Notes and writing3 picks
The best PDF apps for Mac and iPhone
PDF Expert is the PDF app most Mac and iPhone users should get, and Skim is the best free one for reading long papers.
PDF ExpertPick it if you fix, sign or redact PDFs for work on a Mac, iPad or iPhone.Free to startPDF Expert reads, signs and fills PDFs free on every Apple device, and Premium adds real text editing for $49.99 a year or $139.99 once on the Mac. Skim is a free, open source Mac reader that collects every highlight into 1 exportable list. Notability is a handwriting notes app that also marks up PDFs.
How we chose
- 1Editing the text inside a PDF
- 2Exporting highlights and notes
- 3Signing and filling forms
Compare at a glance
Tap a name to jump to its write-up.
| App | Price | How you pay | Mac | iPhone | iPad | App Store | Developer | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PDF Expert | Free to start | Free, with paid upgrades | 4.7 | |||||
 Skim | Free, open source | Free | Too few ratings | |||||
 Notability | Free to start | Free, with paid upgrades | 4.8 |
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The picks, in order
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Pick it if you fix, sign or redact PDFs for work on a Mac, iPad or iPhone.
Free for reading, highlighting, filling out forms and signing, PDF Expert covers what most people do with PDFs on Mac, iPhone and iPad before asking for money. Editing the actual text and images, redacting, merging, OCR and Word or Excel conversion need Essential at $49.99 a year, or $139.99 once on the Mac alone. If you only read and annotate on a Mac, Skim does that free and open source.
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Pick this if you read long papers or textbooks on a Mac and want your highlights in 1 list.
Preview handles a quick highlight, but Skim is built for reading long papers: one swipe highlights, and every note and highlight collects in one list you can export as text. A reading bar, snapshots that keep a figure in view and SyncTeX for LaTeX writers round it out. It's free and open source, and it's a reader rather than an editor, so changing a PDF's text is PDF Expert's job.
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Pick it if you annotate PDFs by hand with an Apple Pencil, often during lectures you're recording.
Record a lecture while you handwrite, and the audio stays synced to the moment you wrote each part of the note. That is why so many students run Notability on an iPad, and it also marks up PDFs and mixes typing with ink on one page. The free plan stops at 5 notes and audio recording starts on the $15.99-a-year Plus plan; the $49.99 Classic purchase is the way to avoid a subscription.
Head to head
Stuck between 2 of these? Each comparison lines up price, devices and who should pick which.
