PDFgear: PDF Editor & Reader Ratings and Reviews

I can’t believe how phenomenal this app is. Anyone who is poorly rating it doesn’t understand it’s capabilities. This is seriously at least 10x better than adobe acrobat and they never ask for money. The problem for me is it is crashing very frequently which obviously is an issue if I want to get anything done in a timely manner. I hope I just need to update my computer or wait for an update of this app to be released because it crashed at least 10x in the span of 2 hours, didn’t lose any work though, and to be fair, Apple’s Preview app also crashed frequently for me and that was what I was using before this (it had A LOT less features too). Perhaps all of tech is focusing so much on AI that they’ve neglected pdf editors completely haha

This free utility solved my PDF to spreadsheet issue without any hassles, ads, restrictions or subscriptions. It does the job pretty flawlessly. The things about it that bugged me was after installing, any time I clicked on any PDF it opened with PDFgear instead of Apple's Preview. Clicking "Get Info" and changing "Open With" to Preview and checking "Use this application to open all documents like this one" fixed that. Then I noticed the tiny PDFgear icon in the menubar on the upper right hand side of the screen. Turns out PDFgear wants to launch on startup and always be running, I had to turn that off and tell it "no". If you're converting PDF documents all the time I guess that could be handy, but it's something I only need to do occasionally.

PDF editors are notorious cash cows for companies like Adobe and Readdle, who offer what amounts to basic word processors with signature capabilities and a PDF save and load feature. The cost of these tools is prohibitive for a student and just about anyone, except for a company, perhaps. I came across PDF Gear and was very skeptical about its zero price. The old adage that if you don’t pay for the product you are the product really frightened me. From what I am seeing thus far, however, the publisher for this utility has kept to its word about zero ads and full features. It seems very easy to use, too. PDF Expert seems to be a unicorn in this space, and I recommend it.

I personally think this software is the closest thing to Bluebeam for a MAC. I used Bluebeam daily but it no longer is compatible with latest MAC software updates. I do wish you could take screenshots or snips within PDFgear, as well as rotate images once you paste an image, or a screenshot onto the PDF. Another cool feature would be if you could cloud an item, not just circle. If this had all the Bluebeam features, i would give me a 10 star review but it is GREAT as it is as well.

I was able to create a new floor plan and make adjustments so easily. I would reccomend this for all construction personnel using a mac.

I've just spent 20 minutes pulling my hair out attempting to edit text in a PDF in PDF Gear. Deleting lines leads to the entire text box shifting upwards on the page, moving outside the bounds of the page. Pasting new lines of text in leads to all paragraph breaks being ignored and a strange ÿ symbol being inserted for these instead, with all text placed into one absurdly long horizontal line that ignores the previous text box bounds and goes right off the side of the page, seemingly into infinite. I appreciate that the developers are attempting to create a usable PDF editor that doesn't pass through "pay as much as you used to pay to purchase our software, except now you only pay that much to rent it for a limited amount of time" Adobe, and I realize the PDF architecture is a mess, but they've got a long way to go.

Good day. All that I can say is WOW, and cite a quote from Shakespeare where he wrote in Hamlet, “To suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them.” In a few words, this signifies my victory in defeating a powerful foe like Adobe. I have been a victim of Adobe Acrobat since they sent (and charged a king’s ransom) for “updates/upgrades” in CDs and DVDs. PDFgear has freed me from a maximum-security prison similar to Angola Prison in my home state of Louisiana (the largest maximum-security prison in the United States). I am amazed by the high-quality, most accessible program without any mysteries and hidden expensive bells and whistles. Thanks, and congratulations to the entire PDFgear team. You came like a shooting star blazing through the Aurora Borealis at night. il gracias a todos
Many thanks to all
Merci beaucoup à tous
Grazie mille à tutti
谢谢大家
شكرا لكم جميعا
תודה לכולכם
Obrigado a todos
Vielen Dank euch allen
Tack alla
Хвала свима
Gràcies a tots
Greg

It updates too often. That says a lot about relationships between the app and developers. That's nice. But for me as for a customer, this is uncomfortable to recive notifications from App Store that a new update is avalible. It's would be better if updates were published once a month instead of every week. And about the start sceen. It looks a little bit messed. I mean sometimes I just open a pdf document to read and it opens a start screen as well. It's not necessary. But it's a good and free app so it's would be a sin to complain too much. Solid good app. Four stars instead of five for thoose uncomfortable moments.

About time there is an great alternative to the non-sense of the yearly/Monthly subscription of Adobe Pro. After reasearching the company I feel comfortable with this "free" software that is at the same level of Adobe Pro that I will be using. For "Home Use", this is excellent. I do understand that furture versions may have some in-app options that may be "paid", but I hope the company takes into account that most home users just need a reader with some edit and fillable options for personal use.

Unfortunately, I am unable to edit pdfs other than to highlight, underscore, strikethrough, or smudge/redact. I need to be able to edit for boldface/lightface, italic/roman, etc. When I click on Edit Text, the pdf appears in a new window and is so tiny, I can't even read the text. When I tried randomly selecting text to see if a contextual window might pop-up, nothing happened. I can change a font and point size but can't do anything else. Also, the app won't even open some pdfs. I sent feedback for help, but haven't received a reply. This is really disappointing because I was hoping to find an alternative to expensive Adobe Acrobat Pro for use with my nonprofit organization.

Please the stories of Malware, blocking Preview, are utter nonsense. I use this app to open, read, edit, and save as a new PDF tens of PDFS everyday and they all work and open in any PDF reader or editor I want. Ie Foxit, Nitro, PDF Expert, never an issue. The talk of not opening or ceasing to function from what I can see are likely issues with the user’s Mac or their OS, but I can find zero evidence on my 2024 M4 iMac running Sequoia 15.5. I suggest ignoring the negativity and give PDFgear a try…it’s just fine. I love it!