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Tommy1910's avatar
Tommy1910
Brass Contributor
Jun 08, 2026
Solved

How to merge or combine pdf files into one on mac?

I have several PDF files in different parts and I want to merge them into a single PDF document on my Mac. The PDFs contain related pages, and it would be much easier to share, store, and print them ...
  • Nobel_Baynes's avatar
    Nobel_Baynes
    Jun 09, 2026

    If your PDF file is too large to upload, email, or share, PDFZin is a convenient option for compressing it.

    https://www.bincodelab.com/merge-pdf-files

    It can reduce the PDF file size while balancing document quality, which is especially useful for PDFs containing lots of images or scanned pages.

SawyerColt's avatar
SawyerColt
Iron Contributor
Jun 08, 2026

If you are comfortable using command-line tools, Terminal provides a fast way to merge PDF files on a Mac. This method is especially useful when you need to combine multiple PDFs regularly or automate the process with scripts. Unlike online PDF mergers, your files remain on your computer, which helps protect sensitive information.

One of the easiest approaches is to install PDFtk Server using Homebrew. After installation, place all PDF files in the same folder and run a simple command to merge them into a single document. This can be much faster than manually dragging files in a graphical application when dealing with large batches of PDFs.

Install PDFtk:

brew install pdftk-java

Navigate to the folder containing your PDF files:

cd /path/to/pdf/folder

Merge the PDFs into one on Mac:

pdftk file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf cat output merged.pdf