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.

  1. Adobe Reader For Macbook Pro
  2. Best Pdf Viewer For Mac

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. ‎Adobe Acrobat Reader is the free global standard for reliably viewing, signing, and commenting on PDF documents. VIEW PDFs • Quickly open and view PDF documents. • Search, scroll, and zoom in and out.

Pdf reader and editor free download. 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

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

Adobe Reader For Macbook Pro

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.

Best Pdf Viewer For Mac

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Download Reader XI today at With over one billion downloads, Adobe Reader continues its leadership as the global standard in PDF viewing and interaction. New Functionality Adobe Reader XI provides full commenting capabilities, including text, stamps, file attachments and audio recordings, as well as drawing markups, like lines, arrows, shapes and free-form annotations. And, of course, you can do this on the most recent and popular operating systems, OS X Mountain Lion and Windows 8, which includes our new 'touch-mode' for an optimal tablet experience. Pdf reader for mac cneter. Well, Reader is now able to fill, sign, save and send your forms without requiring printing and mailing. Do you have a PDF form that needs attention?

First released in 1993, Adobe Reader can be found on countless home, school, and businesses computers around the world. This free PDF viewer is available in most major languages, and its comprehensive support for the PDF file format is often used as a reference point for other PDF applications to meet. But just because Adobe Reader is the most widespread PDF viewer on Mac and other operating systems doesn’t necessarily have to mean that it’s also the best.

The goal of this article is to examine what makes Adobe Reader, and more specifically Adobe Reader for Mac, so popular and compare it to select PDF reader for Mac applications to see if it’s really as good as its download and user statistics would suggest.

Best Features of Adobe Reader for Mac

  • Adobe Reader for Mac is a capable PDF viewer that allows you to view, print, and annotate PDF files for free. If you register with Adobe, you can connect Adobe Reader for Mac to Adobe Document Cloud, which is a suite of cloud-based software applications from Adobe Systems that provides PDF-related services, including conversion and document exchange.

For example, EchoSign lets users send, e-sign, track, and file documents online; ExportPDF makes it possible to convert PDF files into editable Word or Excel documents; and Adobe Send is an alternative to email attachments and FTP sites for sending, sharing, and tracking large files. Adobe Document Cloud is fully localized in English, German, French, Japanese, Italian, and Spanish.

  • Apart from the cloud, Adobe Reader for Mac also supports your mobile devices, allowing you to work with PDF files on your iPad or iPhone thanks to the free Adobe Acrobat Reader mobile app. Just like its Adobe Reader for Mac, the mobile app supports Adobe Document Cloud, annotating, digital signatures, text editing, and more.
  • Wanting to take the mobile PDF experience to the next level, Adobe also released the Adobe Scan and Fill & Sign mobile apps. Adobe Scan quickly scans any documents and turns them into versatile Adobe PDFs, while the Fill & Sign mobile app lets you fill, sign, and send any form electronically from any mobile device.
  • Adobe Reader for Mac can also convert PDF files to Word documents with a single click. This is particularly useful in the business world, where documents are often shared as PDF files for compatibility reasons, only to be edited multiple times as they are passed around.
  • Another feature aimed at businesses and institutional users is the possibility to extend Adobe Reader for Mac using the free Acrobat SDK. This set of tools contains header files, type libraries, simple utilities, sample code, and documentation, and it helps software developers interact with Acrobat technology, allowing for inter-application communication and the creation of plugins and scripts.

As you can see, Adobe Reader for Mac is a highly capable PDF viewer, so it might surprise you to learn that it’s not even the most capable PDF application developed by Adobe, that would have to be Adobe Acrobat DC.

Steps on How to Download Adobe Reader for Mac

To download the free Adobe PDF reader for Mac, head to Adobe’s official website and follow our instructions:

  1. Select the “PDF & E-signatures” option from the menu at the top of the website.
  2. A pop-up menu will appear. Select “Reader DC” under Featured Products.
  3. Click on “Download now”.
  4. The download page should automatically suggest you Adobe Reader for Mac. If it doesn’t, click on “Do you have a different language or operating system?” and select the right version for your operating system.
  5. Pay special attention to the middle column, titled Optional offers. Unless you uncheck both offers, Adobe Reader for Mac will automatically install McAfee Security Scan Plus utility and McAfee Safe Connect.
  6. Click on “Install now” to download the Adobe Reader for Mac installer.
  7. Install Adobe Reader for Mac as you would any other Mac application.

Top Alternatives to Adobe Reader for Mac

Adobe Reader for Mac is often the only PDF application people know about, but there are actually many excellent alternatives, most free and some with more features than Adobe Reader for Mac.

1. Foxit Reader

Foxit Reader is a lightweight and fast PDF solution with a familiar user interface and plenty of features. Going being PDF viewing, Foxit Reader features ConnectedPDF, cutting-edge technology that powers document intelligence, security, and collaboration services for PDF files.

With ConnectedPDF, users can grant and revoke access to the document, grant specific readers with specific document access rights, track document usage, view all versions of the document in an intuitive document version tree, and share content quickly, easily, and securely by generating a file link and sending it via email or to social media, among many other things.

Because Foxit Reader utilizes a familiar ribbon toolbar, learning about its capabilities and accessing all of its features is effortless. PDF compatibility isn’t a problem with Foxit Reader. You can leverage existing forms and workflow with standard PDF (Acroforms) and XFA (XML Form Architecture) form filling, and open any PDF file without being greeted with an indecipherable mess of letters and numbers.

2. Okular

Okular is a universal document viewer developed by KDE, an international free software community that develops free and open source software. Apart from Mac, Okular also runs on Linux, Windows, and *BSD. It supports PDF, Postscript, DjVu, CHM, XPS, ePub, and several other document file formats. Okular is a suitable Adobe Reader Mac alternative for those who only want to open PDF files and aren’t concerned with their editing.

To use Okular on Mac, you first need to install KDE. You can learn how to do so on this page. We recommend using Homebrew, a package manager for macOS.

3. Skim

Skim is a compact yet capable PDF reader and note-taker for macOS. It was designed to help Mac users read scientific papers in PDF, but you can, of course, use it to open and read any PDF file you want. Its features include text highlighting, making snapshots for easy reference, navigating using the table of contents or thumbnails, convenient reading in full screen, magnification, smart cropping tools, Spotlight support, and more.

Bonus: Disk Drill

None of the PDF applications we’ve mentioned so far support one critical feature: PDF recovery. To recover your lost or deleted PDF files, you need to install a dedicated data recovery application, and Disk Drill for Mac is easy to recommend. Unlike many other data recovery applications, Disk Drill is extremely easy to use, featuring a signature one-click data recovery process that makes data recovery absolutely effortless. Apart from its ease of use, Disk Drill also stands out with its support for over 200 file formats and most storage devices.

Data recovery for free
Your Companion for Deleted Files Recovery

Adobe Acrobat Reader for Mac Versus Adobe Acrobat DC

Adobe Acrobat DC is a complete PDF viewing and editing solution packed with best-in-class tools to satisfy all PDF needs. Whereas Adobe Acrobat Reader for Mac is aimed chiefly at the consumers of PDF files, Adobe Acrobat is aimed at the authors of PDF files.

Reader

You can use it to easily scan and transform any document into an editable PDF file, compile multiple PDFs into a single one, or convert files into rich PDFs in a single click. Let’s say your boss sends you a year old white-paper that she would like to be updated. Instead of having to recreate the whole thing from scratch, you can simply open it in Adobe Acrobat DC and individually edit each element of the document.

Versions

Adobe Acrobat DC is available in two versions: Pro and Standard. Compared to the Standard version, the Pro version adds one-click creation of rich PDFs from the Acrobat ribbon in Word, the option to add or edit text in a PDF on your iPad, the ability to scan paper to PDFs you can edit instantly with fonts that match the original and compare two versions of a PDF using an easy-to-scan results summary of all differences, and it also supports the creation and validation of PDFs based on WCAG 2.0 and PDF/UA accessibility standards.

Price

As you might expect, Adobe Acrobat DC, both Pro and Standard, isn’t free. Individuals can purchase Acrobat Pro DC for €18.14 if they pay annually or for €30.24 if they pay monthly. Adobe Acrobat Standard DC costs €15.72 a month when paid annually or €27.82 when paid monthly. Adobe also sells Acrobat DC for teams and enterprises with several extra features, including advanced 24/7 tech support.

Just by reading what features Adobe Acrobat DC brings to the table, it should be obvious to you whether you need it or not. Generally, everyone who works with PDFs on a regular basis should consider upgrading to Adobe Acrobat DC from Adobe Acrobat Reader Mac.