The PDF app that feels native — read, annotate, edit text and images, fill and sign forms, and redact, all at a speed the incumbents never manage.
PDF Expert opens big documents instantly and lets you actually work on them: change the words in a paragraph, swap an image, rearrange pages, fill in a form, add a signature, or permanently redact a block of text. It reads like a document viewer and edits like a proper tool.
Why it makes the list
Readdle has spent years making PDF Expert feel like it ships with macOS — fluid scrolling, a clean toolbar, sensible defaults — while quietly covering nearly everything you would otherwise open Acrobat for. It is the rare productivity app in this space that people describe as pleasant.
Standout features
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Real text and image editing inside existing PDFs
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Annotations — highlights, notes, shapes, stamps, and freehand
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Form filling and signing, including sending for signature
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Redaction that actually removes the underlying content
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Page management: merge, split, reorder, and extract
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Fast search and OCR for scanned documents
Pricing
Free to read and annotate. A Premium plan unlocks editing, OCR, redaction, and cross-device features.
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