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macOS Preview Does PDF Editing
Today I finally realized that macOS Preview handles the PDF editing tasks I’ve been outsourcing to sketchy online tools for years. Deleting pages, rearranging them, even redacting sensitive content. It’s been sitting in my dock the whole time.
I was trimming a contract PDF before sending it over, reached for iLovePDF out of habit, and then thought: “There has to be a local way to do this.” Five seconds of searching confirmed that Preview does it natively. No upload. No watermark. No “upgrade to Pro” modal.
Deleting Pages
- Open the PDF in Preview (right-click the file, Open With, Preview)
- Show the sidebar: View > Thumbnails
- Click the page thumbnail you want to remove
- Press Delete on your keyboard
That’s it. Save with Cmd + S and the page is gone.
For multiple pages, the standard macOS selection shortcuts work:
| Selection | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Consecutive pages | Shift + click first and last |
| Non-consecutive pages | Cmd + click each page |
| All pages in range | Shift + click start, Shift + click end |
Select your pages, press Delete, done.
Rearranging and Merging
Drag thumbnails up and down in the sidebar to reorder pages. To merge pages from another PDF, open both files in Preview and drag thumbnails from one sidebar into the other. No third-party merge tool needed.
Redacting Text
This one surprised me the most. Tools > Redact lets you draw boxes over sensitive text. Once you save, the redacted content is permanently removed from the file. Not just visually hidden. Actually stripped from the PDF data.
One catch: redaction is permanent on save. Preview warns you, but there’s no undo after that point. Always work on a copy.
Quick Reference
| Task | How |
|---|---|
| Delete page | Select thumbnail > Delete key |
| Reorder pages | Drag thumbnails in sidebar |
| Merge PDFs | Drag thumbnails between two open files |
| Redact text | Tools > Redact > draw box > save |
| Add signature | Tools > Annotate > Signature |
| Fill form fields | Click text fields directly |
| Crop page | Tools > Rectangular Selection > Tools > Crop |
When Preview Falls Short
If the PDF is password-protected or has editing restrictions, Preview’s delete option greys out. For those cases, iLovePDF and Smallpdf still work. But for 90% of my PDF editing needs, Preview handles it without leaving the machine.
What I Learned
- Preview does page deletion, reordering, merging, redaction, signatures, and form filling out of the box
- Deleting a page also removes all annotations on that page. No way to recover them
- Redaction in Preview permanently strips content from the PDF data, not just a visual overlay
- Cmd + click and Shift + click work in the thumbnail sidebar for multi-page selection
- For locked PDFs, online tools are still the fallback. But check Preview first
Discovering hidden macOS features years too late? I’d love to hear your “it was there the whole time” moments. Reach out on LinkedIn.