PDF editing is a very needed feature but not every app out there provides that functionality. Not only that, the ones that enable PDF editing are very costly. For instance, take the case of PDFPen – that costs you $74.95 for the full version. Adobe’s propriety can cause a massive dent in your pocket: about $200 for the editors.

Although PDF editors are costly, not everyone wants to edit PDF documents per se. More or less, it’s only to annotate, highlight, or specific other research-oriented purposes. This can achieve through various software that’s less costly or free such as PDFelement for iOS. It’s completely free to use. We’ll take a look at the options available for Mac users.

Skim For Mac allows for a variety of marking and annotations to be inserted into PDF files. This free program includes movable text boxes for notes as well as highlighting, underscoring.

Trusted Mac download Skim 1.1. Virus-free and 100% clean download. Get Skim alternative downloads. Download Skim for Mac free. Skim is a PDF Reader and note-taker for OS X. 22,096 downloads Updated: July 22, 2021 BSD. Review Free Download specifications 100% FREE report malware. A handy and practical PDF reader and note-taker that provides the necessary tools to annotate scientific papers or other types of documents. What's new in Skim.

1. PDFelement

• Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for Mac computers. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but it is also great for viewing any PDF file. Main features: - Adding and editing notes. Making 'snapshots' for easy reference. Navigation using table of contents or thumbnails, with visual history.
• A separate window will then open to reveal all the highlights and notes you added to the PDF document. To search for Skim notes of linked files, type the text in the search field of toolbar and choose Skim Notes from the search buttons. Skim is indeed a powerful PDF reader and note taker for Mac. It has all the benefits at its.

PDFelement 6 is all about giving businesses the efficiency they crave when it comes to the world of PDF documents. Talk of creating, converting, editing, annotating and sharing PDF documents with the utmost professionalism. This software features all the tools you can use completely edit your PDF documents, from the simple tasks like editing text and images to even cooler stuff like signing your documents digitally. You can also convert to PDF or from PDF using virtually any document file type be it to Word, Excel, PowerPoint. Moreover, you can transform the scanned document to editable PDF using a top draw Optical Character Recognition (OCR) feature.

Form handling has also been made super simple with this tool keeping in mind that you can create, edit, fill, sign and protect your PDF forms without breaking a sweat. You can even extract data from your PDF interactive PDF forms and export in CSV formats. It gets even better! You can speed up the process of converting, data extraction, Bates numbering and watermarking by batch processing your PDF files. Read full review.

• Download PDFelement 6 for iOS (Free)
• Download PDFelement 6 for Mac ($59.99)
• Download PDFelement 6 Pro for Mac ($99.99)

2. Preview

Mac’s built-in solution, Preview, has become quite powerful over the years. One of the most impressive additions is the ability to annotate, highlight, adding images in a PDF file. Preview is as good as any other PDF editor out there, but it is not a full-fledged editor: you can’t edit the entire PDF file as such. You can only take to a certain level of editing where you either add or highlight sections of the PDF file. Preview can also help you combine files.

Skim Pdf Editor App For Mac

3. Skim

Skim is a popular, open-source and free PDF reader that doubles up as a research tool with it set of features. It’s pretty much the same as Preview on Mac, but it works well for those quick annotations, comments, and highlights.

Skim Software

You can also customize Skim to suit your needs better. The app makes navigation super easy with the table of contents or thumbnails and visual history. That’s not all, it is integrated with BibDesk and several other third-party apps and has the support for extensive AppleScript as well.

Price: Free
Download

4. JotForm PDF Editor (Online)

If you don’t like to download apps on your Mac, this online PDF Editor from JotForm is perfect. Whether it about creating a form for registration or issuing invoices to your clients; JotForm PDF Editor has got your back. You can create a regular form and share it with the recipient. The responses are saved automatically in presentable and customizable PDF files.

It also offers 100+ PDF templates across multiple categories to get you started quickly. Some of the template’s categories are invoice, registration, job application, lease agreement, event planning, and many more. If you are comfortable using the online editor, this one is the best. And yes, it is free.

Price: Free
Try Online

5. PDF Reader – Document Expert

Take control of your PDFs with more flexibility and manage them just the way you want! PDF Reader is pretty simple yet effective enough to let you carry out your tasks with the needed efficiency.

You can create quick shortcuts to import your files and folders easily. Using TAG, you will be able to organize your PDFs ideally. Access all the needed information like bookmark, outline, thumbnails, and annotation without breaking any sweat. Keep an eye on your entire library and also check out the last import history. And yes, you can also sync your data with iCloud to access them from across your devices.

Price: Free
Download

Best PDF Editors for iPhone/iPad

Now that we’ve talked about PDF editors for the Mac, it’s also a good thing to take a look at some popular options available to do the same on iOS devices. There aren’t many popular apps or services for this, but if you’re ready to shell out some money, there are apps to help you annotate and read PDF docs on iOS devices.

1. Good Reader

Right on top of the list is Good Reader. Sells at $4.99 and brings pretty good PDF reading and editing capability. The app has got a separate version for the iPad.

Price: $4.99
Download

2. PDF Expert

Good Reader is good enough, but you can’t fill/edit forms within the PDF file using Good Reader. PDF Expert is costlier than Good Reader, but there are good features like scanning capabilities that make PDF Expert a little more advanced than Good Reader.

Price: $9.99
Download

3. Foxit PDF Reader & Converter

I rate Foxit very highly as it makes PDF editing plain sailing. You can view, annotate and also secure your PDF files. The app also lets you sign documents using digital certificates. It comes with the ConnectPDF feature that allows you to collaborate with your friends.

Shield your PDF files with password and Microsoft Rights Management Services. Another notable feature of Foxit is the support for 12 languages like English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Traditional Chinese, etc.

Price: Free
Download

4. MaxiPDF

For editing and designing PDF files, you can’t go wrong with a neat PDF editor like MaxiPDF. You can easily create, modify, delete text and images. It allows you to add and save comments as well.

You can upgrade to the premium ($0.99/monthly) version of the app to use it without ads. Besides, MaxiPDF supports several languages including English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and Turkish.

Price: Free
Download

5. Adobe Acrobat Reader

If you want to have an all-in-one PDF editing experience, pick out Adobe Acrobat Reader. There is so much to like about this app, and the first among many is the—wide range of superior editing tools. That means you have the required freedom to create eye-catching files.

Take the full advantage of sticky notes and drawing tools to make comments on PDFs. Get the most out of annotating tools to highlight and mark up the text. With the full support for Apple Pencil, it ensures you have greater precision while creating praiseworthy docs.

Price: Free
Download

That’s all, folks!

What’s your pick?

I think you have found an able PDF editor for your device. Which one is it? Feel free to let us know what you pick in the comments.

Don’t miss:

The founder of iGeeksBlog, Dhvanesh, is an Apple aficionado, who cannot stand even a slight innuendo about Apple products. He dons the cap of editor-in-chief to make sure that articles match the quality standard before they are published.

• https://www.igeeksblog.com/author/dhvanesh/
• https://www.igeeksblog.com/author/dhvanesh/

It is Adobe that coined PDF, and there is no wonder that Adobe Acrobat is always considered as the first or best solution to edit a PDF on Mac. However, the price tag of Adobe Acrobat just makes us roll back, think about it, $14.99/month, that’s too much.

So, lots of PDF users are in search for a solution to edit PDF on mac without Adobe Acrobat, trying to find a way to do PDF editing with lower cost, or even without spending any cent. And, we are lucky enough to have options on editing PDF on mac without Adobe or free.

What Do I Mean “Edit PDF” on Mac Here?

First of all, I want to make my point fair clear here that, Edit PDF means editing the existing PDF text, image or others in the file, instead of inserting text by adding a text box over the existing PDF contents, instead of just drawing, highlighting or annotating the PDF, instead of reordering, merging, splitting the PDF pages, instead of adjusting the viewing options. And due to this, my solutions will be a little different from others.

How to Edit PDF on Mac Efficiently without Adobe?

While, it is totally understandable if you want to edit PDF on mac as efficiently as editing a Word file in MS Office Word and without Adobe Acrobat. It is possible, all we need to do is finding an Adobe PDF Editor alternative but with affordable price. Which one? Both Movavi PDF Editor and PDF Expert are recommended.

#1 PDF Expert

PDF Expert is a fast and beautiful PDF editor designed exclusively for mac users, you can read, annotate, edit, convert, bookmark, crop, fill, redact, compress, share, sign and merge PDF files very easily.

Regarding the Edit features, it can detect all the PDF text and directly edit the existing PDF text, insert, delete, change font style/size or do any other operations as you can do using Adobe. Even it allows you to edit images (replace, crop, etc.) and links in the PDF file.

PDF Expert Features:

• Edit PDF texts;
• Edit image in PDF;
• Add and edit links in PDF;
• Fill out PDF forms;
• Redact, annotate, protect, sign, crop, rotate, extract PDF;
• Insert/Add/Delete PDF pages, add/remove page numbers;
• Scan & OCR PDF files to recognize text from scanned PDF or image;
• Export PDF as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Text, Image;
• Export annotation summary;
• Create PDF from Word, Image, etc.;

How To Edit A PDF on Mac with PDF Expert?

1. Go to download and install PDF Expert;
2. Drag and drop your PDF files into the program;
3. Then go to the Edit tab, choose Text;
4. Choose a part for editing, click on your preferred part, the text will be selected in a blue-slashed box, it means you can edit the PDF file now;
5. To edit image or link, click on these toolbars, then PDF Expert will detect and render the PDF for editing;
6. Finally, go to File>Save.

#2 Movavi PDF Editor

I’ve never came across any PDF editor as affordable as Movavi PDF Editor, but enables users to edit every bit of a PDF file. Instead of adding text boxes to input the text, Movavi PDF Editor allows users to edit every sentence and every word in the PDF file, no matter Add, Delete or Modify. Equivalently, you can edit the image and link in the file, to add, delete, rotate, or resize. Even, its PDF Creator and PDF Converter helps to export multiple files as different formats.

Movavi PDF Editor Features

(With US$23.95, You Can Get Movavi PDF Editor Lifetime License incl. VAT)

• Sign PDFs;
• Convert blank page, Word, Exel, PowerPoint, ePub, HTML, TXT, DJVU, JPG, PNG and BMP to PDF;
• Convert PDF to Word, ePub, HTML, TXT, JPG, PNG and BMP;

How to Edit A PDF on Mac with Movavi PDF Editor?

1. Download and install Movavi PDF Editor;
2. Drag and drop the PDF file to this application;
3. Click on Edit button, choose to Edit Text or Image;
4. Then click on the text or image that you want to edit or modify, edit as you always do in a MS Office Word file;
5. Then go to File>Save.

How to Edit PDF on Mac Free without Adobe?

If you believe that there are many genuinely PDF editors allowing you to edit PDF on mac for free, that’s not your fault, you are being misled on the Internet. There may be free PDF tools, but they are by no means PDF editor, they are just free PDF annotator, PDF reader or PDF pages manager that cannot edit the PDF text.

However, if you want to find a way to edit PDF on mac online, free, there is one but only one helps on this, it is Google Docs.

Google Docs is one part of Google Office Suite, enabling users to operate and edit PDF or other Google documents online. It is more like Microsoft Office Word, if you are proficient in working with Word, you can tackle PDF files equally easily in Google Docs.

Steps to Edit PDF on Mac Free with Google Docs

1. Login into your Google Account, if no Google Account, register first;
2. Then click on the Menu icon beside your Account image, go to Drive;
3. Click “+ New” to upload PDF file;
4. Once the PDF is uploaded successfully and displayed in the right panel, right click on the PDF file, open with Google Docs;
5. Go to the PDF part you want to edit, directly modify or insert, just as the way you do in MS Word, or you can utilize the toolbars to edit the file;
6. Once the editing finishes, go to File>Download>PDF. The editing will be saved in the PDF file.

For PDF users even for most of our netizens, Google Docs is really the best invention these years, it keeps its promise to be free, but still powerful, and this is rarely seen in today’s interest-driven world. Yet, there are cases that you may be not recommended to use this tool to edit PDF on mac for free, especially your original PDF has a professionally designed layout and formatting, or filled with tables. Otherwise, it will be a mess to edit PDF in Google Docs, it cannot keep those layout, formatting, table or form fields when displaying in Google Docs, you can check following screenshot:

Consequently, if your PDF is mainly composted of texts and paragraphs, Google Docs deserves a try.

Skim Download Mac Free

Any Other Solutions to Edit PDF on Mac “Free”?

As I made clearly as above, Google Docs is the only one free PDF editor available. If you still have doubts on this and believe in the presence of many other free PDF editors, like other bloggers told you so, we can now dive in to have a close look on this.

Preview Cannot Edit PDF on Mac

Mac Preview is the free utility to view, annotate, compress and manage PDF pages, but it is not capable of editing the PDF text.

It does support filling out PDF forms, but the original PDF should come with form fields and interactive elements:

Preview doesn’t allow editing the existing PDF text, or insert text to a sentence, you will have to add a text box into a blank area, or white out the existing PDF text, then input PDF text into an added text box;

Skim Cannot Edit PDF on Mac

On the topic of “free PDF editor software”, Skim is always included on the recommended list from a lot of bloggers. However, it is not. Skim is just a piece of free software to read and annotate PDFs, it cannot edit PDF text. As you can find in following screenshot, Skim offers a set of annotating tools instead of enabling users to edit existing PDF texts.

PDFEscape/PDF Buddy Cannot Edit PDF on Mac

Likewise, you will be recommended to use online, free PDF tools like PDFEscape or PDF Buddy to edit PDF on mac for free, however, they don’t support editing PDFs, you can view, annotate, draw, sign or manipulate the PDF pages, but to edit the PDF text or others, these online, free PDF tools won’t help, even you can not directly fill out a PDF form.

In PDFEscape, you can find the available features as following:

In PDF Buddy, you can find the available features as following:

Skim Pdf Editor For Mac

Conclusion

To be frankly, PDF editors are not small in quantity, but you should start with Movavi or PDF Expert, they won’t disappoint you.

Download Mac Browser

Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for OS X. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file.

Stop printing and start skimming.

Download Mac Os

Explore the links to the left to investigate Skim and consider helping out with the project.

Skim Pdf Windows

Features:

Download Mac Games

• Viewing PDFs
• Adding and editing notes
• Highlighting important text, including one-swipe highlight modes
• Making 'snapshots' for easy reference
• Navigation using table of contents or thumbnails, with visual history
• View all your notes and highlights
• Convenient reading in full screen
• Giving powerful presentations, with built-in transitions
• Handy preview of internal links
• Focus using a reading bar
• Magnification tool
• Smart cropping tools
• Extensive AppleScript support
• Bookmarks
• Saving passwords in Keychain
• Export notes as text
• Automatic download of remote PDFs
• Support for Apple Remote Control
• Interaction with LaTeX, SyncTeX, and PDFSync
• Integration with BibDesk and other third party applications
• Spotlight support
• Highly customizable
• And much more...