Mac's built-in Preview app has a "Reduce File Size" option but it often produces poor results or dramatically degrades image quality. Here's a better way to compress PDFs on Mac — for free, entirely in your browser.
Preview applies aggressive downsampling that can make text images blurry and photographs look pixelated. For professional documents, this is unacceptable. A proper compression tool gives you control over the quality-to-size tradeoff.
Go to pdfeditor.onl/compress-pdf. No installation required. Works on all Mac models including M1, M2, M3, and Intel chips.
Drag the PDF file directly from Finder into the upload area in your browser, or click to choose the file.
Tip: On macOS you can drag a file from Finder directly onto a browser tab — a quick shortcut that works in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.
Select Basic, Good, or Strong compression. Click Compress Now. The result shows the original size, compressed size, and percentage saved. Click Download Result.
Yes. The WebAssembly engine runs natively in Safari and Chrome on all Apple Silicon and Intel Macs with no compatibility issues.
In most cases, yes — particularly because you can choose the compression level. Preview applies fixed aggressive compression with no quality control.
No. Open the page in any browser and it works immediately — no extensions, no plugins, no downloads.