What you can do to a PDF on a Mac without Acrobat

Preview covers most review and paperwork jobs. None of these tools changes the words already on the page; they add to it.

• Highlight selected text, or add a text box with the Text tool and drag it into place.
• Click a form field and type. If a PDF won’t let you type into the form, add a text box instead.
• Sign with a signature you capture on your trackpad, with your Mac’s camera, or on a nearby iPhone or iPad.
• Hide text with the Redaction Selection tool. Apple notes that a redaction becomes permanent once you close the document.

Page jobs are where people often reach for Acrobat, and Preview handles the common ones. Apple warns that changes to a Preview document are saved automatically, so choose File > Duplicate first if you want to keep the original.

• Add a page: select the page it should follow, choose Edit > Insert, then Page from File or Blank Page.
• Delete pages: choose View > Thumbnails, select the pages, then press Delete. Any annotations on a deleted page go with it.
• Reorder pages: choose View > Thumbnails or View > Contact Sheet, then drag pages to their new place.
• Combine PDFs: open both, show thumbnails in each, and drag pages from one sidebar to the other. To add a whole PDF, drag its icon from the Finder to the sidebar.

Apple’s Preview guide says you can’t edit the text of a PDF in Preview. A text box over a redacted word can look right, but it is something placed on the page, not a change to the PDF’s own text.

If you have the file the PDF came from, change the text there and make a new PDF: choose File > Print in that app, then Save as PDF from the PDF pop-up menu, or choose File > Export To > PDF in Pages. The guide to editing text in a PDF covers this route in more detail.

Nudocs is a document agent for your Mac. You can ask it to update a date, correct an amount or revise selected text in an existing PDF and save an edited copy. It is for changing what the PDF says; for forms, signatures and page changes, use Preview as above.

This is for correcting your own documents. Only edit documents you are entitled to change, and never alter official records, receipts or statements. If a document someone else issued is wrong, ask them for a corrected copy.

Say exactly what to change and what must stay the same, and ask for a separate output so you can compare it with the original. Layout preservation is not guaranteed, so check the edited region and the rest of the page. Editing the PDF you supplied and generating a replacement document are different jobs; check which one you got.

Nudocs runs on Macs with Apple silicon and macOS 13 or later, and you need a Nutrient DWS account. The Mac app is free; document and AI services use DWS free allowances or paid usage. Depending on the task, your instructions and document content may be sent to AI providers and Nutrient services, so read the desktop Privacy Policy before you add files.