What readers annotate PDFs better than the Preview app?
I usually spend around 3 or 4 hours a day working with and annotating PDFs. I've always used Preview, but there's a few things that bother me about it. Mainly the large icons used when you place notes, which can get in the way in tightly formatted documents.
Is there an alterate PDF reader that is any better for annotating documents?
Solution 1:
Skim is a pdf reader specialy designed to annotate pdf.
Skim is a PDF reader and note-taker for OS X. It is designed to help you read and annotate scientific papers in PDF, but is also great for viewing any PDF file. Stop printing and start skimming. Explore the links to the left to investigate Skim and consider helping out with the project.
Features:
- Viewing PDFs
- Adding and editing notes
- Highlighting important text, including one-swipe highlight modes
- Making "snapshots" for easy reference
- Navigation using table of contents or thumbnails, with visual history
- View all your notes and highlights
- Convenient reading in full screen
- Giving powerful presentations, with built-in transitions
- Handy preview of internal links
- Focus using a reading bar
- Magnification tool
- Smart cropping tools
- Extensive AppleScript support
- Bookmarks
- Saving passwords in Keychain
- Export notes as text
- Automatic download of remote PDFs
- Support for Apple Remote Control
- Interaction with LaTeX, SyncTeX, and PDFSync
- Integration with BibDesk and other third party applications
- Spotlight support
- Highly customizable
- And much more...
Solution 2:
PDF Expert is hands down the best pdf editor made. Better than Acrobat.
Solution 3:
While not meant primarily for your use case, I found Mendeley Desktop to be quite adept at highlighting and annotating.
Solution 4:
PDF Studio Viewer is a free PDF Reader for macOS that can annotate PDF documents with text and graphical comments including text highlights and markup, shape annotations, text box, typewriter, callout, etc. It can also fill interactive forms.
All annotations are compliant with PDF specs and Adobe products and can be viewed by other readers on all platforms.
Solution 5:
There are plenty of good PDF readers on Mac, including: Formulate Pro, http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/19911/formulatepro
PDFPen and PDFPen Pro (a little bit expensive but really good software)
PDF Checkpoint that I like very much which allows you to automate your workflow.
You should try their free version to see which one suits your needs ;)