How to edit a PDF on a Mac: A step-by-step process

Editing, annotating, and signing PDFs is an essential function that any working professional needs. We do sometimes need to resize PDFs as well, or extract pages from them for sharing or printing. All of these processes can seem quite challenging at first, especially for someone new to a MacBook.

Apps you’ll need: Preview and Adobe Acrobat Reader

Apple’s macOS has a surprisingly powerful built-in tool called Preview that’s more than capable of handling most actions that one would need to perform with a PDF. For anything more advanced, such as Digitally Signing a document, we recommend Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is a free tool made by the company that created the PDF file format. A paid version of Adobe Acrobat is available for more advanced users.

Third-party options such as NitroPDF and Foxit Reader are available, but for this how-to we’ll stick to the most popular and reliable options on macOS.

Digital vs electronic signatures

A digital signature is a cryptographic key used to securely sign your PDFs, while an electronic key involves images or scanned copies of your signature. The latter is much less secure and easier to spoof, but is usually sufficient for non-critical document signing. Digital signatures are essential for most professional document signatures, however.

Signing a document: Electronic signature

1. Open the PDF document in Preview by either double-clicking on it, or by previewing it by pressing the space bar and then selecting “Open in Preview” in the top-right corner of the window.

2. Make sure the “Form Filling Bar” is visible by tapping on the “Show Form Filling Bar” in the top right of the Preview window. This bar is usually visible by default.

3.Click on the “Create Signature” icon in the form filling bar. This drop-down menu lets you select pre-existing electronic signatures, or will let you create one using your Mac’s Trackpad, or iPhone, or can capture an image of your signature using your Mac’s webcam or iPhone camera.

4. Once created, select the signature you want to use.

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5. Drag the signature to the desired location on the PDF document by clicking and holding the centre of the signature. You can also resize it using the handles at the corners.

6. Save the document by either hitting Cmd+S, closing the document and selecting Save, or clicking on File>Save in the menu bar.

Signing a document: Digital signature

1. Open the PDF document in Adobe Acrobat Reader by right-clicking on it and selecting Open With > Adobe Acrobat Reader

2. Make sure the ‘All Tools’ tab is selected in the menu bar by clicking on it (top left)

3. Select ‘View More’ at the bottom of the list

4. Select ‘Use a digital signature’

5. Select ‘Digitally Sign’

6. The cursor will change to a target reticle. Navigate to the area where the digital signature is required and click and drag a rectangle to select the area you want to use

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7. When you release the mouse button, a pop-up will appear asking you to choose an existing signature or to create a new one.

8. If the signature you want to use is already present, simply select it and click on ‘Continue.’ If not, select ‘Configure New Digital ID’ and follow the on-screen instructions to create a new digital signature

9. Select ‘Lock document after signing’ if no additional signatures are needed. If not, leave the option deselected and hit ‘Sign.

10. Save the document and rename it if necessary.

Filling a form or editing text

1. Open the document in the Preview app

2. Select ‘Autofill form’. If this is not available, select the ‘Text Box’ option from the toolbar and draw rectangles over the areas that you need to fill. The ‘Autofill form’ function will appear by default in most PDF files with empty text fields, but might not appear in scanned images that were converted to PDF.

Annotate a PDF

1. Open the document in Preview

2. Head to Tools > Annotate in the menu bar

3. Select a suitable option from the list that emerges. Preview will let you add text, highlight areas, and draw shapes to annotate documents. If you have an iPad, you can also doodle your annotations on the iPad.

Shuffle or delete pages in a PDF document

1. Open the document in Preview

2. Select View > Thumbnails from the menu bar

3. All pages will be visible in the sidebar as thumbnails

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4. Click and drag pages to move them around

5. Click on a page in the sidebar and hit Delete on the keyboard to delete that page.

6. Close the document and select ‘Save’ to save changes

Resize a PDF

1. Open the document in Preview

2. Select File > Export from the menu bar

3. Select ‘Reduce File Size’ from the dropdown menu labelled ‘Quartz Filter’

Note that this will only primarily work on documents with scanned images. Text-heavy documents will not be easily compressed.

That’s it! This is how you perform basic edits on PDFs in macOS using built-in and popular tools. Third-party tools aren’t necessary for macOS for most use-cases, and are only ever needed if your work demands the use of a particular tool or workflow.