How to compress a PDF without Adobe Acrobat on Mac
You don’t need Acrobat for this. Preview, which comes with every Mac, can reduce a PDF with File › Export › Quartz Filter › Reduce File Size, with one fixed setting. FileMate adds Compress PDF to Finder’s right-click menu, with three levels, no subscription and no account. Both run on your Mac, so the PDF doesn’t have to be uploaded anywhere.
FileMate is a one-time purchase and compresses PDFs on your Mac.
Compress a PDF with FileMate
- Right-click the PDF in Finder.
- Choose FileMate › Compress PDF.
- Use Report compressed.pdf, saved next to the original.
FileMate starts at Safe, which keeps text, links, bookmarks and forms. If the PDF can still get smaller, the result offers Stronger and Maximum.
Your options without Acrobat
| Preview | FileMate | |
|---|---|---|
| Comes with macOS | Yes | No, a small one-time purchase |
| Where you start | Open the PDF, then File › Export | Right-click the PDF in Finder |
| Compression settings | One fixed Quartz filter | Safe, Stronger and Maximum |
| Keeps text, links and forms | Usually, though scans can blur | Yes at Safe and Stronger, checked after every rewrite |
| Several PDFs at once | No | Yes |
| Tells you the saving | No | Yes, for example “18.4 MB → 7.2 MB · 61% smaller” |
| Runs on your Mac | Yes | Yes |
Compress a PDF with Preview
- Open the PDF in Preview.
- Choose File › Export.
- Choose Reduce File Size from the Quartz Filter menu.
- Save the copy under a new name, so the original stays.
The filter can’t be adjusted. On some PDFs it works well; on scans it often reduces images so far that small text becomes hard to read, and on PDFs that are already compressed it can make the file larger.
What Acrobat does that FileMate doesn’t
Acrobat is a complete PDF editor: editing text, OCR, redaction, e-signatures and preflight for print. FileMate doesn’t try to replace that. If you edit PDFs every day, a PDF editor makes sense. If you mainly need PDFs smaller, merged, or made from Office documents and images, those are FileMate’s actions, directly in Finder.
Get FileMate
For compressing PDFs, a full PDF editor is more than you need. FileMate does this one job from Finder, for one payment, and keeps the file on your Mac.
Normal price €9.99, now €4.99 incl. VAT
One payment, no subscription. macOS 14 Sonoma or later, Apple silicon or Intel.