The Mac Preview PDF Markup Tools

[@lorensims4846]

Excellent and very complete overview! This is what you get when the display system for the Mac is based on PDF technology. So much of this stuff is built right into the system.

[@monaattiah3976]

This notes and highlights feature I think will be LIFE CHANGING for me!! God bless you Gary!! I have used markup for years and never knew about it. This will make my studies so much easier! Thank you!

[@garudasomanna]

I thought I had a good knowledge of Preview before viewing this video that made me understand that I haven't😀. Great stuff from you Gary🙏. Thanks.

[@bethedwards3013]

I'm switching from Acrobat to Preview after watching this! Thanks for the video, and this is just another reason I support you in Patreon.

[@justinodelvalle6142]

One of your best videos, I saved it for future reference. You nailed it again Gary! 🏆

[@NastuFfka]

Just watched a small section about redaction, and now it's all clear about how that works!! Thank you so much 🙏

[@davidkoch7880]

You consistently provide the best and most clearly explained solutions to my technology questions. Thank you.

[@badcatdesign]

Just an FYI for anyone wondering... @4:31 the Draw tool only seems to be available if you have a Force Touch trackpad.

[@paulbaltzer4745]

Your video was fantastic and came at a perfect time since I just received an email with a PDF that I have to sign and add text and date. The Markup functions worked great, I remembered your older video about using my camera to quickly add a signature from a written piece of paper into the PDF and email it back. THANKS!

[@patriciatomlin836]

This video was so informative and very useful for me. You are one of the better educators on this platform. I alway find it so clear and easy to follow instructions and learn from these posts. Thank you for sharing, this was great information. Just what I was looking for as I was faced with having to sign and markup a pdf documnet. I just learnd some realy valuable information. Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge. 👏🏾🏆

[@mikann226]

Hello from Belgium. Your are a good teacher ! and i understand not very well English but it's simple to lean with your video ! Continue !

[@marionb6154]

Thank you Gary, this is super helpful information, have just moved from windows to Mac and wondering how to annotate a pdf without adobe acrobat 🙏🙏

[@nuclear_reactor5x5]

though a simple app, i really struggled with the quirkyness of preview. thank you gary once again

[@ishan_murjhani]

Heck I am loving my first Mac already

[@scottabergermd]

Gary, you honestly saved my life with this video! I have been looking for a pdf annotation tool, and in the past have used Evernote. But, I have to say, Evernote’s ability to do this is wonky at best, and very disappointing. (Especially for a paid app). I just today found Mac’s preview annotation tools, but needed a more structured way to understand all it can do…VIOLA! I found your video, and I have to say it was awesome. Thank you, and i am considering becoming a paid contributor to your KZbin site for even better content.

[@MarkKulek]

both the draw and sketch functions are not working on my MacBook. Any ideas? Thanks in advance ✌️

[@macmost]

Perhaps it is having trouble connecting to your iPad? Try plugging it in with a cable to see if it works better for you.

[@mariamjan8895]

You explain things so clearly! Great job, thank you

[@woostertrade1349]

Thanks. I can now draw a line. Trying to figure it out on my own was driving me crazy. It was good having the time stamp in the google search so I could go straight to the info I wanted.

[@dongreenough9]

Great video! I have a strange problem on preview. The text selection tool only selects all of the text in the Doc. not individual letters or words. I am trying to highlight some text only. Any suggestions?

[@abhishekdwivedi8289]

this was really helpful. Thanks for making these videos. keep doing the amazing work.

[@Suxandroc]

Thanks for Gary! Is there a way to increase the text size within the Note while annotating in Preview?

[@philiprand3720]

Another coup! Good going! I want to see if you have something about filling out a pdf document. I have done this with preview, and an Italian form to fill out. Preview (Anteprima in Italian) was very clever at knowing what I wanted until I got to the box for my Italian tax code. It would fill in half then get blocked. To make a long story short, I had to create a text box outside the place for the tax code then drag it into the proper box. Another thing I'll do is see if Pages does all the things you showed us in this video (shapes, boxes for notes, etc.) I get a bit frustrated trying these things in Word.

[@anitawallace2166]

Sometimes I go to lectures that have a PDF handout on which I take notes. Usually there is enough white space to place text boxes. Occasionally there is not. Is there any way to add a blank page for note taking?

[@anitawallace2166]

Is there an iPad app that allows you to do all this on the iPad? I learned so much from this video and others you have made. Thank you so much.

[@IRVremy]

PDFEXPERT or Documents 7

[@ziv_tendoora]

There’s no special app needed. Just open the file and use the markup tool. (the “pencil in the circle” icon)

[@calenit52]

Excellent tutorial!! Thank you so very much.

[@thisisme003]

needed this for a long time for my work, great work, I'm a fan...

[@kate.kubani]

Hi, please how can I delete the notes from the preview document? I tried everything and I end up always with the yellow note which is not going away. Thank you . 🙏🏻

[@sundukchi]

Thanks, Gary, for the great video! I have a couple of questions. Firstly, how can I delete a "note" once I've already started it? In other words, if I no longer need the note, how do I remove it? Additionally, could you explain how to print the PDF file without including the note?

[@macmost]

Click away from the note, then select it, then press Delete. I don't think you can print without them once you add them. You can always duplicate the document and have one that is plain and another annotated.

[@sundukchi]

Thank you so much for your quick reply.

[@deborahwright4048]

This was a very good video. Your videos are to the point and easy to follow

[@CarlShepherd-r2c]

Hi Mac Most, thanks that was helpful, there were some features that i have not explored yet that I have in my toolbox now. I found your videoby looking for a solution to a problem I am having. Arrows now show up with a callout box at the opposite end, and there seems to be no control that has been added to control these. There is also no green or blue dot to change the size of the callout. The size of the callout will change if you change the font size of the text. Actually I just figured out that the callout can be turned off by using the fill color. Wheew! Anyway it might be a valuable addition to your great video to explain this feature. Also I wanted to let you know that changing the angle can be done to any item with the 2 finger gesture on the trackpad. Finally I have always wondered where the triangle shape was, your video helped me figure it out but it may be worth adding that too.

[@christofeles63]

I find the highlight colors on my 2022 MacBook atrocious. Is there anyway to change the them? A simple light grey would be great.

[@Whitsunday1020]

Hi Gary, please advise which version of iPad OS and Mac OS you used for the signature function using your iPad. I am running iOS 14.5.1 on my iPhone and OS 11.3.1 on my Mac and cannot get it to work despite using the same Apple ID and handoff being activated.

[@eh9190]

Thank you! One question though, how do you remove the entire yellow memo note?

[@macmost]

Select it and press delete. If you can't select it, try clicking elsewhere to exit text editing mode for the note, and then do a single click on the note to select the note without entering text editing mode again.

[@iskojc3574]

hi! i only have sketch in my preview. is the draw option a monterey thing? i am still currently on big sur. Thanks!

[@ladyboomer2]

Extremely informative-so so usefull. Thank you.

[@BrandiTalmadge]

Thorough and very informative - thank you!

[@MarcoPolux]

Gary, you are the man!!! 👍 👍 👍 👍 saved me today (and many times over throughout this years) with this (it is idiotic, but I couldn't find how to remove the dropshadow from anotations on documents I need to hand over, and also, the rEdact tool.... but a question: If I just cover text with white rectangles, and then, just RE-Print the document.... I believe then it is secure enough because it was printet with that above the text, so it is not recoverable, right?)

[@meeluanistyn1644]

Wonderful video. I use some tools but not all by a long way. I’m going to have a play at the weekend.

[@limegardensirrigation]

Hi Gary. Do you have a video on how to build a fillable form? I want to make one for new employees details. Or is there another option?

[@macmost]

As a PDF? You'll need a pro PDF creation tool for that. Nothing that comes with your Mac for free will do it.

[@manishmamtani3495]

Hi Gary - this is so useful. Thanks a lot for this video. Very Very informative.

[@valerieyoung4725]

This tutorial is super useful! Thanks a lot!

[@jefersoncitadin5778]

Hi, Thank you for your video. I am having trouble with the Highlight - Open preview, this function was working perfectly in my MacBook but now it is not and I do not know what I have done, when I try to highlight a text it works only half text, it takes half of the line of the text and half of the space between one line the next one, looks like it is not calibrated. Any idea how to fix this? Thank you.

[@digelsrud]

Thanks for this, great summary of the annotation tools in Preview. So I don't know if you would have the answer for this or not. I have used Preview forever and am quite familiar with it. Today however, for some reason, when I was attempting to just type in a simple text annotation, when I hit the little icon to put some text in, the actual box where one types the text in is all of a sudden very tall. It's almost as if the text in the annotation is aligned with the top of the box, and there's a bunch of extra empty space below the text. I can hit return and make a separate line of text, which is single spaced, but all that extra space is still at the bottom of the text field, and I can't simply touch the bottom of the box to make it shorter. Did I hit something inadvertently to put extra space at the bottom or did I find some way to vertically align the text with the top of my text box? This has never happened to me before. I can make it work, but it's kind of annoying to look at. Any ideas?

[@macmost]

Have you tried selecting all text in the box and resizing? Maybe use Command+T to bring up the Text Inspector and look at the text settings there too.

[@MrMr123]

Why is it that my mark up text disappears when I click export to PDF? seems to work when you click Save as PDF in the print menu

[@fredmiller1270]

Gary, Thank you for an excellent video. Can I send a Preview PDF with annotations in the sidebar and have those show?

[@macmost]

Not sure what you mean. If you send someone the PDF with annotations they will see the annotations.

[@fredmiller1270]

Gary, If I'm sending that annotated PDF from preview to someone with a PC I'd like them to be able to see the annotation notes in the left column. I'm not sure that is possible. Thanks!@@macmost

[@macmost]

@@fredmiller1270 Not sure if that would work. Will depend on what they open it with. I think many of the annotations will work in Adobe Reader. Try it and see.

[@Innoxblue]

You're a legend for this!

[@shantemeryl9469]

Hey Gary! Is there a way to white out text in a PDF? Or change the color of the text to white?

[@macmost]

You can draw a white box over it using the markup tools. But if you require real security you should use the Redact function instead.

[@poeteller]

Hi! I'm wondering how to copy an image from Preview to paste it to a document on Preview as well? Thank you!

[@macmost]

Use the selection tool. Select an area, copy. Then go to the other document, paste.

[@sharoncampbell5636]

How do I add a tick to a preview form please, I can't find it anymore on MacBook Pro ...

[@scelodlamini2762]

I was hoping that the video would show how to use different colors to underline a pdf document in Preview - e.g. using blue, orange, etc. Can it be done?

[@macmost]

Do you mean underlining, or highlighting. I did a video on highlighting a while back, not sure how much it changed since then. kzbin.info/www/bejne/jJetlIOCba10qrc

[@TatyanaValdaBelindaHill]

Thanks for this... I finally figured out how to *get rid of notes* after ages of looking... Now I don't know how to reposition them, or (if possible) leave them large/open - rather than the tiny chicklet square they close/re-size to... I find annotations for PDF's in Preview wonderful & useful in theory, but totally awkward and unwieldy in practice. Opph :'(

[@alanmclean1399]

So many features I never knew about. Really useful stuff

[@nicoled985]

I just love your videos!! Thank you!

[@susanparker5339]

Is it possible to add a link to a external webpage in preview?

[@dierdraorourke]

This was a GREAT video! One question, how do you delete a Note that you accidentally added?

[@macmost]

Just select a note in the left sidebar and press Delete.

[@TheUnofficialMaker]

What's the best way to mask or redact text in a jpg or png using Preview?

[@stevenburton7922]

Wow...very informative....thanks for posting

[@ACohen]

Draw tool only appears if you're using a force touch trackpad!

[@VV-yl7cc]

every time I try to use the text option the text box just goes all the way down the page I can't move it to where I want it?

[@auliyanurul98]

Thank you for the video, but why my highlight tools do not function? Would you give me a solution, please?

[@macmost]

I'd need more to go on to make a guess, What do you mean by "do no function." Describe the problem.

[@deborahwright4048]

How do I open the document in preview? I have some screenshots open in there that I didnt't even know of

[@loisskiathitis8926]

Another very informative video! Thank you, Gary! ❤️👍🏻

[@tigerlineplayer7715]

Interesting Insights, thanks!

[@mickguinn8462]

I love that we can easily annotate anything that Preview can open. I use Markup all the time to annotate photos of areas inside and outside our house that we'd like a cleaner or gardener to attend to. Using Google Translate, I put notes in Spanish for them, and they appreciate it. 1000 words and all. However, it seems that every time I do this, the background of the text box is transparent when I need it to be opaque white. The same thing seems to happen to arrows when I need to use one. They keep defaulting to transparent. When you're annotating a lot of photos and PDFs, having to click crazily each time to change the default settings feels onerous. I'd also love to set my default for Preview to have the Markup setting open on all docs. Is that possible? Seems like there should be some way to change the default settings. Does anyone know if that's possible, or there's a hack that might? Or is there another 3rd party MacOS app that would do this just as easily (Adobe feels unnecessarily complex) and allow me to set these defaults? Very obliged if anyone is able to assist here. 🙏🏼 [Running Sequoia on 2 modern M-chip Macs]

[@macmost]

It should remember your last choice for shapes. Not sure why it isn't for you. But also you can use copy and paste, or better yet hold Option and drag a shape to duplicate it. Then just change the text. That way you only have to set the color once.

[@mickguinn8462]

@@macmost Yeah, it never seems to, and I don't know why. I NEVER use "transparent" for any arrow or shape, and rarely as a background, but it's always there as the default. It's like Preview knows precisely the opposite of what I want and gives that to me. 🤷🏻‍♂

[@christofeles63]

I find when I underline using the Highlights and Notes feature the line is so far below the text that it grazes the top of the next line. Is there another way of underlining where the thickness of the line can be specified as well as its distance from the text?

[@macmost]

If you are underlining as part of markup, then there's no fine-tuning options or anything like that.

[@christofeles63]

@@macmost But there must be a way to change a red underline to some other color. Can't seem to figure it out.

[@incognito8023]

Hi Gary! I hope you can explain something. Do you also have a problem with fullscreen mode? There's slideshow and full screen. In slideshow we get that control center to "play", "next", etc. However, the fullscreen is also showing that control at the bottom. It is really frustrating. This has been going on since Big Sur. Do you know any way around that?

[@macmost]

That control will be there. Maybe there is some other way to achieve your goal? What are you trying to do?

[@valesanchez6336]

Every time I try to save my mark-up or highlighting changes it does not. It is like I never made any changes, even if I go to revert. I tried to do the save-export-pdf suggestion I had heard of and it still does not save. Sometimes some changes save, but most do not

[@macmost]

That's odd. They should save every time. You may want to get it checked out.

[@scottboettcher1344]

I wanted to highlight some text I had downloaded last night, and could not get it to work. Called up this video (which I've watched several times before) this morning, and as soon as I saw your doc was a .pdf, and mine was a jpeg, I had my head-slapping moment; d'Oh!

[@daletrout1327]

My mac only has the sketch feature and not the draw, how can I fix this

[@grata1221]

Thank you, this is very helpful.🙏🏼

[@pratapseshachalam2859]

Thanks Gary for such a wonderful video :)

[@jengvideos9886]

This is very helpful! Unfortunately, when I mark up a pdf with text and saved it. I cannot print the pdf file in brother app with the marked up text. How can I address this. Thank you.

[@macmost]

Not sure what you mean by "print the pdf file in brother app." If you want to print, just print from Preview.

[@jeffreysmith5970]

​@@macmost I have had a similar issue in the past when sending a document from Preview. My solution was to choose "Export as pdf" and export the document to the desktop first. Then, open and either print or send the document from the saved file.

[@hotelphotography]

2 clients of mine have sent me (2024) PDF files with annotations and circles of photos I need to edit. I visualize the circles, but not the annotations. Is there a menu I am missing? They use Windows, I have Mac. Any suggestions?

[@macmost]

So you don't see some of the things they say that are there. Sorry, I don't know why that could be. Maybe find out what they are using on their end and try to use the same app on your end if it is available for Mac.

[@destructodisk9074]

I am having this issue where when I take a few different PDFs and combine them into a single multi page PDF and then use markup to edit or annotate the pages, after I save and close.. when I reopen the file, all the markups I have done are all over the place and some are missing.

[@macmost]

Experiment. Figure out what set of actions makes the problem happen. For instance, does it happen if you create the combined PDF, save it, close it, then open it again before annotating?

[@monaattiah3976]

For my version it says "highlights and notes". Then I have another square icon that makes notes. So what does that 'notes' mean when written next to highlights? Is it just informing.us these things can come.in the sidebar?? I am confused why 2 instances of word notes. Thank you.

[@macmost]

Try them out. You can add a highlight and then attach a note to that highlight. Or, you can just add a note by itself. When figuring these things out, just make a sample document (export something from Pages as a PDF for instance) and then play around.

[@apeel2008]

Great tutorial. Is there a way to have the annotations permanently in the file, so if some later opens it with Preview or Acrobat Reader that they will be unable to edit the annotations? I guess doing a Print, followed by save as PDF would work, but I think then you would lose any hyperlinks in the document. It would be good to keep the hyperlinks that may exist but permanently retain the annotations.

[@mathematiSHAN]

If you print and save as a new PDF, the new PDF you save won't allow edits to the changes you made.

[@apeel2008]

@@mathematiSHAN I agree that this would 'bake in' the edits, but then any hyperlinks in the original / edited pdf would no longer work in the 'printed pdf'.

[@davidsmith6028]

Awesome video, thanks so much!

[@souerico]

Is there an easy way to select multiple markups and delete them? I was able to do ⌘A after selecting one markup but it will select them all. I just wanted to select a bunch of ones.

[@macmost]

Shift+click to select them.

[@johncarveth4177]

Very helpful ! Thank you.

[@purple9rain]

How can I quickly make a line perfectly straight again? Please help! 😃😃 There must be a quick way, because otherwise I keep fiddling on the ends up and down and it still never can come perfectly.

[@macmost]

Jut use the shape tool and choose the line.

[@nicaov]

is it possible to change bookmark names?

[@devonpeters9458]

Thank you! I was highlighting a pdf I was reading through and must have hit something because now it won't let me select/edit the text anymore. I can still "choose" all of the options up top (like highlight, shapes, etc), but when I try to click in to the text there it doesn't select anything. It just acts like a static document. Do you or anyone reading this know what I may have clicked so I can "go back"?

[@macmost]

Either turn off markup tools (pen in a circle icon at the very top) or switch to the text selection tool if you want to stay in markup. The icon should be the one all the way to the left of the markup tools, like an A with a cursor next to it.

[@devonpeters9458]

@@macmost thank you! I called Apple before seeing your come and it turns out it was a glitch from me needing to update my software. What you shared it good it to know in general for future use and is appreciated 🙏

[@zhiqianwen]

I can't move the stick note using text selection tool

[@dangerpig]

How do you delete a note in Preview!! Cannot seem to figure that one out, and now I have like 5 notes on my pdf while trying to experiment!

[@dangerpig]

In Preview, when you want to delete an annotation, press ⌘+i to open the Inspector panel. The right-most tab in that panel is your ordered annotations. Click the one you want to remove, press the backspace key, and then click once in the PDF and the annotation will disappear.

[@shjo392]

Hi, how do you rotate a text box in preview on a imac?

[@macmost]

Two fingers on a trackpad, twist.

[@Henrique212121]

How to duplicate the text in macbook? On the cell phone the option to duplicate appears when we select the text

[@macmost]

Do you mean a text box? Either copy and then paste it for a new copy, or Option+drag.

[@shoumikislam9242]

How to get more highlight colors?? It's just few colors out there,any way to achieve that??

[@macmost]

No, it is just those.

[@shoumikislam9242]

@@macmost Sad to hear about that, I do not have particularly that much problem with preview app on mac, but foxit on windows had so much color options, I definitely miss that :(

[@karthickg2050]

Very Informative! Thanks for the effort to make a clear guide! Is it possible to enable "dark mode" on "Preview app" in anyway? Thanks!

[@macmost]

Dark Mode works in the Preview app like any other. But note it isn't going to reach into a PDF document or image and change anything in there. You'll still see the PDF or image as-is, naturally.

[@karthickg2050]

@@macmost Thank you so much for the response... Sir, I am asking similar to Safari brower, in which after pressing the "read (a book symbol)" on the top of the safari browser, next to web address and then when we press "AA" to choose any four background options from white, light yellow shade, dark and more dark... Similarly, Do we have any options in preview app or with any other software or extension, to get dark background option and white test on the pdf of the preview app? Awaiting for your guidance...

[@macmost]

@@karthickg2050 That's Reader View, not Dark Mode. You don't have that in Preview with PDFs because PDFs are meant to be digital versions of printed paper, always appearing with the same design and layout no matter where you are viewing them.

[@karthickg2050]

@@macmost Oh ok! Thanks to educate me with "Reader View and Dark Mode". I am just wondering that the same pdf, I can open in "Documents by Readdle" app in my iPad and getting the reader view and I am able to read it in dark background. Thats why, I was looking in preview app any options possible... Could you please suggest any ways to change the background of the pdf to darker with any app on Mac [I do know the image colour will change, if any image present, but that doesn't matter to me] All I am searching is to find ways to make text in white and background to dark in PDFs (to reduce eye strain) and also the selected position to be read out [This "read out" part, I found out to make from system perferenence --> Accessibility ---> Spoken content...]... Kindly advise, is there any app similar to "Documents by readdle" on Mac platform... Looking for your support! Thanks...

[@macmost]

@@karthickg2050 Maybe try using System Preferences, Accessibility, Display, Invert Colors.

[@MrWanted000]

Can we add/remove pages from a pdf Using preview?

[@enigmatist666]

One major - and very frustrating - downside of this is that any markup is not fixed in place on SAVE. I marked up lighting and sound cues on a script, but it was too easy to move them accidentally when I later worked on the PDF (or for someone else to move or even delete items). It seems the only way to fix markup using these tools is to do it on a JPEG. Gary, is there any way to permanently mark up a PDF (with everything behaving as the redacting tool does)? Thank you.

[@macmost]

Use Print, then Save as PDF.

[@enigmatist666]

@@macmost Thank you so much! That's perfect. :)

[@anthonymosher4336]

@@macmost Thanks! I've tried exporting as PDF and Save As but nothing seemed to work until this!

[@christofeles63]

I just want to add an arrow to the left column. I don't want some giant arrow plunking down in the middle of the text. Any suggestions? This was so much more straightforward on my 2013 MacBook.

[@macmost]

You don't need this for that at all. Just use the Shapes annotation too, select an arrow. Then resize and style as you like. kzbin.info/www/bejne/hKXdhpurrbB0gbs

[@christofeles63]

@@macmost Why is this less cumbersome? I have to resize the arrow, which plunks down in the middle of the text, every time? I want to select arrow making as a default annotation allowing me annotate FROM THE LEFT MARGIN until I choose some other form of annotation. It used to be possible. In fact, the app would transform a doodled arrow into one that was uniform/straight. What happened to that feature?

[@macmost]

@@christofeles63 If you are doing it multiple times, copy and paste instead, or Option+drag to split off a new copy of an existing arrow.

[@christofeles63]

@@macmost For some reason right-click does not feature a copy/paste option. You have to go up to the top of the screen. Copying from there just inserts another arrow immediately below the previous one. If I attempt to insert on the next page, it inserts at the exactly the point of the new page where the previous arrow was inserted. If I attempt to drag it, it bends into an unwieldy shape which I have to muck around with. I just want to be able to past an arrow in the margin!

[@macmost]

@@christofeles63 Not sure what you are doing. Select the arrow you have. Command+C, Command+V. You should have a second arrow. Then move it into position. Or, hold the Option key down and click and drag the arrow to duplicate it and now you are moving a second arrow. It sounds like you have the arrow selected already and are dragging its shape. Try unselecting everything, then Option+drag.

[@tubular26]

Hey Gary. I have a related question about Mac Preview. I saved a word document as a PDF to open it in preview. The word document had two hyperlinks. one was to a website and one was to an embedded document or object. Once converted, neither hyperlink worked when I tried to open them in Preview. What am I doing wrong?

[@macmost]

Not sure what could be the issue. Something in Word? Maybe ask in the Microsoft support forums about it.

[@tubular26]

@@macmost Maybe a better question, will hyperlinks work in .PDF files in Preview and if so, can they be edited in Preview?

[@macmost]

@@tubular26 You don't create documents in Preview. It is a viewing and annotation tool. mostly. You create them in apps like Word, Pages, InDesign, etc.

[@TheRobinMorris]

Are you marking up with MacBook 💻 trackpad ? Magic mice ?

[@macmost]

Either one will work. Preview doesn't care which pointing device you are using.

[@TheRobinMorris]

@@macmost thank you

[@RawFitChris]

Great instruction! But, how do you (or can you) save the NOTATED pdf so that it is NOT editable? (Not editable in Preview or Adobe Acrobat)? Let's say you want to make a permanent, notated document?

[@macmost]

Export it a a new PDF or use Print, Save As PDF.

[@jonathanread2715]

@@macmost This no longer works on macOS Monterey. Using Export and Print As both retain editable annotations.

[@macmost]

@@jonathanread2715 Just tested and you are right about export, though you can set permissions for it. But Print, Save As PDF still bakes-in annotations for me.

[@xiangzhang8508]

is there any way to keep sketch my own lines? I just want draw my own lines but it's annoying to select the originl lines everytime it rectify my lines.

[@macmost]

I think if you draw enough and it is too far from a shape, it won't ask. Or at least you can just ignore it asking and start dragging the next line. Experiment. Otherwise use the second tool (Draw) instead of the first one (Sketch).

[@somethingabstractiguess]

After the Sonoma update, these markup tools don't work on PDFs because Preview does not accurately select the text. Instead, the boxes it draws when highlighting or selecting text will be cutting off the actual text or misaligned with it. Is there any way to fix this??

[@macmost]

Perhaps it is just that right now you happen to be in a PDF that is actually a scanned document. So a PDF with images of text rather than actual text?

[@somethingabstractiguess]

No, it’s a digital copy of a book, not a scan. The highlight tool worked perfectly fine before the update with the exact same file. Now, it knows where the text is, but the line height of the selections are not accurate, so it all appears misaligned.

[@callmeNeno]

I use PDF Expert on the MacBook & iOS; Preview is not bad on macOS

[@adjarahma706]

Please help. The header of my preview app where it shows the pencil, search or zoom buttons is not appearing anymore when I open a file. I don't know what I did.

[@macmost]

Are you in full screen mode, maybe?

[@adjarahma706]

No, it is not on full screen mode. And also when I open a pdf file, the left side of the screen used to show my pages but now it shows my highlight and notes.

[@macmost]

@@adjarahma706 Go to the View menu to change that. View, Thumbnails. Then perhaps there you also hid the Toolbar? Use View, Show Toolbar to bring it back.

[@CanDoSo_org]

Nice tools. Thanks.

[@cchwaynechen]

Does anyone know how to change the font size of Notes ? Because it is too tiny to read....

[@macmost]

You can select text and then use Format, Font, Bigger/Smaller or the keyboard shortcuts shown there.