Adobe's free PDF reader has long been a standard for handling its extremely popular document format, but you aren't limited to using it to view your PDF files. Let's take a look at five of the. PDF Reader Premium Available to download directly from the Mac App Store, PDF Reader Premium from Kdan Software is one of the most powerful and popular PDF management tools for Apple computers. It functions as a file manager, file converter and page editor.

There are plenty of ways to view and edit PDFs on a Mac, but Apple's built-in Preview application is phenomenal and often overlooked. While Lion didn't wow the crowd with most of its features, it brought some amazing additions to Apple's PDF viewer/editor that puts it over the top and makes it our choice for the best.

Note: There are a few ways you could define a PDF viewer/editor, as features can range from simple form-filling to complete PDF manipulation. For this post we're concentrating on the features the average person would use, meaning viewing, form completion, annotation, and so on.

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UPDATE: Wondershare is claiming we named their Product, PDF Editor, our top choice. We did not, and they are using a false award that claims our approval. Please do not buy their products as they are a dishonest company. We've left the original text (stricken out) about PDF Editor in the alternatives section so you can see how little of a recommendation we made.

Preview

Platform: Mac OS X
Price: Free
Download Page

Features

• View and edit images in addition to PDF files
• Annotate, highlight, and mark up PDFs in several ways
• Digitally fill out forms
• Sign PDF documents with your webcam (read on for more info)
• Super-fast performance
• Super-fast search
• Insert new pages into PDFs
• View and edit PDF metadata
• Add and edit hyperlinks in a PDF file

Where It Excels

Preview is fast. Mac OS X isn't exactly known for its speed and efficiency, so Preview's ability to blow through PDF documents is pretty impressive. But among its many handy highlighting and annotating features, which are all solid, its ability to fill out forms is especially impressive. This may seem like a mundane thing, but when you get to the signature line it is hard to eschew at least a little reverence. Preview (in Lion) has a feature where you can sign a piece of paper, hold it up to your computer's webcam, and it'll turn it into a high-quality signature you can place in a form. It can also save multiple signatures so you don't have to continuously repeat this process. Preview is solid all-around, but it's those sorts of features that make it amazing.

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Where It Falls Short

As incredible as Preview's webcam signature feature is, it seems kind of strange that there is no ability to sign with your trackpad as well. After all, Apple Stores let you sign for purchases with your finger on an iPod touch. Additionally, Preview wasn't exactly perfect prior to Lion and Lion isn't exactly perfect on its own. It's hard to justify upgrading to OS X 10.7 if Preview is the only draw. If you're sticking with Snow Leopard, your version of Preview isn't bad but it's certainly not the best PDF editor/viewer you can find. Apple fixed a lot of quirks in Lion, which make it a pleasure to use, but if you're not running Lion you're pretty much out of luck.

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The Competition

PDFPen costs $60 but is pretty great. If you need more features than Preview can provide, it'll get the job done. PDFPen makes page rearrangement, editing, multi-document assembly, and more very easy. While it's on the expensive side, consider it a cheaper alternative to Adobe Acrobat ($200). We've never loved Acrobat and it likely provides more features than you're going to need.

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Wondershare PDF Editor ($50) is another pricey option, but it has the ability to convert PDFs to Microsoft Word documents. We're not sure how well this works, but you might want to give it a try if that's something you need. Wondershare placed a false claim on their PDF Editor software that we considered it the best. They even created a fake Lifehacker approval image to act as if we provided them with an official award. We listed it as an alternative here, but as Wondershare has opted to falsely market their product with a seal of approval from us that we never provided, we ask that you do not buy from them.

Skim is a great choice if your primary focus is annotation as that's what it was design to do. It has an impressively long list of features to make annotation easy.

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Got any other favorite PDF editor/viewer apps for Mac that you love? Share 'em in the comments.

Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.

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A dedicated free PDF reader will let you do so much more than just open documents. If you want to merge several PDFs, convert them to a different format, extract images, tweak text or split them into individual pages, there's a free PDF reader that will make it straightforward.

Once you've installed a new PDF reader, it will display a prompt asking if you'd like to make it your default PDF reader. We recommend leaving your settings as they are until you've had a chance to try the new reader and see if it's right for you.

If you're satisfied with its performance, you can make it your default PDF reader by right-clicking one and selecting 'Open with'. Browse to the EXE file for your new PDF reader, check 'Always use the selected program to open this kind of file', then click 'OK'.

1. Foxit Reader

A clear interface and every tool you could want in a PDF reader

Foxit Reader is a joy to use, and makes working with PDFs effortless. Its ribbon-style interface is intuitive, and there's practically no learning curve if you're familiar with recent versions of Microsoft Office.

The ubiquity of the PDF format makes it a popular target for malware and virus developers, so Foxit Reader offers a Safe Reading mode that provides control over things such as internal links and Javascript integration.

Downloadable add-ons are available to convert PDFs to other formats (and vice versa) and to combine multiple PDFs into a single file. File conversion is incredibly simple thanks to the inclusion of an entry in Windows' context menu.

This power and flexibility makes Foxit Reader the best PDF reader you can download today. Try it now and you won't look back.

2. Nitro PDF Reader

A great PDF reader for collaboration, with tracked changes

Like Foxit Reader, Nitro PDF Reader bears more than a passing resemblance to Microsoft Office applications – and this is no bad thing. Right from the start this feels like a highly accomplished piece of software and there are plenty of document viewing options to choose from.

But this free PDF reader is about more than just viewing. As well as including an annotation and highlighting option, Nitro PDF Reader also lets you add sticky notes to the documents you open.

You can use Nitro PDF Reader to convert text documents to PDF format, and vice versa. You can also extract all of the images from a PDFs in one fell swoop, digitally sign electronic documents with an e-signature. This is without doubt one of the most polished free PDF readers out there.

What Is The Best Pdf Reader For Windows 10

3. PDF-XChange Editor

A classic free PDF editor, fully overhauled for Windows 10

The free edition of PDF-XChange Editor contains handy features such as tracked comments and the ability to insert or extract pages, but those marked 'Pro' in the menu are only available in the paid-for version.

This free PDF reader's killer feature is OCR (optical character recognition). You can scan printed documents, have the text converted into searchable format, and save the resulting document as a PDF.

While installing this free PDF readers, we recommend selecting the 'Custom' option rather than 'Complete', then deselecting the components you don't want to install. They are presented as an expandable tree, so make sure you click all the '+' icons to discover what's hidden there.

4. SlimPDF Reader

A frill-free PDF reader that barely makes a dent in your drive space

SlimPDF Reader is by far the smallest free PDF reader in this roundup, occupying just 1.43MB of space, and makes a virtue of its frill-free approach.

Which Is The Best Pdf Reader For Mac

SlimPDF Reader really is little more than a viewer, but that's no bad thing. Controls and navigations are simple and self-explanatory, and the program benefits from being lightning-fast.

Search, print and rotate are the most advanced features you'll find, although you are invited to try a free trial of the PDF to Office converter.

If you're looking for a free PDF reader without the bloat, SlimPDF Reader could be the ideal choice. The only real drawback is the inability to view two pages side-by-side as a spread.

5. Icecream Ebook Reader

Icecream's great ebook reader is also a good choice for PDFs

As the name suggests, Icecream Ebook Reader is designed primarily for viewing EPUB and MOBI documents, but it doubles as a simple free PDF reader.

As this is an ebook reader, you-re encouraged to organize all of your books into a library, sortable by type and fully searchable – but there's nothing to stop you from just opening individual PDFs.

The program has a slightly unusual look, but it is a joy to use. Navigation of PDFs is wonderfully simple, and there are a number of viewing modes to choose from, including an eye-friendly night mode. You can quickly add bookmarks and create notes, which are accessed through the fly-out Contents pane.

If you have a Word document or ebook that you'd to convert to PDF format, or vice versa, you might like Icecream PDF Converter, from the same developer.

Pdf Reader For Macbook Pro

• Discover how to convert PDFs to Word documents with our guide