How to print a PDF on Mac [2023]
Jackson Kustec
jackson@macro.com
In the last few years, the world has turned digital. More and more can be done online, from filling out forms to signing PDFs. However, there are instances when printing and sending manual copies of a document is the only option.
In this article, I talk about how to print a PDF on Mac via free-to-use downloadable software – Macro and also through Mac’s Preview app .
How to print a PDF with Macro
💬 Consider this scenario: As a newlywed couple living in California, you decide to adopt a baby. You enquire about the procedure from an adoption agency and start the due diligence.
According to the law of the United States, if a couple wants to adopt a child, digital signatures are not legally recognized.
Therefore, to complete the adoption process, electronic signatures won't work. Printing forms and signing them physically is the only option in such cases.
Macs and most other devices give you an in-built option to print any document.
But what if you want to edit, annotate, and organize the PDF before printing? That’s when you can use Macro.
Here’s a video on how to print a PDF with Macro 👇
Read ahead if you want a step-by-step guide about the printing procedure.
Step 1. Opening a PDF in Macro
Once you’ve downloaded the app and signed in with Macro, click the ‘Open a PDF or DOCX file’ option on the Macro app’s home screen.
Choose the file you want to print and double-click the PDF. You can also click Open .
Step 2. Printing a PDF with Macro
Macro will now open the PDF for you to edit, organize, or print it directly.
From the right side top menu bar, click the Print icon 🖨️.
Step 3. Setting up printing options
You will now see a window with several printing options.
Let’s talk about these one by one 👇
Printer
Start by selecting the printer you want to print the PDF files from.
Macro lets you select an already-linked printer or add a new one. You can also customize the printer and scanner settings if needed.
Presets
A preset is a group of previously defined and saved print settings.
Click ‘Last used settings’ if you want to print the PDF the same way as your last printout. If you're going to reset them from scratch, leave the preset options at Default settings .
👀 Note: Macro also lets you save presets you can use later as a template.
Basic print settings
The basic print settings have the following options:
- Finalize the number of copies you want to print.
- Select the page range you want to print or tick the All pages option to print the entire PDF.
- Select the Page size you want for the PDF.
- Choose the orientation – portrait or landscape.
- Decide if you want to scale up or scale down the PDF before printing.
Layout settings
Here’s what options you get with Macro’s layout settings section:
- Choose the number of pages you want to print per sheet. With Macro, you can print 1 to 16 pages per sheet .
- Select the layout direction .
- Give the PDF a border if needed.
- Reverse page orientation if the text is upside down.
- Flip the page horizontally to get a mirror image.
Paper handling settings
- Enable the collate sheets option to collect and assemble printed sheets of paper within a predetermined order or sequence.
- Select the sheets to print from options – All, odd, and even.
- Choose the sheet order from – automatic, normal, and reverse.
- Enable or disable the scale to fit the paper size option.
Once you’ve selected your printer and have all the print settings in place, click Print . And you’re done.
How to print a PDF on Mac with the Preview app
Step 1. Opening the print option on Mac’s Preview app
After opening the PDF, click File Menu > Print or press Command + P .
Step 2. Setting up printing options
Like Macro, Mac Preview gives you the same printing options to set up.
I will not repeat all the steps but discuss what's different in printing PDFs with the Preview app.
On the left-hand side of the print window, you get to preview the PDF in real-time. Any changes you make to the printing options can be seen in this preview window.
There’s an additional Preview section where you can:
- Enable or disable auto-rotating PDF pages.
- Show or hide notes that your PDF might have.
- Scale PDF manually or let Mac choose the best fit for you.
- Choose the number of copies per page.
Read and edit documents faster with Macro
Printing a PDF on a Mac is a pretty straightforward process.
Whether using a specialized tool like Macro or Mac's built-in Preview app, both offer the same customizable settings for a tailored printing experience.
So why go for Macro and not just rely on the Preview app? 🤔
With Macro, you can print, edit, organize PDFs, and do more for free.
Here are some key features Macro offers:
Key Feature #1. Edit PDFs
Often, businesses need to edit an employee contract, sign a document, or take notes from a PDF. Macro lets you do all that and more.
With free-to-use Macro’s editing capabilities, you can:
- Underline, strikethrough, and highlight text
- Redact PDF text to hide sensitive information before making the PDF public
- Add a watermark to PDFs and protect your content
- Add images and page numbers
- Add headers and footers to your PDFs
- Add comments to the PDF and let your teammates act on them
Key Feature #2. Spot errors with Macro
Macro comes with AI capabilities to spot document errors automatically. It doesn't just stop there. Macro will suggest actions to rectify errors and help implement them in PDFs.
Apart from spotting errors, Macro is capable of much more:
- Summarize documents in a click
- Look up internal documents
- Answer PDF-related questions
- Auto-complete paragraphs
- Rewrite sections
Key Feature #3. Organizing PDFs
When dealing with PDFs, you often need to rearrange, split, or merge them. Macro gives you every organizing feature you could ask for:
- Merge documents by adding files to the already opened PDF.
- Rotate, delete, or export pages to new PDFs by right-clicking on a page.
- Drag and drop pages to rearrange them.
Like what you see?
Download the free-to-use Macro app and start printing PDFs with comprehensive customizable options.