BASALT · JOURNAL
What free Mac PDF editors can and cannot do
There are more free options on macOS than people realise, and they cover more than people expect. It is worth knowing exactly where the line is rather than paying to cross it unnecessarily.
Preview, which is already installed
Preview handles more than its reputation suggests. Rotating pages, reordering them, deleting them, combining two documents by dragging thumbnails, filling many forms, and adding a signature. For a large share of everyday work this is the whole answer and it costs nothing.
Its limits are specific. No OCR, so a scan stays unsearchable. No genuine redaction, which matters below. No Bates numbering. No batch operations. Compression is a single Quartz filter with no control and frequently poor results.
Command line tools
qpdf handles splitting, merging, rotation, decryption and structural repair, and it is fast and reliable on very large files. Ghostscript compresses. Poppler extracts text and images.
These are free, powerful, and available through Homebrew. They are also a command line, which is a genuine barrier for many people and no barrier at all for others.
The one thing free tools do not do
Redaction that removes content.
Preview can draw a black rectangle, and this is the single most consequential misunderstanding in PDF work. The rectangle is an annotation drawn on top. The text underneath is still in the file and can be recovered by selecting the region and copying, or by deleting the annotation in any editor.
The page looks identical either way, which is exactly why the mistake keeps reaching the news.
If the document is going to another party and something must be removed from it, this is the point at which free tools stop being sufficient. Not because they are poor, but because covering is not removing and none of them do the second thing.
A sensible approach
Use Preview for what it is good at, which is more than most people use it for. Add the command line tools if that suits you. Pay for something only when you hit a specific need they do not cover, which for most people is OCR, batch work, or redaction that genuinely removes content.
Frequently asked questions
Can Preview edit PDFs?
It can rotate, reorder, delete and insert pages, combine documents by dragging thumbnails, fill many forms and add signatures. It cannot OCR a scan, genuinely redact, apply Bates numbering, or batch process.
Can Preview redact a PDF?
No. It can draw a black rectangle, but that is an annotation on top of text that remains in the file and can be recovered by copying the region or deleting the annotation. The page renders identically to a real redaction, which is why the mistake is so common.
What free command line PDF tools work on Mac?
qpdf for splitting, merging, rotating, decrypting and repairing; Ghostscript for compression; Poppler for text and image extraction. All install through Homebrew and handle very large files well.
When is it worth paying for a PDF application?
When you need OCR to make scans searchable, batch processing across many files, or redaction that removes content rather than covering it. Those are the specific gaps the free options leave.
Doing it in Basalt
Basalt is a native macOS PDF toolkit: eighteen tools in one window covering merge, split, page organisation, compression, OCR, passwords, Bates numbering, forms, signing, watermarks and comparison. Every file is processed on your Mac, and the engine that opens documents holds no network entitlement at all, which macOS enforces at the code-signature level, so nothing is uploaded. Redaction destroys content rather than covering it and an independent verifier proves the material is gone before a file is written. A one time $29 licence covers up to three Macs, and it is free for the first 24 hours. Download it at basaltformac.com, or install it with brew install --cask chipmunk1101/tap/basalt.
Redaction that proves itself
Basalt destroys the content you mark, then re-opens the file it wrote and proves the content is gone before it saves anything. Your documents never leave your Mac.