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From your Mac

Reduce a PDF's size on your Mac.

Preview, the app that opens PDFs on your Mac, can compress them too. It takes a few clicks.

The quick way: Reduce File Size

  1. Open the PDF in Preview.
  2. Choose File > Export.
  3. In the Quartz Filter menu, choose Reduce File Size.
  4. To keep the original, type a new name in Export As. Then click Save.

Apple warns that a compressed PDF may look worse than the original, so open the copy and check the text is still readable before you send it.

More control: choose the options

In the same Export window, you can tick any of these instead:

  • Optimize images for screen makes images smaller for viewing on a screen.
  • Save images as JPEG converts images to compressed JPEGs.
  • Create Linearized PDF makes it load faster in a web browser.

These help most with scans and PDFs full of photos.

Made it in Pages or Keynote?

Shrink the document before you export it. Choose File > Reduce File Size, pick what to scale down, then choose Reduce a Copy to keep the original. Then export the PDF. See Send a Pages document and Email a Keynote presentation.

Still too big to email?

Personal Gmail accounts attach up to 25 MB, and over that Gmail swaps the file for a Google Drive link. Apple Mail can send up to 5 GB with Mail Drop. Messages is another option for someone you text. More in Send a PDF from your Mac and File too large for Gmail?

Send it to your accountant with Sendoff

Sendoff is a Mac app that lives in the notch. Drop the PDF on the notch, pick your accountant, press Send off. It remembers how you reach each person, checks the file size before it goes, and gives you three seconds to undo.

Join the waitlist below, and tick the beta box if you want to test it first.