PDF tools for Mac: compress, merge, split and export
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PDF tools for Mac include Preview for combining pages, extracting a selection and exporting a smaller copy. Yuzu Drag adds a drag workflow for compression, merging, splitting and export. A page image, extracted text and OCR are different results.
Use Preview for a one-off job
Open the file in Preview and show the thumbnail sidebar. You can drag pages to arrange them, insert pages from another document, or drag a selected thumbnail to Finder to create a separate file. Work on a duplicate when rearranging pages so that saving does not change your only copy.
For compression, File > Export offers a Quartz Filter choice. Try Reduce File Size, then inspect small print and image detail in the exported result. A smaller file that makes an invoice unreadable is not a useful result.
Yuzu capabilities and limits
| Task | Result |
|---|---|
| Compress | New PDF; reduction depends on its contents |
| Merge | Multiple PDF files combined |
| Split | One PDF per page |
| Export JPG or PNG | One rendered image per page |
| Export TXT, DOCX or MD | Text extracted from an existing text layer |
| Copy Text OCR | On-device recognition copied to the clipboard |
Page images use 300 DPI up to a 16-megapixel cap. TXT, DOCX and MD exports read an existing text layer; they do not reconstruct the original layout or recognize scanned text. Without a text layer, TXT can contain no useful text, while DOCX or MD can report “No text found”. Copy Text OCR is separate; check its recognized words before reuse.
Use the wheel
- Begin dragging the document in Finder. Select multiple documents first for Merge.
- Tap ⌘ for Tools, then drop on Compress, Merge or Split.
- To export another format, drag again, tap ⇧ for Convert and drop on the desired format.
- Complete any options, then inspect the output's page count, order and readability.
Conversions create new files. Keep your source, particularly for signed documents or files with complex forms. An exported representation should not be treated as the signed original.
Continue with compress a PDF, merge PDFs or split a PDF. For text-source conversion in the other direction, see document tools.
For page pictures, follow PDF to JPG. In the other direction, JPG to PDF explains assembling images into a document.
More file tasks
| Capability | Input | Output | Network |
|---|---|---|---|
| Copy text with OCR | jpg, png, webp, heic, avif, tiff, gif, bmp, jpeg, tif, svg, pdf | — | — |
| Compress PDF | — | ||
| Convert pdf to DOCX | docx | — | |
| Convert pdf to JPG | jpg | — | |
| Convert pdf to MD | md | — | |
| Convert pdf to PNG | png | — | |
| Convert pdf to TXT | txt | — | |
| Merge PDF | — | ||
| Split PDF | — |