How to Edit a PDF on Mac: Free and Paid Ways

Quick Answer

"Edit a PDF" can mean two different jobs. One is putting new things on the page: a text box, a signature, a black box over a name, a page removed. The other is changing the words that are already printed in the PDF. Apple says Preview does the first and not the second: in Apple's guide to annotating a PDF, "you can't edit the text of a PDF in Preview".

PDFgear, PDF Expert and Adobe Acrobat all say their apps change existing text. The price differs a lot, so the sections below put each vendor's own words and price side by side. Three jobs that travel with editing have their own sections: filling out a form, saving pages as pictures, and getting the words into Word.

Preview Can Do

Preview's Markup toolbar and its page sidebar cover most small jobs. Apple's pages show some toolbar buttons as icons, so we name each tool by the label in Apple's tools table. Where one of our other posts has the full steps, the last column links to it.

For the jobs marked Below, these are Apple's steps.

• Add a page. Select the page you want to appear before the new page, choose Edit > Insert, then choose Page from File or Blank Page. The new page goes in after the current page.
• Delete a page. Choose View > Thumbnails or View > Contact Sheet, select the page or pages, then press the Delete key or choose Edit > Delete. Apple adds that all the annotations on a deleted page are removed as well.
• Rotate. Click the rotate button to turn one page to the left, and hold the Option key while clicking to turn it to the right. For several pages, open View > Thumbnails or View > Contact Sheet and select them first.
• Crop. In the Markup toolbar, select the part of the page you want to keep, then click Crop. To undo it straight away, choose Edit > Undo Crop. Later, choose File > Revert To > Browse All Versions and find a version from before the crop.
• Black out text. Apple describes Redaction Selection as a tool to select text to remove it from view. You can change the redaction while you edit, but once you close the document it becomes permanent. If the PDF has a table of contents, Apple says entries that link to redacted text are not removed.
• Fill out a form. Apple's steps, with the flat-form and Mail cases, are in the Fill Out a Form section below.

Two Apple notes on saving are worth knowing. To keep your additions editable later, choose File > Save, File > Export or File > Export to PDF. To flatten them so they cannot be edited, choose File > Print, then Save as PDF. And if you want the old version back, choose File > Revert To > Browse All Versions, pick one and click Restore, or hold the Option key and click Restore a Copy to keep both.

Preview Cannot Do

Apple's wording is direct: although you can't edit the text of a PDF in Preview, you can use the markup tools to provide feedback or write down something you want to remember. In practice that means:

• You cannot fix a typo in a sentence that is already in the PDF. You can add a new text box beside it.
• The Text Style tool changes the font, style and color of text you add. We found nothing in Apple's guide that changes the font of the words already on the page.
• Apple's tools table says Text Selection is to "select text to copy or delete". We did not test what delete does to a PDF's text, and the same page still says you can't edit it.

Apple's guide does not describe covering a typo with a shape and typing over it. We did not test that, and a shape is not redaction. If text must not be seen, Redaction Selection is the tool Apple offers.

Fill Out a Form

A form PDF is either fillable, with boxes you can click, or flat, a picture of a form with no boxes. Apple's page does not say how to tell them apart. A quick check, which is ours and which we did not run, is to click where an answer goes and see whether you can type there.

Fillable form. Open the PDF in Preview, click a field in the form, then type your text. The AutoFill Form button above the PDF fills in names, addresses and other contact details from Contacts, and Apple notes that not all PDFs support it.

Flat form. If a PDF will not take typing, Apple says to add a text box instead: click the Show Form Filling Toolbar button, then the Text Box Tool button. Apple names those two buttons only in its pictures, so look for the icons. The Text tool in the Markup toolbar also adds typed text, which Apple says you then drag where you want it.

Other apps. Adobe's Acrobat Reader page, archived 26 October, says Reader is free to download and use without a subscription and lets you fill out and save PDF forms. Adobe's Fill & Sign page, archived the same day, calls that online tool free and says you must be signed in to complete a fillable form. In Chrome, Google's help page lists filling out and signing paperwork among the PDF viewer's jobs, and says to select Download, then With your changes.

Keep the answers. The saving notes under Preview Can Do are Apple's note about annotations; we assume they also cover form answers. By that note, File > Save keeps additions editable, and File > Print, then Save as PDF, flattens them. Flatten when the form is final. Apple does not say what other apps show of Preview's additions, so open the saved file once before you send it. Our Print to PDF post has the Print steps.

Send it back. For a form that arrived in Mail, Apple's steps are to open the attachment in Preview, fill it out, choose File > Save, then select Reply to the sender or New Mail Message, and the email opens with the PDF attached. To add a signature line, see how to sign a PDF. To build the boxes in the first place, see how to make a fillable PDF form.

Save as JPG or PNG

Preview can save a PDF as a picture. Apple's Export page says to open the PDF, choose File > Export and select a file type from the Format pop-up menu, but lists no types. Apple's page on converting image file types, written for images, lists HEIC, JPEG, JPEG-2000, OpenEXR, PDF, PNG and TIFF in that menu, says a JPEG's quality can be adjusted, and says holding the Option key while you click the menu shows specialized or older formats. Our HEIC guide walks through the same menu for photos and lists what five converter websites say about their limits and about keeping your files.

Apple's pages do not say which pages of a multi-page PDF are saved. Setapp's guide, last updated 12 March 2026, says Preview converts one page at a time, while PDF Expert's page says its own app saves each page of a multi-page PDF as a separate JPG. We did not test Preview, so check the files that come out. For one particular page, Apple says you can create a new PDF by dragging thumbnails from a PDF sidebar to the desktop. Exporting that one-page PDF should give you the page, though we did not test it. For a picture of part of the screen, Apple's screenshot page says to press Shift, Command and 4, then drag the crosshair over the area.

For every page at once, we found no route on Apple's Preview pages. PDFgear's Mac page lists JPG and PNG among its output formats and calls the app free. We did not test whether it saves every page.

Change Existing Text

Three apps say they change the words already in a PDF. We quote each page, because what an app says it does is the part you can check before you download it.

PDFgear

PDFgear's Mac page says it "lets you edit existing text in PDF for free without converting PDF to Word", and that you can correct the wording or adjust its font, size, color and spacing directly in the PDF. The same page says you can resize or replace images, add highlights and comments, and reorder, insert, rotate, extract or remove pages.

On cost, the page calls PDFgear for Mac "a completely free PDF editor and reader" with no ads, no forced upgrades and no watermark on saved PDFs. It says you can open it and begin working without registering or signing in, and that most editing tools work locally on the Mac, while AI features, online services, help content and updates need an internet connection. It asks for macOS 12 or later.

PDF Expert

PDF Expert's edit page says you can "modify text directly in a PDF" and fix typos, add new paragraphs and change fonts. Its steps are to open the PDF, click Edit, and choose a tool from the toolbar: Text, Image, Link or Redact.

The price is on its pricing page, in an archived US copy of 5 October 2026. Yearly was $79.99 billed annually, and it lists iPhone, iPad and Mac versions. Lifetime was $139.99 as a one-time payment, for the Mac version only, and the page says additional new features may come at an extra cost. Both plans list Edit PDF text, images, and links and Recognize text (OCR), and both carry a 30-day money-back guarantee. It requires macOS Monterey or later.

The live page showed pounds to us, so we could not read today's US price. A change since 5 October cannot be ruled out. The edit page also says the premium features are free for 7 days with nothing to set up. Neither page says what the free download allows after that, so we could not confirm it.

Adobe Acrobat

Adobe's plans page, in its US view on 2 November, lists the row Edit text and images in PDFs and automatically adjust formatting for both Acrobat Standard and Acrobat Pro. The prices are:

• Acrobat Standard: $179.88 a year when prepaid, $14.99 a month on an annual plan billed monthly (12 months come to $179.88 as well), or $24.99 a month with no commitment.
• Acrobat Pro: $239.88 a year when prepaid, $19.99 a month on an annual plan billed monthly (12 months come to $239.88), or $29.99 a month with no commitment.

Adobe's notes on each billing option differ. The prepaid option says there is no refund if you cancel after 14 days, and the annual option billed monthly says a fee applies, up to half your remaining annual commitment, if you cancel after 14 days. The same comparison table marks Redact sensitive information for Pro and not for Standard.

Adobe's online editor page describes what Pro does: with Acrobat Pro for Mac or Windows you can "edit PDF text to fix a typo, change fonts, or add new content", and the page offers a 7-day free trial. The pricing table does not say whether Standard on a Mac matches Standard on Windows, so we could not confirm that.

Free Browser Editor

Adobe's free online editor does not change existing text. Adobe's own FAQ says the free version does not let you edit existing body text within a PDF, and that in this version you can "only annotate, comment, and mark up documents". To edit or reflow existing text, fix typos or change fonts, the same answer points to Acrobat Pro.

Adobe's page is not consistent about the account. Its FAQ says you can upload a PDF and use the basic annotation tools without an account, but that you must sign in with a free Adobe account to download or share your edited file. Its steps say to sign in to add your comments. Plan on signing in. For marking up a PDF for feedback, see our PDF markup post.

Convert to Word

Another route is to turn the PDF into a Word file and edit it there. Apple's pages show no way to do that in Preview or Pages. Apple's Export page does not name Word as a format, and the Pages guide says "You can't open PDFs in Pages." Preview can copy a PDF's text for pasting into another document: choose Tools > Text Selection, drag over the text, then choose Edit > Copy. Text Selection copies text only.

Word. Microsoft's page says Word makes a copy of the PDF, converts it to a Word document and tries to match the original layout. The steps are File > Open, find the PDF and select OK when Word says it will make a copy; the original PDF is not changed. Microsoft says this works best on mostly text, and lists tables with cell spacing, tracked changes, footnotes that span pages and PDF comments among the elements that do not convert well. A PDF that is mostly charts or graphics can come in as an image whose text cannot be edited. Microsoft's pages list Word versions and do not mention Mac, and we did not run the steps on one. Microsoft's free web apps page, archived 25 October, offers free access to Word for the web, and its convert page (archived 15 October) says to upload the PDF there. Word for Mac comes with Microsoft 365 Personal, which Microsoft's US page, archived 24 October, lists at $99.99 a year or $9.99 a month billed monthly.

Google Docs. In Google Drive, right-click the PDF and click Open with Google Docs. Google's page says bold, italics, font size, font type and line breaks are likely to be kept, while lists, tables, columns, footnotes and endnotes are not likely to be detected. Its tips say the file should be 2 MB or smaller.

Free converters. Smallpdf's page says you can convert for free without signing up and that files are deleted an hour after processing unless you save them to your account. PDFgear's online page says single files up to 100 MB are free. Adobe's converter page, archived 7 October, says daily conversion limits apply and gives no number. These upload your PDF, so for a private document the question is whether it leaves your Mac. PDFgear's Mac page says it can batch convert offline, keeping the files on your computer throughout.

Scanned PDFs

A scanned PDF is a photo of a page. Its words are a picture, so an editor has to read the picture before the words can be changed. That reading is called optical character recognition, or OCR. PDFgear's page describes it like this: scanned pages store words as images, which makes the text hard to search or select, and PDFgear can OCR the whole PDF so the recognized text can be searched, copied or exported to Word or TXT.

The other two list OCR as well. PDF Expert's pricing page shows Recognize text (OCR) on both plans. Adobe's online editor page says the Acrobat Pro free trial lets you edit text in scans using OCR. For converting a scan to Word, Smallpdf's page says its OCR option is a Pro feature, and PDFgear's online converter has an Advanced mode that enables OCR.

Apple's Preview guide has a page for when you can't select or copy text in a PDF. It gives two checks: that the Text Selection tool is chosen, and that the PDF may need a password before you can select or copy text. It does not mention scans, so we cannot say Preview reads them. If Text Selection is chosen, the PDF is not locked and you still cannot select a word, a scan is the likeliest reason, but that is our reading, not Apple's.

Options

Here are the tools side by side. The first two cannot change existing text.

These are US dollars for one person, and we could not confirm whether tax is included. PDF Expert is its Yearly plan from the archived copy of 5 October, and the Acrobat prices are the prepaid yearly ones. Word is Microsoft 365 Personal on its yearly price from the archived copy of 24 October. PDF Expert Lifetime ($139.99 once) is in the Cost section, because one column cannot hold two billing options.

Loop

Loop does not edit the words already in a PDF, so make the changes first. When the corrected PDF goes to a client, Loop is a Mac app that turns it into your own link. In that link's settings, the Replace File row has a Replace button, and File > Replace File… does the same. Everyone with the link then sees the new file at the same address, and earlier copies are kept in your storage. If you only need to change a word and email the file, you do not need Loop. To get a filled-out form back from someone else, a Loop request link asks them for files: they open it in a web browser, type a name and an email, drop the files and press Send, with no account. Our document collection post has the steps.

For how a PDF link works in full, see our post on creating a link for a PDF, and for sending the file by email, how to send a PDF by email.

Limits

Loop is the step after editing, not a PDF editor. Here is what it does not do:

• It does not edit the words already in a PDF. Templates print typed text into blank fields you place, and a signed copy adds signatures, but we found no way in Loop to change existing text, rotate, delete or reorder pages.
• Drawing does not edit your PDF. Drawing happens on the reader page and sits on top of the pages.
• A reader cannot type into a form's own boxes. Loop's reader page draws each PDF page as a picture, with the words selectable and links clickable. When the sender has switched on Require Signature or Feedback, readers can sign by typing a name or mark up the page. With Allow Downloads on, they can save the PDF, fill it in on their own Mac and send it back. We read how the page is built and did not test a live fillable form.
• It does not convert a PDF to Word or to pictures. Loop's conversion goes the other way: it makes a PDF copy of Word, Pages, PowerPoint and Excel files so a link can show their pages. JPG and PNG files are shared as they are.
• It will not preview a PDF that needs a password to open. Share a copy without the open password.
• It does not work from an iPhone or Windows. The sender needs a Mac running macOS 14 or later, and the reader opens the link in a web browser.
• It does not alert you by email or phone. Alerts are Mac notifications while Loop is running. Open and download alerts come once per reader's browser per link.
• It has no free plan. There is a 14-day trial, and you need a Cloudflare account.

We do not promise a maximum file size.

Cost

Preview has no price in Apple's guide, and PDFgear says it is free. PDF Expert is $79.99 a year, or $139.99 once for the Mac version, from the archived copy of 5 October. Acrobat Standard is $179.88 a year and Pro is $239.88, when prepaid. Loop is $49 once for one person, and it does not edit existing words.

Adobe's cheaper monthly routes cost the same over a year: Standard at $14.99 a month on an annual plan billed monthly, and Pro at $19.99 a month. On a plan with no commitment they are $24.99 and $29.99 a month. These are US dollars for one person, and we could not confirm whether tax is included.

For the Word route, Microsoft 365 Personal is $99.99 a year or $9.99 a month billed monthly, for one person (archived US copy of 24 October). Microsoft's page offers free access to Word for the web, Acrobat Reader is free per Adobe's page, and Smallpdf says its converter is free without signing up. Google's Drive page shows no price.

If you use Loop to send an edited PDF, the file lands in your own Cloudflare account, free for the first 10 GB. Over that, Cloudflare bills you: its pricing page, updated 30 October 2026, lists $0.015 per GB-month, and downloads carry no data-transfer charge. Cloudflare may ask for a card when you switch storage on.

The 14-day trial begins the first time you run Loop, with no payment to start. For those two weeks a small "Shared with Loop" badge appears on the pages your clients see when you send them a PDF, and buying a licence takes it away.