Questions, answered.

Yes. There is no subscription, no in-app purchase, no trial and no account. The code is MIT licensed.

No. Your documents never leave your Mac. OCR, page checks, sensitive-data detection and name suggestions all run on your Mac. The only request PDFMate makes on its own is a check for new versions, which sends no document data and can be turned off.

No account. The internet is only needed to download the app, and for the optional update check.

No. It sets no cookies, stores nothing in your browser and loads no analytics or third-party scripts. The hosting provider sees standard request data, as described in the Privacy Policy.

When you ask for a suggested name, Apple's on-device model reads the text of pages 1–2 on your Mac. Nothing is sent anywhere, and you can switch it off in Settings ▸ Intelligence.

No. There is no telemetry of any kind. If you want to report a problem, you email us yourself.

There are no plans for a paid version. Copies you have downloaded keep working under the MIT licence whatever happens.

macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on a Mac with Apple silicon.

Copying and exporting tables, and name suggestions from Apple Intelligence. Everything else works on macOS 14.

No. PDFMate is a Mac app.

Dates are recognised in common formats such as October 14, 2026, 14 October 2026 and 2026-10-14. Topic words are in the document's own language: taken from its subject line, or picked by the on-device model when Apple Intelligence is on.

Yes. The slide show itself works on one display; the presenter view with next slide and notes needs two.

The Download page shows the size as soon as the download is published. The app has no third-party code and bundles no fonts.

Click Scanned in the status bar, or choose Tools ▸ OCR Text Recognition. The text layer is invisible and lies over the image.

Every language Apple Vision offers on your Mac. The invisible text layer stores Latin characters only, so other scripts are recognised but not stored correctly in the layer.

No. Blank, sideways and duplicate pages are only found when you ask. They are shown with badges and changed only after you confirm, and every change can be undone. Pages that are only possibly blank are never deleted automatically.

Put an empty sheet between the documents in your stack and scan everything in one go. Split Pages ▸ At separator sheets makes one PDF per document and removes the separators and any blank backs.

A page with no visible content. A page that shows any text, even a lone page number, is never called blank. Faint pages get a “possibly blank” badge instead.

Yes. Batch removes blank pages, adds OCR and splits stacks for many files at once, and never overwrites the originals.

Press ⌃⌘C and drag over any area. The recognised text is on the clipboard. A clipboard you changed in the meantime is never overwritten.

You can replace words and phrases across the document with Find & Replace, within the limits of the document's fonts, and add new text blocks, images and links. You cannot click into existing text and retype it.

Marks are only pending until you choose Apply; until then the text is still there. Applying removes the marked content for good and turns the marked pages into images. Earlier versions may still exist in macOS versions, Time Machine or sync services, so check those before sharing.

Bank account numbers, payment card numbers, tax IDs, phone numbers, email addresses, postal addresses and links. Dates and names are optional. Tax IDs include US Social Security numbers, ITINs and EINs, UK National Insurance numbers and tax references, Canadian SINs, Australian TFNs and ABNs, Indian PANs, and VAT numbers from the UK and 14 EU countries; a number that could be anything, such as nine plain digits, is only marked next to a label like “SSN” or “TFN”. It searches the document's text only, so run OCR on scans first, and review every mark.

Files are encrypted with 128-bit AES. PDFMate opens files protected with 256-bit AES too. Permission flags such as “no printing” can be ignored by other software, so do not rely on them for secrecy.

Yes, with a Digital ID you create in PDFMate or import as a .p12 file. Signatures are cryptographic and verifiable, but they are not qualified electronic signatures, and there is no timestamp server.

Yes. Prepare Form turns any PDF into a fillable form with nine field types and calculations; Fill mode fills them in. Data can be exchanged as FDF, XFDF, CSV or JSON.

Yes. Protect ▸ Remove Hidden Data strips metadata, comments, attachments and form data you choose.

Yes. Like other Mac apps, it autosaves in place. Use Undo to step back, and work on a copy if you need to keep the original untouched.

Yes. Word, RTF, text, Markdown, HTML and images are converted to a new PDF as they open. Complex Word layouts may look different.

On your Mac: in ~/Library/Application Support/PDFMate for the copy from this site, and in the app's own container, ~/Library/Containers/org.pdfmate.PDFMate, for the copy from the Mac App Store. The two copies keep their items apart. Digital IDs are encrypted with your password.

Word, RTF, text, HTML, Markdown, CSV, XML and images. You can also reduce file size, flatten, or convert to an image-only PDF.

Yes. Use Create ▸ Combine, or Batch ▸ Combine. Each file's bookmarks are nested under its name.

No. Opening checks whether pages contain text and whether signatures are valid, both on your Mac, and writes nothing.

The copy from this site checks pdfmate.org for a new version about once a day and tells you when there is one; Help ▸ Check for Updates… checks right away. It never installs anything itself: download the new version from this site, quit PDFMate and replace the app in Applications. Your settings, Recent list, stamps, signatures, templates and Digital IDs stay. The copy from the Mac App Store is updated by the App Store.

It is MIT licensed.

Email us with your macOS and PDFMate versions and the steps. Please do not send your documents; a sample file without personal data helps.

Drag PDFMate from Applications to the Trash. To remove everything, also delete ~/Library/Application Support/PDFMate and the preferences under org.pdfmate.PDFMate; for the copy from the Mac App Store, delete ~/Library/Containers/org.pdfmate.PDFMate instead. Deleting the Digital IDs folder removes your signing identities.

Yes: Help ▸ Keyboard Shortcuts in the app.