PDF Buddy

Trim, number, stamp, and collate your PDFs — on your own Mac, all in one pass. Nothing is uploaded anywhere, and the file you started with is left exactly as it was.

Download free trial See what it does

PDF Buddy is included in my bundles, along with over twenty other apps.

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One pass, not six uploads

Drop four files in and they are one document. Tick what you want done — trim, compress, number, watermark — and save once. There is no verb to pick first, and no round trip between each one.

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Compression that keeps the words

A scan of a page and a page of text are not the same problem, so PDF Buddy doesn’t treat them alike. It re-encodes the pictures and leaves text and line art untouched, so the file gets smaller and stays sharp and selectable — and it refuses to “compress” a text document into something larger.

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Trimming that really cuts

Preview’s crop sets a box and leaves everything outside it in the file. PDF Buddy finds the ink on each page and genuinely cuts to it — the margin is gone from the export, not hidden. A scanned book fills the screen at last.

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Redaction that destroys

A black rectangle drawn over a PDF hides nothing: the text sits underneath, selectable. PDF Buddy finds emails, card numbers, social security numbers and faces — on your Mac, never in a cloud — and burns the page so the words are gone from the file.

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Stamps that know their job

Page numbers, Bates numbers that keep counting across every file you split out, six-slot headers and footers with date and filename tokens, and text or image watermarks. Set the corner on a grid rather than guessing at coordinates.

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See it before you save

The Result tab renders a page through the very pipeline that writes the file, so what you are looking at is what you will get — redactions included. Worth checking before a document goes to someone else.

Screenshots

A bank account application open in Pages view with Redact and Watermark on: black bars cover the social security number, both phone numbers and the email address, a tiled CONFIDENTIAL watermark runs across the page, and the sidebar shows which kinds are being detected

The page grid showing five pages of a merged document with Trim margins on: every thumbnail dims the margin about to be discarded and outlines the region being kept, and the sidebar reports “Trimming 5 pages · 79 × 56 pt off”

The Interleave sheet asking which way the scanner handed over the second pass, with both answers drawn as numbered sides — fronts 1, 3, 5, 7 woven with backs 8, 6, 4, 2 to give 1 to 8 in order

Pages view with the Result tab showing a finished sheet: four policy pages placed two by two, a page number stamped on the sheet, and the Pages per sheet controls beside it

PDF Buddy with nothing open: a drop zone reading “Drop PDFs or images here” beside the full list of tasks, dimmed until a document arrives

Get PDF Buddy

Free to try, with nothing held back — no watermark on your exports, no truncated files, no disabled tasks. A license removes the occasional reminder and supports the work. Requires macOS 13 or later. Buying more than one app? PDF Buddy is included in my bundles.

Download free trial Buy a license

Read the docs

Support

Questions or bug reports? Email ben.dansby@gmail.com and you’ll get a reply, usually within a day or two.

For privacy questions, see the privacy policy.