How to edit a PDF on a Mac, for free

With PDF Unlimited (free)

1. Open the PDF

   Install PDF Unlimited from pdfunlimited.app/download, then double-click any PDF or drag it onto the app icon. It opens in Read mode, with page thumbnails in the left sidebar.

2. Pick a mode

   Use the mode switcher in the toolbar: Annotate for text and markup, Sign for signatures, Pages for page order, Redact for removing sensitive content. Tool options like color, stroke and font size live in the inspector on the right.

3. Add text

   In Annotate mode, choose the text box tool and click anywhere on the page. Type, then set the font size and color in the inspector. Drag the box to line it up.

4. Mark it up

   Select text and choose highlight, underline or strikethrough. Use the pen, shapes (rectangle, ellipse, line, arrow) and sticky notes for everything else. Made a mess? ⌘Z undoes it.

5. Fix the pages

   Switch to Pages mode to drag thumbnails into a new order, rotate, duplicate or delete pages, insert a blank page, or drop another PDF onto the grid to merge it in.

6. Save or export

   Save the file as usual. If it is too big to email, use File > Export Compressed… and compare the before and after size.

With Preview, built into macOS

1. Open the PDF in Preview

   Preview is the default PDF app on a Mac, so a double-click usually does it. If not, Control-click the file and choose Open With > Preview.

2. Show the Markup toolbar

   Click the Show Markup Toolbar button, or choose View > Show Markup Toolbar. It holds Text, Highlight, Shapes, Note and Sign.

3. Add text or markup

   Click the Text tool to drop a text box, then drag it into place. Use Highlight Selection for highlights and Shapes for boxes and arrows.

4. Edit pages

   Choose View > Thumbnails, then drag thumbnails to reorder, or select a page and press Delete to remove it.

What "editing a PDF" usually means

Most people searching for this want one of five things: type something onto the page, mark up a document, sign it, fix the page order, or make the file smaller. All five are free on a Mac. You do not need Acrobat, and you do not need to upload your file to a website.

The sixth thing, changing the words that are already printed in the PDF, is the hard one. A PDF is closer to a printout than a Word file. The text is placed glyph by glyph, so retyping a sentence means reflowing it by hand.

The honest limitation

PDF Unlimited doesn't edit existing text in place yet. You add new text with text boxes, which covers forms, corrections in the margin, and filling in blanks. If you need to change a typo in the original body text, cover it with a white rectangle and type over it, or use a tool that edits existing text, like LibreOffice Draw (free, a bit clunky) or a paid editor. We'd rather tell you now. There are no refunds on free, but we still don't want to waste your afternoon.

Preview has the same limitation. It adds text boxes but does not retype the original words.

Which tool for which job

For a quick signature or a single highlight, Preview is already on your Mac and does the job. Reach for PDF Unlimited when the job gets bigger: real redaction, making a scan searchable, compressing with a visible before and after size, or rearranging dozens of pages in a proper grid.

• Add or fix text: add text to a PDF
• Sign a contract: sign a PDF on Mac
• Fill in a form: fill out a PDF form
• Join files: combine PDFs
• Shrink a file: compress a PDF
• Hide sensitive info for real: redact a PDF
• Work on a scan: edit a scanned PDF
• Sketch or circle things: draw on a PDF

Why not an online editor

Web PDF editors work, but your file goes to someone else's server. That is a bad trade for tax returns, contracts, medical records or anything with an ID number on it. PDF Unlimited works fully offline and has no telemetry, so the file never leaves your Mac.

Questions