Forum Discussion
What is the best pdf editor software on mac?
What is the best PDF editor for Mac? Using Terminal to free edit PDF files on your Mac is a more advanced and technical approach, but it can be effective for certain tasks. Terminal is a command-line interface that allows you to run scripts and use various tools to manipulate PDF files without installing any additional software.
For example, you can use command-line tools like pdf tk or q pdf (both of which can be installed via package managers like Homebrew) to perform operations such as merging, splitting, encrypting, or decrypting PDFs. However, these tools typically handle more structural modifications rather than detailed editing like adding text or annotations.
As a best PDF editor for Mac that supports editing content directly, Terminal isn't the ideal choice because it doesn't provide a graphical interface or fine-grained editing capabilities. Instead, Terminal is best suited for batch processing or automation tasks related to PDFs.
Command Line with pdf tk:
bash
brew install pdf tk-java
pdf tk input.pdf cat 1-5 10-end output new.pdf
- Split, merge, rotate, decrypt PDFs
- No GUI but extremely powerful