PDF Unlimited, at a glance.

The facts

What it is

A native PDF reader and editor for Mac, built with Apple's PDFKit and SwiftUI. Edit mode uses PDFium (BSD license), which loads only when you use it.

Price

Free. Every feature is included. No subscription, no in-app purchases, no trial.

Account

None. There is nothing to sign in to.

Watermarks and ads

None.

Privacy

The app has no network access at all (no network entitlement in its App Sandbox) and collects no data. Files never leave the Mac.

Requirements

macOS 14 Sonoma or later. Universal app for Apple silicon and Intel Macs.

Download size

About 8.5 MB (DMG). The installed app is about 18 MB.

Current version

1.1.0, released October 13, 2026. Version 1.1 added editing of existing text and images.

Signing

Signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple.

Where to get it

pdfunlimited.app/download (DMG). A Mac App Store version is coming.

Made by

Amer Sarhan, an independent developer.

Support

support@pdfunlimited.app

What it does

Read

Thumbnails, table of contents, full-text search with a results list, single/continuous/two-page layouts, slideshow, Dark Mode, tabs, autosave and Versions.

Annotate

Highlight, underline, strikethrough, freehand pen, rectangles, ellipses, lines, arrows, sticky notes and text boxes.

Edit

Edit mode (⌘3): click a block of existing text and retype it in place, in the closest matching font, size, color and alignment. The original text is replaced in the file, not covered. Paragraphs reflow within their width; one-line blocks keep their alignment edge. Delete a block with ⌫. Select, move, resize, replace or delete images. Full undo and redo. The PDF's embedded font is reused when it has every character; otherwise the closest installed Mac font is embedded.

Sign

Draw a signature on the trackpad or type one in a handwriting style; it is saved on the Mac for reuse.

Forms

Fill in interactive PDF form fields and save them.

Pages

Reorder by drag, rotate, delete, duplicate, insert blank pages, insert pages from another PDF, combine several PDFs (File > Combine PDFs…), extract pages to a new PDF, crop.

Compress

File > Export Compressed… with Low, Medium and High presets, showing the size before and after.

Protect

Password protect a PDF, or remove a password you know (File > Remove Password…).

Redact

True redaction: marked content is removed from the page, not covered with a box.

OCR

Tools > Make Searchable (OCR) adds a searchable, selectable text layer to scanned pages, on the Mac.

Export

Flattened copy, pages as PNG or JPEG images, or all text as plain text. Print.

What it doesn’t do (yet)

• Edit text in rotated or vertical blocks, decorative Type3 fonts or right-to-left scripts, or the OCR text on a scan. The app says so and suggests redacting and adding a text box. A bold word inside a paragraph is rewritten in the paragraph’s main font.
• Convert PDFs to Word or Excel.
• Run on Windows, iPhone or iPad. It’s a Mac app.
• AI chat or summaries. Nothing in the app sends your documents anywhere.

How fast

Measured on a Release build on Apple silicon: the app reaches its first window in about 263 ms, and the first page of a 1,000-page PDF renders in about 1.7 ms. Search runs in the background across all 1,000 pages in about 1.4 s, streaming results as it goes. Times vary by Mac.

How it compares

Like Apple’s Preview, it is free and runs offline; it adds Low, Medium and High compression presets that show the size before and after, OCR you can run on any scan, and a full-window page grid for reorganizing. Unlike Adobe Acrobat Reader, merging, splitting, compressing, redaction and OCR are included without a paid upgrade. Like Acrobat Pro and paid editors such as PDF Expert, it edits existing text and images in place, which Preview and Acrobat Reader can’t. Details: vs. Acrobat, vs. Preview, vs. PDFgear, best free PDF editors for Mac.