PDF Expert – Edit, Sign PDFs App Reviews

Excellent App. I am in a graduate program and find this app amazing for taking notes in. It is very useful for merging and commenting on PDFs. It also pairs nicely with its IOS version.

I use it to sign documents, edit PDFs and it’s great. Very easy to use. I even have the mobile version installed in my Iphone and my iPad. I really recommend it!

Going to keep it simple: a great little app with a ton of utility. A solid value for the money, has features that are common and unavailable (or more are more challenging to use) in Preview, and is super-stable. Love it.

Zero crashes so far, simple to use, pixel perfect!

Honestly, Preview only goes so far and Acrobat is clunky. This is fast, powerful, and simple to use.

I love this app. Like many apps produced by Readdle, it is simple, intuitive, and powerful. Beats Adobe Acrobat Pro and all the other unnecessarily complex apps for 95 % of my needs. But the app consumes an inordinate amount of memory (often around 600-700 mb even with one or two open documents and jumping to 1-2 gb when more than 2-3 documents are open) and cpu (around 95% all the time). Not a problem on my imac, but depletes battery fast on my 2014 macbook pro retina. I tried it on my rarely used 2011 macbook air; there, it kills the battery very fast. Hence I find myself going back to Acrobat Pro. It is ugly & complex but very efficient in memory & cpu usage. I hope the developers address this issue soon (perhaps only loading 2-3 pages when they are in view?), so that this app becomes pretty much the one-shop solution for the great majority of my needs.

Others have eluciated the most salient features of PDF Expert. Naturally, this amazing application is by far superior to anything else out there. Two irritating issues: Synchronisation with dropbox isn’t ideal, especially when using both the iPad + OS X version (I don’t use simultaneously + I allow time for synch). Often a duplicate is created. The zoom using the touch pad is more often than not blurry. Entering a custom value renders a sharp image, using the touchpad does not. Perhaps these zoom values determined by the pad aren’t “rounded” to sharp ones? Cheers

I have been looking for a replacement for Adobe’s cludgy and slow and unrelaible Acrobat pro for quite a while. I don’t like Acrobat DC Reader, and it kept proding me to buy. Apple’s Preview is OK for many things, but not good at editing PDFs - and especially difficult for signatures. One frustrated day I found this on the App Store, and plumped for it. I haven’t looked back and have now removed Acrobat Pro and Reader from my Mac. Super happy and the updates keep making it better. Example: Just finished adding company logo to the pages of a customizable template provided by a vendor - saved to flat file, and now ready to rock’n’roll.

I have ALL their apps (including iOS). They take care of business and fix what needs to be fixed and they do it timely! PDF Expert for Mac is no different than any of their apps. It is great. They started off a little basic but have ended up making great updates. There really ins’t any thing to criticize, so I’ll leave it at that. This app is well worth the money and, for me, works seamlessly with iOS.

I LOVE PDF Expert for iOS. It is by far my favorite PDF editor for iOS. It is powerful, offers syncing, writing, editing, on and on and on… DO NOT BUY THE MAC VERSION! I don’t know who these people are giving PDF Expert these glowing reviews, but either they are paid shills, or are something else is going on. It is absolutely, positively NOT WORTH THE MONEY! It is a gross mis-handeling of a product by Readdle to offer it at $60. It does NOTHING, I repeat NOTHING that you can’t do with Preview. And it has MANY things it can’t do that Preview can: - It CANNOT open PDFs with layers (like Preview can) - It CANNOT export a PDF to another format (like Preview can) - It crashes. Regularly. (Ok, like Preview does. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ ) - Simple things like thumbing through searches by hitting “Enter”. You have to manually go through the side menu. Wat? I could go on, but the point is - don’t be in a rush. Preview is better and offers more features than PDF “Expert”. I’m extremely dissapointed with this release. It needs to be a BETA for at leasy 6 more months.

Despite saving PDF at regular intervals, seems to junk the most recent annotations on random occassions. 5 star rating downgraded to 1 star only because 0 stars is not possible. No app should ever ever ever lose data this day in age. No excuses.

I certainly understand anyone’s hesitation in spending so much money on an app, but this app is worth every penny! I use it all the time to fill in documents. It is easy and intuitive!

Marks against PDF Expert - Gratuitous toolbar/sidebar: There is the horizontal toolbar up top, but a sidebar also opens up when using certain tools (e.g., highlighting). It’s a waste of space to dedicate a whole sidebar to something that could easily appear in the extant toolbar (when applicable, obviously). There is no need for a toolbar AND and sidebar when one would do. It’s not an efficient use of space (which becomes more of an issue when working in Split View). - Nested bookmarks: they do not show up in bookmark sidebar (and they do in Preview, Acrobat, etc.) Points in favor of PDF Expert - Handoff between iOS and OS X. That actually improves one of my workflows. You definitely don’t get that with Preview or Acrobat Pro. - Frequent updates and improvements (Preview and Adobe Acrobat are AWFUL about this). - Updates that address my my previous complaints(!): For instance: "- Annotating: it’s not optimally intuitive, easy to use, or well-designed. It’s better than Adobe Acrobat Pro for sure, but not quite as nice as Preview. E.g., [a complaint — about the ease of changing the color of highlighting — which was addressed in the 1.4.1 update! Nice!]. Also, [another complaint — about the highlighting sidebar — that was (mostly) addressed an earlier update].” Also, “[I would appreciate] sidebars [that do not take up so much space]." Stuff that I need from PDF Expert: - the ability to scroll through PDF while changing name of PDF, adding Finder tags, etc — i.e., when the “rename” prompt is covering the PDF. - the ability to click on and then edit annotated text entered in another app (e.g., Preview, Acrobat, etc.) without PDF Expert automatically applying a (red) border of the text box when I click on it. - the ability to search for specific strings of letters (e.g., searching “aid” returns said, etc. Preview allows searches to search with quotes to search only for ‘aid’ — i.e., by typing “aid” into search box) - the ability to highlight over one section highlighting that is one color to thereby change that section of the highlighting to another color (this can be done in Preview and it’s become crucial to my workflows). - better features: OCR, object/text/image editing/removal, compression, metadata and hidden data removal, etc. Stuff I want from PDF Expert - keyboard shortcuts for each highlighting color (e.g., ⌘⌅Y for yellow, ⌘⌅B for blue, etc.) - less reliance on sidebars. - [another thing that Readdle provided] - an explanation of whether PDF Expert improves upon Preview’s more hidden (but still sort of famous) issues. E.g., Preview’s memory leaks, Preview’s proclivity to drastically increase the size of a PDF (e.g., 3mb PDF turns into a 12mb PDF when it is opened and then saved by Preview, etc.) The Verdict(s)? - Preview and PDF Expert are neck and neck, but Preview is free and PDF Expert is not. So Preview wins. - Acrobat Pro offers LOADS more features than PDF Expert, so Acrobat Pro wins by long shot! There are two things PDF Expert could do to compete with the available alternatives: 1. Outperform Preview (not just match it) so as to be worth paying for the app when a free alternative like Preview is available 2. Offer pro-level features to compete with Acrobat Pro. 3. Drastically reduce the price of PDF Expert. (to something that seems negligibly different than free). If (1) and (2) were done, I would recommend PDF Expert to EVERYONE — even if the price stayed the same. (Full disclosure: I’d love to recommend something besides Acrobat Pro; I would relish in that SOOO much! I really hope someone like PDF Expert affords me the opportunity)

I am a solo lawyer and this software has been a big help in my transition to a paperless office. The annotation tools are great. And, the support team is very responsive and open to ideas for future features. No regrets with this purchase.

one of the best PDF reader, the best added feature is work across Mac, iPad and iphone, the use of apple continuity and handoff features, waiting for your new amazing added feature which make work easier and save time

I use it on the iPad every day, on the computer at least a few times a month. They made it easy to have the most recent of my stuff available wherever I am

This app is better than Apples native preview for compiling PDFs. Highly recommended.

Lets me edit down PDF manuals efficiently. Love it!!!

So far I love this program. I just wish you could add fields like you can in Adobe Acrobat. It will read fillable forms…sometimes the fields are cut short but so far I don’t see where you can ADD fields and create your own fillable form. Still need Adobe Acrobat for that task.

I’m in academia, which means reading and annotating a wide variety of PDFs: student papers, journal articles, books, and meeting minutes. Some of these might run dozens of pages, and in a few cases, hundreds of pages. I’ve been a long time user of Adobe Acrobat, but I don’t think I’ll ever go back. I recently began using Readdle’s Spark email app after Mailbox folded. It was so impressive that looked at their other apps and found this one. Readdle has crafted an intuitive, fast, and robust PDF reader/editor that’s quickly found a permanant place on my Mac, iPad, and iPhone. Files sync smoothly between devices with Dropbox, iCloud Drive, and Google Drive without issue which has streamlined my research process considerably. Yes, it’s expensive, but a quality product that I use every single day is more than worth the price tag. Readdle’s support term is quick to respond to questions, listens to their customers, and regularly updates their products. If you’re a power PDF user, this program is what you’re looking for. BTW, check out Spark mail too. I can’t wait to see it on the Mac.