels and a range of document formats.
The one limitation Apple Books has that some of the other apps here don't have is that it can't be used for editing, anotating, or creating PDF files. However, as we're only focused on PDF readers in this piece Apple Books is still a wworthy and necessary inclusion. Even still, there are other apps available in the App Store that can provide expanded functions for manipulating PDF files, if required.
3. Adobe Acrobat Pro DC
Adobe’s own heavyweight offering
Acrobat Standard DCAdobe not only invented the trusty PDF document in the first place, but the company has also created some top-notch apps to manage them. Acrobat Pro DC is a great example, and it supports both Windows and Mac devices. The software allows you to create, edit and convert PDF files with ease.
Whether you happen to be using a desktop PC, laptop or tablet, Acrobat lets you turn any paper document into a PDF file. You just have to snap a photo of the piece of paper and upload it to Adobe’s platform, then you can subsequently edit it. Acrobat also lets you convert PDFs into any Microsoft Office file format, preserving all fonts and formatting.
Thanks to integration with Excel, you can even edit data in scanned tables, making it easier to edit and analyze financial data. Just like Kdan Software’s PDF Reader Premium, you can keep track of the changes you and your colleagues make to PDF documents.
Acrobat is capable of detecting the differences between two versions of the same PDF, too. You can sign up for a business plan for £15.17 a month, which gives you the option to add more team members in the future.
4. PDF Expert
PDF Expert is a robust and easy-to-use solution for managing business documents. And with a four-and-a-half star rating in the Mac App Store, it seems to be one of the most popular options out there for Mac users. The software gives you the ability to read, edit and annotate PDF documents from a central dashboard.
One of the great things about PDF Expert is that it’s fast and slick to use. Thanks to smooth scrolling and a fast search function, you can quickly find what you’re looking for across multiple PDF files.
This app lets you edit images, text and links, plus the software can automatically detect fonts, size and opacity of writing. Plus, if you happen to own an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, you can add annotations and notes to documents on-the-go. Like most PDF apps out there, PDF Expert comes with a free download option, but the app for iPad/iPhone costs $9.99 and includes in-app purchases, while the version for Mac costs around $100 for 3 Macs.
5. PDFelement
Wondershare has developed a Mac version of the popular PDFelement app, which is positioned as an easy way to edit PDF documents. It gives you the tools to add text, images, links, backgrounds, watermarks, headers and footers to PDF documents.
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The software provides an extensive selection of PDF editing options. Not only can you add text to documents, but you can also tweak the font type, size and style. There’s the ability to rotate, extract, replace and crop images too.
Best Pdf Reader For Mac Reddit
PDFelement is a great option for teams in particular, with powerful collaborative capabilities, letting you add sticky notes, comments, text boxes and more. And you can use the tool to fill out business documents such as contracts and tax forms. PDFelement retails at $49.95 for the standard package, but for all features you will need the Professional package priced at $79.99.