A Preview alternative for Mac, compared fairly
Preview is free, fast and handles signing, form filling, highlights and page order well. PDF Unlimited is a free alternative built on the same Apple PDF engine that adds compression presets with before and after sizes, a full page grid, a dedicated OCR command, password protection in one step, and area-based true redaction. Neither edits existing text.
| PDF Unlimited | Preview | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free, built into macOS |
| Annotate, sign, fill forms | Yes | Yes |
| Typed signature | Yes | No (trackpad, camera, iPhone or iPad) |
| Combine PDFs | File > Combine PDFs… | Drag into the thumbnail sidebar |
| Compression | Low, Medium, High with before/after size | Reduce File Size Quartz filter |
| OCR | Tools > Make Searchable (OCR). | Embed Text on export, when offered |
| Redaction | Drag boxes over any area | Redact Selection on selectable text |
| Password protect | File > Password Protect… | File > Export > Permissions |
| Edit existing text | Not yet | No |
Preview is good. Really.
We will say it plainly: for a quick signature, a highlight or deleting a page, Preview is great, and it is already on your Mac. If that is all you do, you may not need anything else.
Preview is also a photo viewer and image editor, which is why its PDF tools are spread across the Markup toolbar, the View menu, the Export sheet and the Edit menu. That is fine for occasional use. It gets fiddly when PDFs are a regular part of your work.
What PDF Unlimited adds
Built only for PDFs, with every tool one mode away:
- Compression you can control. Low, Medium and High presets with the before and after size shown, instead of one Quartz filter. See compress a PDF.
- A real page grid. Pages mode for reordering, rotating, duplicating, inserting and extracting, plus dropping PDFs in to merge.
- Combine in one step. File > Combine PDFs… instead of dragging between sidebars.
- OCR on demand. Tools > Make Searchable (OCR), rather than an export option that only sometimes appears.
- Area redaction. Drag a box over text, images or signatures, then Apply Redactions. See redact a PDF.
- Typed signatures alongside drawn ones.
- Clear modes. Read, Annotate, Sign, Pages and Redact, with an inspector for colors, stroke and font size.
Where Preview still wins
Preview can capture a signature with your camera or a nearby iPhone or iPad, fill forms with your Contacts details via AutoFill, and edit images. It is also already installed, which is hard to beat. Plenty of people keep both: Preview for photos and quick looks, PDF Unlimited for real PDF work.
One thing neither does
Neither app edits the existing text in a PDF. Both add new text with text boxes. If you need to retype original paragraphs, see the options in our free PDF editor roundup.
Want to try it? Download PDF Unlimited. It is free, needs no account, and runs on macOS 14 or later.
A few everyday examples
Here is where the difference shows up in practice:
- A 40 MB scan will not attach to an email. In PDF Unlimited you pick a preset and see the new size before saving, instead of exporting and checking in the Finder. See compress a PDF.
- A landlord wants pages 3 to 7 of a lease. Select them in Pages mode and extract them. See split a PDF.
- A document has a signature image you need to hide. Drag a redaction box over it and apply. Preview's redaction works on selectable text.
- A scanned contract needs to be searchable. Run Tools > Make Searchable (OCR) whether or not Preview would have offered Embed Text.
Same engine, different focus
Under the hood, PDF Unlimited and Preview both use Apple's PDFKit, so files render the same way and annotations made in one show up in the other. The difference is focus. Preview is a general viewer for images and PDFs. PDF Unlimited is only about PDFs, so every PDF tool lives in a mode or a File menu command, not three menus deep.
Apple, Mac, macOS and Preview are trademarks of Apple Inc. They are named here only to identify those products. PDF Unlimited is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple.
Questions
Is there something better than Preview for PDFs on a Mac?
For quick jobs, Preview is plenty. For regular PDF work, PDF Unlimited adds compression presets, a page grid, OCR, one-step passwords and area redaction, and it is also free.
Can Preview edit PDF text?
No. Preview adds text boxes but does not change existing text. PDF Unlimited works the same way today.
Can I make PDF Unlimited my default PDF app?
Yes. Select a PDF in the Finder, choose File > Get Info, choose PDF Unlimited under Open With, and click Change All.
Does PDF Unlimited replace Preview?
For PDFs, it can. Preview stays on your Mac for images and anything else, and you can switch back any time.
Is PDF Unlimited built on the same engine as Preview?
Yes. It uses Apple's PDFKit, the same framework behind Preview, so PDFs render the way you expect on a Mac.
Can Preview compress a PDF?
Yes. Choose File > Export and set Quartz Filter to Reduce File Size. It is one fixed setting, so results vary. PDF Unlimited offers Low, Medium and High presets and shows the new size.