How to open a PDF on Mac
You can do this with Verso, a PDF editor and reader for macOS. Four ways in, and a document that remembers where you stopped.
Opening a document sounds like the least interesting thing an app does, right up until you have forty of them and you are trying to find the one you were reading on Tuesday. This guide covers the four ways into a document, what happens the second time you open it, and the small conveniences that make a long document bearable.
Everything in this guide happens on your own machine. There is no account, nothing is uploaded, and the document never leaves your Mac.
The four ways in
All of these do the same thing. Use whichever suits the moment.
| Way in | When it suits | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Drag and drop | The file is already in front of you in Finder or on the desktop. | Drop it anywhere in the window and it opens in a new tab. |
| The File menu | You know roughly where the file lives. | Choose File ▸ Open and pick it from the panel. |
| Recent documents | You had it open recently and remember what it looked like. | The home screen shows each recent document with a preview of its first page. |
| Double-click in Finder | You want the quickest possible route, every time. | Works once Verso is the app that opens PDFs on your Mac. |
Open it, step by step
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Start Verso
Open the app from your Applications folder, from Spotlight, or from the Dock. The home screen appears, showing the documents you opened recently, each with a preview of its first page so you recognise it by sight rather than by filename.
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Bring the document in
Drag the PDF from Finder and drop it anywhere in the window, or choose File ▸ Open (⌘+O) and select it. Several files at once is fine — each one gets its own tab.
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Find your place
The document opens at the page you were on last time, or at page one if this is the first time. The sidebar on the left shows page thumbnails; click any of them to jump straight there.
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Set the view you like
Scroll continuously through the document or move a page at a time, and zoom to whatever is comfortable. Whatever you settle on becomes the default for everything you open afterwards, so you only choose once.
What happens the second time
Close a long report at page 240 and Verso brings you back to page 240 next time. There are no bookmarks to set and nothing to remember. That applies per document, so a dozen half-read documents each keep their own place.
The same is true of zoom and of the undo history: each open document keeps its own, and switching between tabs never disturbs the one you stepped away from.
Opening several documents at once
Open as many documents as you like. Each gets a tab across the top of a single window rather than a window of its own, so your screen does not fill up with overlapping copies of the same app. Switching between them is instant.
When you need two documents side by side rather than in tabs — an old version and a new one, say — open both and use Compare Versions instead. It lines the two up page by page and shows you what actually changed, which is faster than reading both.
Documents that need a password
If a PDF was encrypted by whoever sent it, Verso asks for the password before it will show you anything. Enter it and the document opens normally. The password is not stored anywhere by us; it belongs to the file.
Documents that are pictures of words
A scanned document opens exactly like any other, but you will notice you cannot select the text or search it. That is because a scan is a photograph of a page rather than a page: there is no text in it yet. Run Make Searchable over it once and its words become selectable, searchable and editable from then on.
When a document will not open
A small number of PDFs are genuinely damaged — truncated downloads, files that were interrupted mid-save, files a faulty tool produced. No reader can recover those, and the fix is to get a fresh copy from wherever it came from.
Two much more common causes are worth ruling out first. The file may be encrypted and waiting for a password you have not been given. Or it may not be a PDF at all: a file saved with the wrong extension opens in the wrong app and fails for reasons that have nothing to do with the document.
Making it the default
If you want a double-click in Finder to land in Verso every time, you can make it the app that opens PDFs on your Mac in a single click. The app offers to do it during the short tour the first time you run it, and there is a switch for it in settings afterwards.
Frequently asked questions
How do I open a PDF on a Mac?
Drag it into the Verso window, choose File ▸ Open, pick it from the recent documents on the home screen, or double-click it in Finder once Verso is the app that opens PDFs on your Mac. All four do the same thing.
Can I open more than one PDF at a time?
Yes. Open as many as you like and each gets a tab across the top of one window. Switching between them is instant, and each keeps its own place, its own zoom and its own undo history.
Does Verso remember where I stopped reading?
It does, per document. Close a report at page 240 and it opens at page 240 next time. Nothing to set and nothing to remember.
Why can I not select the text in my PDF?
Because it is a scan — a picture of a page rather than a page with text in it. Run Make Searchable over it once and the words become selectable, searchable and editable from then on.
My PDF asks for a password. What now?
The document was encrypted by whoever created it, and only they can give you the password. Verso will not open an encrypted document without it, and there is no way around that by design.
Is opening and reading a PDF free?
Yes, permanently and with no account. Reading, thumbnails, the outline, bookmarks, search, Reading View, the reading ruler, Read Aloud and tabs are all free, and nothing is watermarked.
Does opening a document send it anywhere?
No. Verso contains no code that talks to the internet. Turn off your Wi-Fi and every feature still works, which is the easiest way to check.
Can Verso open a PDF stored in iCloud Drive or Dropbox?
Yes. Anything that appears as a file on your Mac opens the same way. The document is read from wherever your Mac keeps it and is not copied anywhere else by Verso.