Apple Preview
The most recommended of 6 PDF readers
Free PDF viewer and editor built into macOS, liked for signing, annotating, redacting and quick image edits; critics cite a buggy, inconsistent interface and removed features.
Free PDF viewer and editor built into macOS, liked for signing, annotating, redacting and quick image edits; critics cite a buggy, inconsistent interface and removed features.
70 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 42
- criticize it
- 28
- approval share
- 60%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 42 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Easy PDF signing and editing
“It solves a long-standing, specific frustration: the inability to natively and seamlessly sign a PDF document directly on your iPhone.”
Comment from 13 Jan 2026 on Hacker News “It allows annotate, merge, realign pages, insert one page from another document or even a JPEG-scan”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Pdfwithlove – PDF tools that run 100% locally (no uploads, no back end)” “Preview is the easiest way to sign anything sent as PDF.”
Comment from 22 Jan 2026 in “Can you slim macOS down?” - Comment from 29 Sep 2026 in “macOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess”
- Comment from 8 May 2026 in “Google Cloud Fraud Defence is just WEI repackaged”
- Comment from 24 Oct 2026 in “OBS Studio 33”
- Comment from 29 Sep 2026 in “macOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess”
Quick image edits and markup
“set the screenshot tool to open the screenshot in Preview.app where you can perform basic editing on it”
Comment from 30 Jan 2026 in “Flameshot” “Just tried rotation in the built in MacOS Preview app, (Command+R or Command+L) and works really well.”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “MacBook Neo” “You can literally just open the image up in Preview or whatever and add a red box”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Nano Banana can be prompt engineered for nuanced AI image generation” - Comment from 14 Jan 2026 in “Apple Says 'Pixelmator' App on iOS Will No Longer Receive Updates”
- Comment from 8 Jul 2026 in “Decoding the obfuscated bash script on a Uniqlo t-shirt”
Built-in redaction and OCR
“it has an explicit “redact” tool which deletes the content it’s used on”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Some Epstein file redactions are being undone with hacks” “the built-in preview app on mac can both competently redact documents”
Comment from 24 Dec 2025 in “Some Epstein file redactions are being undone with hacks” “use the builtin OCR in Preview to select and copy text all the time”
Comment from 8 May 2026 in “The surprisingly complex journey to text-selectable client-side generated PDFs” - Comment from 19 Dec 2025 in “Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features”
- Comment from 19 Dec 2025 in “Firefox will have an option to disable all AI features”
Free and bundled everywhere
“good stock apps cut down on time to get a new machine/install in usable condition substantially”
Comment from 22 Jan 2026 in “Can you slim macOS down?” “This has been the best free PDF app on the market for decades now”
Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “Resizing windows on macOS Tahoe – the saga continues” “Part of what makes it so good is that it's everywhere”
Comment from 11 Nov 2025 in “I hate screenshots of text” - Comment from 26 Jan 2026 in “Ask HN: Is there a good open-source alternative to Adobe Acrobat?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Buggy, inconsistent UI and menus
“some of the menus in Preview are fixed (File, Edit), others aren't (View, Tools).”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “It's hard to justify Tahoe icons” “Every part of the UI is broken, though. You have to discover this by clicking (all icons, no text)”
Comment from 30 Sep 2026 in “macOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess” “Preview is one of the most deeply frustrating, buggy, and unintuitive pieces of software”
Comment from 22 Jan 2026 in “Can you slim macOS down?” - Comment from 23 Jan 2026 in “Bugs Apple Loves”
Crashes and lost annotations
“I have lots of troubles with the highlight annotation in Preview”
Comment from 1 May 2026 in “Show HN: Perfect Bluetooth MIDI for Windows” “The stupid new preview app crashing if you scroll pdf pages too fast.”
Comment from 13 Feb 2026 in “Resizing windows on macOS Tahoe – the saga continues” “some comment gets corrupted and it removes all existing comments”
Comment from 29 Sep 2026 in “macOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess” Removed features and missing save
“Semi new thing is the removal of proper "save as" in Preview and other 1P apps starting in Lion. Still sucks”
Comment from 30 Sep 2026 in “macOS Golden Gate Is a Buggy Mess” “Features were removed from Preview and other apps that were better before.”
Comment from 2 Mar 2026 in “Welcome (back) to Macintosh” “I miss macOS’s Preview.app auto-converting PS to PDF when double-clicked.”
Comment from 12 Dec 2025 in “An SVG is all you need”
Other PDF readers people recommend
The four most recommended other PDF readers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apple PreviewThis page | 42 | 28 | 60% | 10 | — | — |
| Okular | 12 | 5 | 71% | 5 | — | Approved |
| MuPDF | 11 | 3 | 79% | 7 | — | Approved |
| SumatraPDF | 11 | 1 | 92% | 7 | — | Approved |
| pdf.js | 10 | 4 | 71% | 8 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 78 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“How do you edit a pdf? In Preview, of course.”
“The default Apple preview thing is okay for a single rotation or overlaying text, but not for other simple transformations.”
“Semi new thing is the removal of proper "save as" in Preview and other 1P apps starting in Lion. Still sucks”
“Every part of the UI is broken, though. You have to discover this by clicking (all icons, no text)”
“with Markup etc in Preview it's super easy”
“some comment gets corrupted and it removes all existing comments”
“I find Preview’s PDF editing pretty intuitive generally.”
“I usually make an excruciatingly slow process of exporting a book through a darkening quartz filter in Preview.app”
“It was an awesome experience and the first really exciting improvement I have seen in a long time.”
“Preview has pretty good background removal.”
“use the builtin OCR in Preview to select and copy text all the time”
“Preview could edit PDFs and easily allow signing them”
“I have lots of troubles with the highlight annotation in Preview”
“I haven’t found it to be much of an issue to select the text I want from the screenshot”
“Just tried rotation in the built in MacOS Preview app, (Command+R or Command+L) and works really well.”
“Features were removed from Preview and other apps that were better before.”
“The stupid new preview app crashing if you scroll pdf pages too fast.”
“This has been the best free PDF app on the market for decades now”
“set the screenshot tool to open the screenshot in Preview.app where you can perform basic editing on it”
“use native MacOs app Preview for easy tasks”
“Text section is also extremely annoying when marking up PDF files in the Preview app”
“Preview is the easiest way to sign anything sent as PDF.”
“Preview is pretty amazing and something I take for granted every single day.”
“good stock apps cut down on time to get a new machine/install in usable condition substantially”
“I haven't found anything that can match its combination of accuracy, performance, and features with PDFs.”
“Preview is one of the most deeply frustrating, buggy, and unintuitive pieces of software”
“It allows annotate, merge, realign pages, insert one page from another document or even a JPEG-scan”
“I rarely go beyond the Preview app to get great photos”
“It solves a long-standing, specific frustration: the inability to natively and seamlessly sign a PDF document directly on your iPhone.”
“some of the menus in Preview are fixed (File, Edit), others aren't (View, Tools).”
“I thank Apple every day for adding dark mode to the native PDF viewer for this exact reason.”
“it has an explicit “redact” tool which deletes the content it’s used on”
“the built-in preview app on mac can both competently redact documents”
“Ubiquitous OCR, and ubiquitous semantic search in photos.”
“It uses AI to allow you to copy text from images.”
“I miss macOS’s Preview.app auto-converting PS to PDF when double-clicked.”
“Preview was just about the only thing keeping me on macOS for my personal computing”
“It seems that what I miss the most about using a Mac whenever I'm on Windows or Linux is Apple's bundled apps”
“You can literally just open the image up in Preview or whatever and add a red box”
“Part of what makes it so good is that it's everywhere”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.