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asperity's avatar
asperity
Iron Contributor
Jul 24, 2026

Best PDF compressor software for mac for reducing PDF file size?

Hi all, New to here and really need an solution to my problem. Got a bunch of PDF files on Mac that have ballooned to sizes (~200MB) that make them impossible to email or upload anywhere without hi...
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dlares's avatar
dlares
Copper Contributor
Jul 25, 2026

 

I built https://gitlares.github.io/fs-pdf-compressor/ for essentially this exact problem. It is free, open source, and processes everything locally on your Mac—no PDF files are uploaded.

It has three compression profiles: Preserve, Balanced, and Maximum. For image-heavy reports, I would start with Balanced and use Maximum only if the result is still too large. Enable “Keep original” so you can compare both files safely.

The macOS version is signed and notarized, and the source code is public. It currently supports Apple Silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later.

Full disclosure: I am the developer. Compression results will depend on how the images are encoded, so I still recommend visually checking the resulting PDF before deleting the original.

https://gitlares.github.io/fs-pdf-compressor/

https://github.com/gitlares/fs-pdf-compressor