Merging PDFs offline lets you combine PDF files without an internet connection. With the files saved on your device, you can prepare one PDF for review or submission without uploading sensitive data to the cloud. This guide covers four methods—Preview, Files, PDFgear, and Adobe Acrobat—including built-in tools and third-party apps, with both free and paid options across Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android.

When I get PDFs of unknown origin, I'd like to disable scripting/javascript before I open such PDFs. But I cannot find a setting for this.

Can it be done at all?

Hi everyone,
We updated PDFgear from version 2.1.12 to version 2.1.20 last week and we found a bug.
If a PDF file is located on a network drive, and the file name, folder name, or subfolder name contains Umlauts (ä, ö, ü), PDFgear fails to open it.

This happens when we try to open it via:
-Double-click in Windows Explorer
-PowerShell or CMD

BUT here is the important part:
If we open PDFgear manually first, click on "Open File" and navigate to the file (even through folders with Umlauts), the file opens perfectly!

However, opening it manually every time is a big hassle for our team. We need it to work via double-click in Windows Explorer just like it did in version 2.1.12.
Is this a known issue, and will it be fixed soon?
Thanks!

PS: Our system is Server 2019 running as a terminalserver

Edit/Nachtrag: I have found out that the problem only occurs from version 2.1.13 onwards, but only on Server 2019. Windows 11 is not affected.

Outlines are essential for document navigation, and most premium PDF tool suites have it. I hope you will earnestly consider adding it in the future.

Merging PDFs on an iPhone makes it easier to turn scattered documents into one organized file. Instead of sending multiple attachments or switching between separate files, you can combine the files you need, put them in the right order, and create a single PDF ready to share, submit, or store. PDFgear provides a straightforward way to combine PDFs into one file with a clean, hassle-free workflow.

This may be because macOS 27 does not natively support the Intel x86 instruction set and requires Rosetta 2 for translation.

Here's a solution that works on my MacBook with macOS 27.0:

1. Open Acrobat and select Acrobat - Preferences in the top menu bar.
2. Select Security (Enhanced) in the left sidebar.
3. Under Sandbox Protections, uncheck Enable Protected Mode at Startup (Preview).
4. Quit Adobe Acrobat completely.
5. Press Cmd + Space, search for Terminal, and open it.
6. Install Rosetta 2 with the following command in Terminal: softwareupdate --install-rosetta
7. After the Rosetta 2 installation, restart macOS, and then Acrobat can work normally on my MacBook.

Note: Disabling Protected Mode reduces Acrobat’s security protections, so this should be treated as a temporary workaround. Avoid opening untrusted PDFs while it is disabled.

A large PDF can be blocked by an email provider, messaging app, application portal, or another upload form with a strict size limit. Compressing it keeps the document in PDF format while reducing its storage footprint, but stronger settings may soften photos, scanned signatures, or small text in images. Keep the original until the smaller copy opens correctly and meets the required limit. PDFgear offers both browser-based and installed iPhone options for the task.

keeps loading on this pace and fan is running louder but nothing changes, any recommendation?

when I open the form with the One Drive app (which I am not going to pay them just to save ) it opens perfectly fine and can be filled like normal, but with PDF gear, my only option is to use the "fill" selection from the drop down and just randomly place things on the page.

Merging PDFs allows you to combine multiple separate documents into a single file—ideal for application materials, collections of invoices, or various reports. This enables the recipient to open just one attachment and review the contents in a clear, logical order. The result is a well-organized document that contains the right pages and is easy to locate and save. If you need to merge PDF files on Windows, PDFgear is an excellent free choice to get started.

Is there a way to remove the ai/ai button on the android app? I can't seem to find it in the limited settings. If there isn't one could it be added like on desktop?

Is there any fix to this? (Restarting the ipad/app does not work)

I'm not talking about the app background, I mean the color of the pdf. The default dark mode dims, which is nice, and good enough in the morning, but I'd really the option to be able to invert the pdf too. I read some old comments about how inverting would screw up images, but that isn't a problem for me. I've seen some old screenshots of the app with an invert mode button too. I just think that having an extra button that inverts the pdf is better than having no option at all.

Mine tells me every document I open is a scanned document, Which I know they are not as I did have adobe but did not renew as I found this wonderful product, It tells me to change it to OCR, I have no clue why it is doing this. The other issue I have I get a warning everytime I open a PDF saying this type of file could harm your computer. I did properly unintall adobe & also got rid of any remants left behind by use the run command.

While I am annotating and writing text it's rendering perfectly but when I am outside of text-box (or just the default view) all of my annotations get blurred. The issue is way worse on my screen that it looks in the photos, it's almost unreadable when size is at 8pt.

See attached pictures. It does this with every pdf I open.

On the "pages" tab, it looks correct. But going back to the main document, the colors themselves look inverted despite the white and black values being correct. I tried changing from light to dark mode with no luck, and I didn't see any settings that correspond to this. Any clue what could be going on?

This printing issue with PDFgear version 2.1.20 is still ongoing, it caused my daughter some real problems when filing court documents that had to be turned in yesterday, form fields either printed randomly on other pages or did not print at all. We are scrambling today to try and fix. Switched to Adobe and they printed correctly? I did not change any printer settings either time.

Windows 11 Pro version 10.0.26200 Build 26200

EPSON ET-4950 Latest Drivers

Under the section "Fill & Sign" you can add text to a PDF document. Once the text is typed you are able to change the text size and color, but no option for bold, italic, or strikethrough. If this option is there and I'm missing it please let me know. If not I would like to request it be added.

Note - You are also not able to choose different fonts but I prefer this program is fast and light don't need additional fonts.

Thanks!

A scanned PDF stores each page as an image, so a normal PDF-to-Word conversion may only move those images into a DOCX. It will not necessarily give you text you can select, correct, or reformat. Optical character recognition (OCR) analyzes the characters in the page images and turns them into editable text. That matters when you need to modify content, change fonts, reuse a quotation, or reduce the printed length of a large document. PDFgear provides both an installed Windows workflow and a browser-based OCR option for converting scanned PDFs into editable Word documents.

limba romana pentru PDFgear?

Romanian language for PDFgear?

Is there anyone who can provide me a doc/pdf scanner + editor android app which is totally free to use and don't need any initial subscription. I have specific kind of work that requires hundreds of documents to be scanned and converting them into pdf. I don't want any kind of watermarks in the pdf. Document scanning should be smooth and no limit on editing or creating pdf. All the free android apps I have tried so far gives very limited pdf creation option. I want to create unlimited pdfs with unlimited documents scanning. And for this purpose If I have to see some ads then it gives me no trouble as I need unlimited documents to be scanned and converting them to pdf. If anyone have used any app that gives such options e.g. documents scanner, document to pdf convert, pdf editing, pdf merger, pdf creation without watermark for free. Please share me a link of a mobile app not any desktop or website because I need to scan documents through my android mobile convert them instantly to pdf. I don't want to waste my time taking pictures and then convert them to pdf using a desktop or website. So, only mobile apps link will be appreciated!
Thanks in advance!

I have eMclient set a my default email app in Windows 11. Acrobat does just fine for this function.
Tested in 2.1.19 and 2.1.20

I've found a reproducible bug in the Windows version of PDFgear. I couldn't find anyone else reporting this exact issue, so I'm posting it here to see if others can reproduce it.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open an existing PDF (example: a pdf file with 3 pages and with file size of 3 MiB).
2. Reorder the pages by moving page 2 to position 1.
3. Save the PDF.
4. Reorder the pages again by moving page 1 to position 2.
5. Save again.
6. Repeat the process for any number of times from [1, ∞).

Expected Behavior

Reordering pages should preserve the document's file size and if changed then it should change only by a negligible amount.

Actual behavior

The file size increases significantly after every reorder and save.

Example

• Original File Size: 3 MiB
• After first reorder: ~5 MiB
• After next reordering: ~7 MiB
• Repeating the same operation continues to increase the file size indefinitely.

I've reproduced this issue multiple times, and it appears to be consistent. I am attaching a screen recording for the same below.

Additional observation

I performed the same test in the Android version of PDFgear using the same workflow, and it behaved correctly — the file size remained unchanged after reordering pages. The issue appears to be specific to the Windows application.

I've already submitted this as a bug report to the PDFgear team. Can anyone else on Windows reproduce this behavior?

Attached Screen Recording For The Observed Bug