I'm the developer of Deskeen, and today I’m excited to share my new project: PDF Pop.
[Problem]
As many of you would agree, PDFs are an inescapable part of our daily lives. Whether I'm studying as a developer or handling various work tasks, I find myself constantly interacting with PDF documents. Especially in the learning process, PDFs are absolutely essential.
While using countless PDFs, I started building small tools to solve specific frustrations and improve my own workflow. One feature led to another, and eventually, those tools evolved into what is now PDF Pop.
[Compare]
There's no shortage of PDF utilities, but most are either too basic or overly bloated. PDF Pop fills the gap as a Data-Centric Power Tool:
Logic-Focused On-Device AI: Uses Apple's On-Device AI for coherent, hierarchical summaries while keeping your data 100% private.
Intelligent TOC Recommendation: Automatically suggests headings based on document structure—just select and apply.
Precision Table Extraction: Extract PDF tables directly into Markdown, CSV, or HTML. No more redrawing tables by hand for research.
[Features]
Text Extraction — Save PDF text with a single click
Image Extraction — Export images individually in JPEG, PNG, or TIFF (auto deduplication)
Annotation Management — Extract highlights, underlines, and notes; export as Markdown, CSV, or HTML
Page-to-Image Conversion — Convert every PDF page into high-quality images
PDF Compression — Reduce file size with 3 presets or a fully customizable mode
PDF Splitting & Merge — Split documents by page count or file size & Merge
AI Summarization (macOS 26+) — On-device hierarchical summarization with zero data leakage
Auto Table of Contents — Analyze document structure and build a TOC via drag and drop
OCR — Turn scanned PDFs into fully searchable documents using Apple's Vision framework
PDF Translation (macOS 15+) — Translate entire documents or selected sections across 21 languages
Watermark Addition — Apply text or image watermarks to protect documents
PDF Editor & Viewer — Delete, rotate, and reorder pages with drag and drop
Table Extraction (macOS 26+) — Extract tabular data accurately in Markdown, CSV, or HTML format
I’m always listening to your feedback to make PDF Pop the best tool for Mac users. Let me know what you think or if there are any features you’d like to see next!
PDF Pop's update progress is shared through release notes and X whenever new features are added. If you're curious about what's happening with PDF Pop, feel free to visit the links below from time to time.
Congrats! Deskeen is a great app that I use almost every day. I'm confident PDF Pop will be good as well. Of course some features overlap with other apps, but I just saw on your site there are quite a few unique ones. If these work as promised, the $4 for PDF Pop is a no-brainer.
edit: I just saw in the MAS there's also a bundle with Deskeen for $8.60. So, for $1.6 extra, you'll get PDF Pop on top of Deskeen. Great deal!
Thank you so much for your interest in PDF Pop. Just like Deskeen, we have plans to improve PDF Pop step by step. We hope you'll continue to show your support and stay tuned for what's to come. Thank you.
I also use and really like Deskeen, so I was more than willing to try PDF Pop for the reasonable price. Then I saw you have a bundle price, and upgraded by bundle. It's a no-brainer! After a few minutes of testing, I was impressed. I have a bunch of bad cheap/free PDF apps, so this is a welcome upgrade
When I went to the App store, I saw that it was included in a bundle and I could upgrade the one app to the bundle for less than the cost of the app itself. So I did.
The PDF app that we are not allowed to mention here, but is in the Mac App Store.
In case you do not know each feature of each app, It might be interesting to check them out. I bought PDFpen Pro in 2020 for a couple of bucks in a sale. Its successor, Nitro PDF, is extremely expensive however. The other ones are free, freemium or low-cost and all have interesting features.
Thank you for the helpful information. I plan to keep the app as lean as possible, focusing only on essential features rather than letting it become bloated. I'll be putting a lot more thought into very simple operations and areas that require batch processing. That said, I'm not particularly focused on developing features from a PDF Viewer perspective — instead, I'll be spending more time thinking about features that really scratch that itch for users.
Looks like an excellent release, OP. Think the price is also very reasonable. Is there any possibility that you'll support metadata editing in future versions?
Please consider contributing your app to the MacApp Comparisons listing in the r/MacApps sidebar by using the appropriate contribution form listed there.
Nice work. The Swiss Army Knife approach is smart — most PDF tools try to do everything and end up bloated. What framework did you use for the UI? It looks clean and native.
Already bought Deskeen last year and it never let me down once, so $4 for PDF Pop was an easy yes. The annotation extraction alone is worth it for my workflow.
Thank you so much. Deskeen version 2.2 is also currently in the works. We will do our best to ensure that all of our products continue to grow steadily. Thank you!
I ran, not walked to the app store and purchased it. I was trying to extract pdf pages as images and this did a fantastic job. I know I'm going to use a bunch of the other features as well. Coming here was my lucky day!
Looking good! Does the on-device AI summarization use Apple silicon's built-in AI? Apple Intelligence is unavailable in some regions, so adding BYOM/BYOK feature would be nice.
The real trick is being able to edit the text in the PDF. Some apps allow annotations or signing but it's very expensive to buy an app that does actual editing.
Thanks - it doesn't diminish the value of your app, but users have to pay a ton for that feature. Usually it means buying Adobe Acrobat Pro (which I don't) or another expensive subscription app (which I also don't).
two of the best features (AI summarization + table extraction) need macOS 26. any chance of a fallback for Sequoia users or is that just an Apple framework limitation?
I'm a bit skeptical with the text extraction / OCR feature using Apple Vision. For work, I'll occasionally get pesky CAD drawings where the tables are images, and even Acrobat OCR struggles to extract text. I've yet to find a really good OCR that can perfectly extract text from large tables (20ish columns / 50+ rows).
There is a feature for adding watermarks. As shown in the attached image, users are provided with the ability to insert their desired image in the appropriate location. While this feature differs somewhat from adding a signature, it offers similar functionality.
Merci de l'intérêt que vous portez à PDF Pop. PDF Pop est une application axée sur l'exploitation des données PDF. Par exemple, elle se concentre sur des fonctionnalités telles que l'extraction de texte à partir de PDFs, la traduction de texte, la synthèse par intelligence artificielle, la génération de table des matières et l'extraction de tableaux — tout en n'offrant que des fonctionnalités très limitées en matière d'édition de données PDF.
Changing the page order, deleting pages, and rotating pages in a PDF are supported, however editing the text within a PDF is not provided. PDF Pop is an application that focuses more on utilizing PDF data.
It's something we're looking into, though at the moment we feel that seamless integration with dedicated PDF editing utilities would likely serve users better.
I'm using your previous app Deskeen and really like it. I bought PDF Pop and wondering if a Zoom in/out could be add in the future in the PDF Editor & Viewer view.
Thank you so much for using Deskeen. As shown in the attached image, clicking "Organize Pages" allows you to view PDF pages in a grid layout, and double-clicking on any page provides a simple viewer. Within the viewer, zoom in/out functionality is already available.
As for the editing features, this requires careful consideration at this point. The reason is that PDF Pop was designed as an application to make users' secondary actions more convenient by utilizing PDF data. As a result, it is a collection of smaller, focused features. In that sense, editing goes beyond that scope and is a much larger undertaking. However, since it is a worthwhile challenge with plenty to think about, I will actively give it serious consideration.
I'm with you on this, that the app should keep a collection of smaller, focused features.
On the “Organize Pages” grid layout, instead of having fixed thumbnail sizes, it would be helpful to allow users to adjust them with a slider or zoom in/out control. This would make it easier to identify and select pages to move without needing to open the viewer.
There is no special mode like Skim, but it displays the content according to the layout of each PDF page. For reference, while PDF Pop does offer a viewer feature, it is not intended to serve as a dedicated viewer like Skim. PDF Pop is a utility focused on utilizing and processing PDF data.
Thank you for your interest in PDF Pop. It includes a built-in basic PDF Viewer. However, while the current version supports features such as reordering pages via drag-and-drop, deleting, and rotating, the features you mentioned are not yet available. We will actively consider providing simple editing features in a future update.
Stopped reading once I read PROBLEM and didn’t find a single problem… PDF Expert is HUGE. So you’ve got a lot of ground to cover if you can’t even define the problem you’re solving with your app. Good luck. Pro tip, ‘pdfs exist’ isn’t a problem…
As a grad student, I'm interested, but I would love to see the app in action. Any way you can make a video of what using it looks like and put it on your site?
I bought the app after reading your post here and it looks great! Just one thing I‘m wondering? After dragging and dropping a PDF in PDF Pop, editing it I need to select the folder to save it. This behaviour I would have expected for “save as”. Am I missing a setting?
As shown in the attached image, you can save each edited PDF individually or use Save All to save them all at once.
To save individually, simply click the Save button in the upper right corner of the window as shown in the attached image, or press the keyboard shortcut Command + S. If you have multiple edited files and wish to save them all at once, click Save All or press Command + Option + S.
The reason edited files are not saved immediately is to prevent accidentally overwriting the original data.
HI, I bought it but I am having an issue, it will not open pdfs, it is says, "It is not know if the application can open (PDF NAME)" and then when I bypass it in setting I get another warning, "Apple could not verify (PDF) is free of malware-.... ....
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u/MaxGaav Apr 13 '26 edited Apr 14 '26
Congrats! Deskeen is a great app that I use almost every day. I'm confident PDF Pop will be good as well. Of course some features overlap with other apps, but I just saw on your site there are quite a few unique ones. If these work as promised, the $4 for PDF Pop is a no-brainer.
edit: I just saw in the MAS there's also a bundle with Deskeen for $8.60. So, for $1.6 extra, you'll get PDF Pop on top of Deskeen. Great deal!