5 Simple Methods to Highlight A PDF on Mac in 2023

PDF highlighting is the process of marking text in a PDF document using various tools, such as highlighter pens or digital highlighting features. This technique allows you to make your important or interesting passages stand out from the rest of the text. Additionally, modern PDF readers allow users to add notes to highlighted sections and even copy and paste text directly from these marked-up documents.

There are few things more frustrating than trying to find a specific piece of information in a long, dense PDF. Highlighting can be a great way to identify key points and make them easier to find later.

Do Not Miss: 14 Best HEIC to PDF Converters, 4 Ways to Add Notes to PDF, How to Edit a Picture in Word

How To Highlight A PDF on Mac Online

PDFgear is a PDF annotation tool that allows you to highlight PDFs for free. It’s easy to use, cross-platform and doesn’t require any sign-up or registration. PDFgear is the perfect tool for anyone who needs to annotate PDFs.

Step 1: Upload PDF to PDFgear

First, navigate to the PDFgear website and click “Edit PDF” to select the PDF that you wish to highlight. Once your file is uploaded, you will see a preview of it on the screen.

Step 2: Select Text for Highlighting

Once your document is on the screen, use your mouse to select the text that you want to highlight, then right-click and select “Highlight” from the drop-down menu. Or you can select the text and click the “Highlight” button in the toolbar at the top left of the screen.

Step 3: Save Your PDF

When you are finished highlighting your document, you can download it to your computer by clicking “Download file” at the top right of the screen.

How To Highlight PDF on Mac with Preview

Preview is the default PDF viewer on Mac, which comes with a built-in tool for highlighting PDFs. 

Step 1: To use this feature, open your PDF in Preview and select the text you want to highlight with your mouse. 

Step 2: After selecting the text, click on the “Highlight” button located on the top toolbar of the screen. 

Step 3: If you want to change the color of the highlight, click the arrow next to the highlighter icon. Once you’ve selected a color, any text you highlight will be marked in that color until you modify it again.

Step 4: Once you’ve finished highlighting, save your edited PDF by clicking “File” > “Export.”

How To Highlight PDF on Mac With PDFgear Desktop

PDFgear, as an excellent PDF editor, provides you with the ability to edit, annotate, and highlight PDF files easily, all within one program.

Step 1: Free Download PDFgear on Mac

First, click the button below to download PDFgear Desktop to your Mac device for free.

Open the PDFgear program on your Mac and upload the PDF file you want to highlight.

Step 2: Highlight the PDF

Once the PDF document is open in the PDFgear editor, click “Annotation” from the top TAB. Select the “Highlight” icon from this menu, and then click the target area on the PDF file.

Drag the cursor to select the highlight or text you want. The text will automatically be highlighted, choose a bold color for the highlighted text according to your needs. In addition, PDFgear also supports area-highlighting PDF and custom-highlighting color properties.

Step 3: Download the Highlighted PDF

When you are satisfied, be sure to save your changes. If you are not satisfied with the changes, right-click on the highlighted section and select Remove the highlighted section from the PDF.

How To Highlight a PDF on Mac With Adobe Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat is a paid PDF editing software that allows you to highlight your PDF documents with ease. To use Adobe Acrobat to highlight PDF on Mac, simply follow the step-by-step guide below.

Step1: Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat

First, open the PDF document that you want to highlight in Adobe Acrobat. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer, you can download a free trial from the Adobe website.

Step 2: Select Text for Highlighting

Next, select the text you wish to highlight with your mouse. A small toolbar will appear above your text. Select the highlighter tool icon to have your selected text highlighted immediately. Or you can click the “Highlight text” button in the toolbar at the top of the screen.

Step 3: Save Your PDF

When you are finished highlighting your document, you can save it by clicking “File” > “Save As” in the Adobe Acrobat toolbar.

How To Highlight a PDF on Mac in Chrome

There are many different PDF editor extensions available for Chrome, such as Smallpdf. Increase your productivity by installing Smallpdf in Chrome! Get instant access to a collection of useful online tools for working with PDFs.

Step 1: Install the PDF Editor Extension for Chrome.

To install the extension, simply navigate to the Chrome Web Store and search for “Smallpdf,” then select it from the list of results.

Step 2: Launch the Extension and Upload Your PDF.

Once the extension is installed, launch it by clicking the icon in your browser’s toolbar. Then, click the “Edit” button to upload your PDF document.

Step 3: Highlight the Text You Want and Save It.

Now that your PDF is open in the extension, click the “Highlighter” button to select a highlighting color. You can then highlight the text that you want to emphasize and save your document by clicking the “Download” button in the extension.

How to Highlight a PDF: FAQs

What to do if Mac Preview highlight not working?

If the highlight feature is not working in Preview, it could be because your PDF document is password-protected. To fix this, simply open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat and enter the password when prompted. Once the PDF is unlocked, you should be able to highlight the text using Preview. If you are still having issues, you can try using a different PDF viewer, such as PDFgear.

How to highlight PDF on MacBook?

There are a few different ways that you can highlight your PDF documents on MacBook, such as using the default Preview app or a paid PDF editor like Adobe Acrobat. You can also use a free online PDF editor like PDFgear to highlight your PDFs.

Are there any free PDF highlighters for Mac?

Absolutely! There are a number of free PDF editors that you can use to highlight your PDF documents, such as PDFgear, Adobe Acrobat, and Preview. You can also use a Chrome-based free PDF editor like Smallpdf to highlight your PDFs.

How to highlight a PDF image on a Mac?

If you have an image of a PDF document that you want to highlight, you can do so using Preview on Mac. To use this method, you should open Preview, tap on the image of the PDF file, and then click on annotate button in the toolbar. In that way, you can highlight a PDF image on Mac successfully.

The next method to highlight a PDF image is to use online tools. There are many free online tools that allow you to highlight PDF images directly in your browser, such as PDFgear. Simply upload your image to one of these tools to get started!

How to highlight a scanned PDF on Mac?

If you have a scanned image of your PDF document, it can be difficult or impossible to highlight the text. However, you can use OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to convert the scanned PDF into a text-based PDF, which you can then highlight using Preview or another PDF editor.

Conclusion

Highlighting text in PDF documents can be a great way to emphasize important points and make your document easier to read. Fortunately, there are a number of tools available to help you highlight PDFs on your Mac. Whether you want to use the default Preview app or a paid PDF editor like Adobe Acrobat, there is a method that will work for you. So why not give highlighting a try today and see how it can improve your PDF documents?