MAC PDF NIGHTMARE SOLVED: The Editor You NEED in 2026!

Why Apple Preview is a good choice: Apple Preview, the default document and image viewer on macOS, is a surprisingly capable and free application that handles most personal and business PDF needs. While it is not designed to replace a full-featured, professional PDF editor, Preview offers a robust set of tools for free. Preview’s built-in capabilities are more than sufficient for everyday tasks, making it an excellent starting point for anyone needing to work with PDFs on a Mac or iPad—and even an iPhone.

Apple Preview is the default document and image viewer on macOS (as well as iPadOS and iOS since the ’26 update). It offers a range of useful features beyond just viewing photos and PDFs.

Click on any PDF (or any image format) to open it and it will launch in Preview. Alternatively, open Preview and it will open the Finder, allowing users to browse through folders to locate the file they want to view. The app features a toolbar at the top of the screen, which allows users to view file details, zoom in or out, share the file, fill in a form, or mark up the file.

The Markup button reveals tools for selection, doodling, inserting shapes or sticky notes, signing, and typing text. These tools are easily customizable, allowing users to control the color and size of a shape or text box, as well as pick between multiple fonts when typing. There is also an autofill helper.

Apple Preview is not designed to replace image or PDF editors, but it still offers some power-user features. The menu bar’s Tools button allows users to reveal more advanced image controls, such as granular resizing, color adjustments, and automatic background removal. The File menu includes a Export button that allows users to choose the output’s quality and file format, allowing them to convert images to various formats.

When viewing a PDF file in Apple Preview, users can easily re-order or delete its pages using the sidebar, allowing them to limit the file to the important bits they need. If exporting the PDF using Preview, users can optionally add a password, quartz filter, or file restrictions.

If you’d prefer not to pay for Adobe Acrobat or another solution, Apple Preview may be more suitable for you. Apple Preview offers free tools that Adobe has paywalled, including PDF page organization/deletion, password protection for PDF files, and document scanning.

Just need to turn something into a PDF? Read: How to make a PDF on Mac

Why Readdle PDF Expert is a good choice: PDF Expert is a popular choice for Mac users, known for its intuitive interface, smooth performance, and a wide range of tools, including AI features. It is available as a lifetime license, making it a cost-effective alternative to subscription models

PDF Expert has a wide range of reliable tools and an intuitive user interface. It’s a great option if you are looking for more than Preview offers for free.

Upon launching PDF Expert, users are greeted by a Tools tab with shortcuts to various features, such as organizing, optimizing, protecting, reviewing, or converting documents. The app runs smoothly and gives you everything you need to fully control a PDF file, including edit text and images, sign, fill checkboxes, add links, redact content in multiple ways, insert shapes, highlight text, doodle, and even measure the distance between two points or calculate specific areas.

The PDF Expert toolbar features layout settings, an advanced search bar, and an AI Chat button. The AI Chat button allows users to interact with the integrated chatbot, summarize PDFs, list key points, generate hashtags, and more. The toolbar’s center includes commonly used PDF editing functionalities, such as annotation, editing, file conversion and exporting, signing, and optical character recognition (OCR).

For most users, PDF Expert’s features are sufficient, as it allows users to manipulate a document’s content, add or remove elements, protect the file with a password, and shrink its size. While Adobe Acrobat offers more advanced tools, PDF Expert’s core functionalities are sufficient for most users.

There are two payment options on macOS: a lifetime license, or an annual license that includes future updates and mobile support. Students can get 50% off and there is a free 7-day trial. It is available for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS, but is not available on Android or Windows devices.

Why Wondershare PDFelement is a good choice: Wondershare PDFelement is a capable PDF editor that offers a compelling alternative to other options on the market, particularly for users with specific needs and budgets thanks to its a rich feature set and flexible pricing.

Wondershare’s PDFelement is a document manipulation tool that offers essential features on all platforms at a reasonable price. The app features a minimalistic user interface and offers single- and cross-platform licenses, with the main difference being app updates. If you plan to use the PDF editor on your Mac exclusively, you can opt for a one-year, two-year, or lifetime license. PDFelement also supports iOS, iPadOS, Windows, Android, and the web, offering an all-encompassing bundle that supports all of these platforms.

The single-platform licenses include 20GB of cloud storage, while the highlighted bundles offer 100GB. Once you run out of the 20,000 AI tokens included with your purchase, you can buy more. PDFelement features a clean home page showcasing standard PDF editing tools, such as PDF conversion, optical character recognition (OCR), template selection, file compression, and more. It also has a sidebar that grants access to handy destinations like recent files, cloud documents, tagged PDFs, and agreements you’ve sent others to sign.

PDFelement supports most commonly needed PDF editing functionalities, including text manipulation, image and URL insertion, adding, deleting, and editing the document’s pages. It’s not the most advanced selection out there, but it gets the job done in casual workflows. PDFelement is better suited for annotation and artificial intelligence needs, allowing users to insert text, shapes, comments, stamps, forms, checkboxes, text callouts, and more. It can also automatically bookmarks reflecting the document’s chapters.

Beyond text manipulation, PDFelement can redact text, add a password to the file, convert the PDF to a Microsoft Office format, change the pages’ background, compress the size, and insert a watermark. While not the most feature-rich PDF editor, it caters to casual users seeking a lightweight solution.

Despite its minimalism, getting used to PDFelement may take some time. The unlabeled buttons in the editor’s sidebar can be confusing and challenging to identify, and some features, like text editing, can sometimes be unpredictable. PDFelement is an excellent PDF editor for those with casual needs, but its tools aren’t as advanced as those offered by many rival apps.

Why Foxit PDF Editor is a good choice: Foxit PDF Editor is a strong competitor to Acrobat, Foxit is packed with business-ready features and uses a familiar Microsoft Office-style interface. It offers different plans, with the Editor+ version including AI-assisted tools and eSign capabilities.

Foxit offers a range of PDF-centric solutions for Mac users, including PDF Reader and PDF Editor. PDF Reader is available on macOS for free, allowing users to view, annotate, sign, and have AI analyze their documents. The paid-for PDF Editor unlocks the complete editing toolbox for an annual fee, with a base plan and a plus (+) plan that includes more features. There are options to pay monthly, but it is still an annual contract: there’s no option to cancel after a month. 

The free PDF Reader allows users to control the size, color, and style of inserted text or shapes, as well as customize features like changing the document’s background shade, reversing and rotating pages, signing forms, and more. It can read text aloud, measure distances, calculate areas, magnify selected spots, and have AI analyze your document.

The paid-for PDF Editor supports all of PDF Reader’s features but adds editing functionalities, such as file conversion, optical character recognition (OCR), and full manipulation of a document’s text and images through addition, deletion, or tweaking. It caters to power users with advanced features like document sanitization, redaction styles, security layers, JavaScript, and accessibility checks.

Foxit’s PDF Editor stands out for its ChatGPT integration, which can analyze and summarize documents and perform actions on your behalf. The base plan should suffice for most users, while the Plus plan offers exclusives like mobile app access, tracking other parties’ signatures, smart redaction, 130GB of cloud storage, and template support.

While the app is generally swift, the user interface may seem too packed to some users, especially those who don’t need all the offered tools. Foxit PDF Editor is designed for serious users rather than casual users, and if the UI overwhelms you, it may be an overkill for you.

Why Adobe Acrobat Studio is a good choice: Adobe Acrobat offers a range of products from a free online editor to the paid Standard and Pro versions. The Pro version is the most feature-rich, including advanced tools like version comparison and web form creation, but it is also one of the more expensive options.

In 2025 Adobe introduced Acrobat Studio, which combines the Acrobat Pro features with Adobe Express premium and adds AI tools.

Adobe Acrobat Studio marks a major step in making PDFs more intelligent and interactive — combining traditional PDF editing tools with AI-powered document analysis and collaboration features. At its core is “PDF Spaces,” a hub where you can upload up to 100 files — not just PDFs, but Word, Excel, PowerPoint, web links or cloud-stored documents — and treat them collectively as a single “knowledge base.”

Once uploaded, Acrobat Studio automatically generates “insight cards” summarising key themes, breaking down complex details into tables or bullet points, and providing a useful overview at a glance.

You can also ask a built-in AI chatbot questions about the uploaded documents — for instance, have it summarise a contract, extract data from a spreadsheet, or outline pros/cons from a long report. The chatbot even supports custom “personalities” depending on your use case (e.g. analyst, instructor), helping you view the content from different perspectives. The AI assistant cites its sources, which helps mitigate one of the main drawbacks of generative AI: hallucination.

Adobe also promises that uploaded documents are not used to train its models. This is an important privacy reassurance for sensitive files.

The Studio package bundles this new AI workspace with other Adobe tools: the full PDF-editing suite, 100 GB cloud storage, 250 generative credits for media creation, and even Adobe Express Premium.

There are some practical caveats though. Acrobat Studio is pricey at about $35/month (or $300/year under an early-access offer). We felt there was a lot of bloatware associated with the macOS installer, as a result the web version may be a better option for Mac users.

Also, although PDF Spaces is great for analysis, you cannot directly edit documents in it; to make changes to a PDF you need to download it, edit it in the separate Acrobat editor, then re-upload, which is cumbersome.

Acrobat Studio is a powerful, AI-driven platform for anyone handling complex or large document sets — whether you’re doing research, evaluating investments, handling contracts, or working on business proposals. It excels at summarising, organising, and extracting insights. But its high price and workflow friction (on Mac) may make it more appealing to professionals and heavy users than casual PDF editors.

Why Abbyy FineReader PDF is a good choice: Abbyy FineReader PDF is a specialized tool that excels in specific scenarios, particularly for users who need to digitize physical documents or convert existing files into editable formats. However, its suitability depends heavily on your specific needs, as it is not an all-in-one PDF solution.

Other PDF editing apps offer optical character recognition (OCR) as an added perk, Abbyy FineReader PDF leads on its optical character recognition software and file converter, and, while it offers reliable OCR and file conversion functionalities, it falls short when it comes to PDF editing.

FineReader PDF is a simple user interface with three main tabs: viewing PDF documents, quick and advanced file conversion tools, and importing documents. It has been optimized for macOS and offers a modern design. FineReader PDF supports viewing and highlighting PDF files, with preset highlight colors and comments.

The quick conversion feature processes inputted files to detect content and then selects the output’s format. Supported file formats include PDF, DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, EPUB, FB2, TXT, HTML, RTF, ODT, and CSV. It doesn’t support Apple’s HEIC image format, so users may need to convert HEIC iPhone shots to JPG first. Each format offers its own customizations, such as ebook title, author, layout, and page size.

FineReader PDF exports the document, making it more editable. However, it doesn’t support proper PDF editing, so it may not be the ideal PDF solution for manipulating files.

It doesn’t offer a one-time purchase option and has relatively high recurring fees. There’s a yearly subscription plan on the Abbyy website, and a monthly subscription on the Mac App Store (which is a good option because you can cancel at any time). There’s a full-featured 7-day free trial.

Why Tenorshare’s PDNob PDF Editor is a good choice:Tenorshare’s PDNob PDF Editor for Mac offers a range of features for users with basic to intermediate PDF editing needs, though it comes with some notable drawbacks.

Tenorshare’s PDNob PDF Editor has a sleek user interface with modern buttons that easily convey their actions. It packs in some neat features, such as an optical character recognition (OCR) engine for converting photographed documents to text, password protection, compression, conversion between popular file formats, merging, automatic indexing, and more. The service offers 20GB of cloud storage.

PDNob PDF Editor also packs an AI assistant, but it failed miserably when I attempted to use it. It simply couldn’t comprehend what my (very) basic questions meant and continued asking for further clarification.

The bad news is it is only available on macOS 10.15 or Windows 10, there’s no iPhone or iPad app, which is a disadvantage. Plus, while there is a free 14-day trial (with watermarks) unfortunately if you later want to delete your account and its associated data from Tenorshare servers you must contact support to help (which rings some alarm bells!)

While it is excellent for those with basic to intermediate needs, there are too many downsides and there are better options elsewhere.

Why EaseUS PDF Editor is a good choice: EaseUS PDF Editor (aka Cisdem PDFMaster) is a capable and affordable option, providing all the essential tools without overwhelming features. It offers a free version with watermarks and is available for a one-time lifetime license fee.

One of the options you may come across during your hunt for a PDF editor is that from EaseUS. While the company’s own PDF editor is exclusive to Windows, its website offers PDFMaster for macOS—which is actually developed by its partner Cisdem. EaseUS packages Cisdem PDFMaster as EaseUS PDF Editor for Mac, but it’s essentially the same app. Confused? We were. 

Just to baffle you further, you can buy the app from EaseUS or Cisdem, and at the Mac App Store, all at different prices and there are a few differences. We reviewed EaseUS’s version. 

The app features a minimalistic user interface with modern-looking buttons and labels. 

While PDFMaster’s feature set is somewhat limited compared to more professional apps, it generally gets the job done for those with casual PDF editing needs. You can edit the text in the document, including add or remove words, change the font, insert links and so on. You can also add shapes, highlighting, underlining, strikethroughs, and leave comments. Images, stamps, and digital signatures can also be added. 

Watermarking, document cropping, conversion to multiple file formats, size shrinking, optical character recognition (OCR), redaction, page reorganization, PDF comparisons, area calculations are also available. 

We did have a few issues during testing. For example, exporting a PDF after password-protecting it didn’t actually secure it. 

Once its 14-day trial expires, you will have to pay $89.95 once or $59.95 per year to continue using the software. The macOS version doesn’t provide a monthly subscription plan. There is no mobile version for iOS and iPadOS users.