Open and read a PDF
Open a PDF with ⌘O, by dropping it on the window, or by pasting a path on Home. Each document opens as a tab; ⌘F finds every match, and View › Appearance switches between light, dark, night and e-ink.
Open a document
- Press ⌘O, or drop a PDF on the Better PDF window.
- On Home, paste a PDF or a path with ⌘V and it opens.
- Home keeps your recents, favourites, signed files and folders such as iCloud Drive, Documents and Downloads. Sort by last opened, name, modified or size.
Tabs
Every document opens as a tab in one window. Drag a tab to reorder it, drag it out for its own window, or drop it on another window to join it. When many tabs are open they shrink to text, then collapse into a tab list (⇧⌘</kbd>). Hover a tab for a preview of its page; press Space on the preview to read it.
Move between tabs with ⇧⌘[ and ⇧⌘].
Find
⌘F opens the find bar under the title bar with the field ready to type. It shows how many matches there are; ⌘G and ⇧⌘G move to the next and previous one. Find also works on scanned pages once they have been recognised (see Recognise a scanned PDF).
Getting around
- The sidebar (⌃⌘S) has three tabs: Pages, Bookmarks and Comments.
- ⌘D adds a bookmark for the current page. Bookmarks are written into the PDF’s own outline, so other apps see them too.
- ⌥⌘G goes to a page by number.
- The page pill floating over the page has previous and next, the page field, and zoom. ⌘+ and ⌘− zoom, ⌘0 is actual size and ⌘9 fits the width.
- Hold Space to pan from any tool, or press H for the hand tool. Esc always brings you back to select.
Light, dark and night
View › Appearance sets the app to light, dark or to follow the system. Night reading (⇧⌘N) inverts the page colours for low light while the rest of the window keeps its theme. For e-ink monitors there is a separate appearance; see Reading on an e-ink screen.
Themes are in Settings › Appearance: Lantern (the default), Classic, Mineral and Gallery.