The Text tool is very versatile although control of your chosen font cannot be done from the Form Filling toolbar.When it’s time to save this new document, click on the ‘Permissions’ button to be offered a wealth of options: you can choose to password protect it, and even allow the reader certain abilities, even if they don’t know the password, such as printing, inserting pages, or filling form fields, for instance.Īdd as many text boxes you need to fill in a form, and customise them with the font, size, colour and alignment you prefer (Image credit: Apple) You can just save the sections you’re most interested in to create a custom PDF perfect for your needs. This kind of flexibility is most welcome, and although you can’t create a PDF document from scratch - an alternative would be to use Pages and save it as a PDF. Or, if you have two documents open side by side with the thumbnail sidebar switched on, just drag a page from one sidebar to the other to duplicate it in that second document. Technically, it's almost a free PDF editor, since you can delete unwanted pages, reorder them, change their orientation, and essentially customize a document to focus on just what you need.Įven better, you can copy one or more pages from one document, and paste them into an entirely new one. This isn't a full PDF editor with all the tools that brings. Now this title could be a little misleading as you can’t actually edit the content of an existing file using Preview. Not a true editor, but useful and easy to customize and reorder documents.Preview will remember those settings and apply them to the next text box you create - but you’re of course free to alter it should you so wish.Īpple Preview allows you to reorder pages, rotate them, delete them, or copy them to another document (Image credit: Apple) The editing flexibility of these boxes is as extensive as you’d expect from a basic word processor: you can change the font, alignment, style, color, add a background fill, or an outline color - there’s a lot of flexibility there. With it, you can add text boxes to any page, should you need to add a comment. It isn’t activated by default, but a simple click of an icon will reveal numerous other features. There’s a highlighter pen for instance, which comes with a choice of five colors, and even offers you the possibility of underlining or striking through text (only in red for those two options, mind).īut if you need more than that, say hello to the Markup Toolbar. What if you need to make notes, for instance? You’ll find a wealth of tools to help you achieve this. If that’s all you need, fantastic! Preview can cater to all your needs.

Lots of tools to cover broad plenty of use-cases.

Highlight your text with multi-coloured digital highlighters (Image credit: Apple)

You’ll find a large search field top right of the interface, which you can use to find specific words within the document (as long as the PDF is properly formatted of course, and not just a JPEG of a page formatted as a PDF, but this is a problem for every PDF reader). Scrolling can be set on a page by page basis, or as a continuous scroll, and if your screen is large enough to see them without squinting too much, you can also set Preview to show you two pages side by side if you prefer. Dragging the border between it and the main preview section lets you increase or decrease the size of those thumbnails. There’s a thumbnail sidebar you can trigger on the left that allows you to scroll through a multi-page document with ease, by displaying a tiny version of all available pages, one above the other. You can scroll through the document, zoom in or out of it, and even print it if you like. So just how good is Preview? At first glance, it looks like you can do pretty much everything Adobe Acrobat Reader DC does (without being bombarded with adverts to upgrade, of course).ĭouble-click on a PDF (or image - but we’ll take those as a given and focus on the documents in question for this review), and it opens up, just as you’d expect. Apple Preview's interface is pretty bare, leaving the focus on the document you’re perusing (Image credit: Apple)

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