How to share a PDF on Mac
Sharing is easy. The part worth doing carefully is what happens immediately before it.
Share hands the document to anything else on your Mac — mail, messages, AirDrop, a cloud folder, another app. It is the standard macOS share sheet and it behaves the way it does everywhere.
Sharing is free and always will be. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing is watermarked.
The check worth running first
Sharing is the moment a document stops being yours. Four questions, none of which takes long:
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Is there anything in it the recipient should not see?
Redact it, and verify by searching the result. A black rectangle is not redaction.
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Does it carry details you did not intend to send?
Sanitize clears the title, author, keywords and internal comments — none of which appear on any page and all of which travel with the file.
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Should the marks be fixed in place?
Flatten if a signature, a stamp or a set of answers must not be movable. Keep the unflattened copy for yourself.
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Is it small enough to arrive?
Compress if it is not. Under 10MB is a safe target for email.
Sending the working copy instead of the clean one. Name them so you cannot confuse them — “contract-working.pdf” and “contract-final.pdf” — and check the document you are about to attach rather than the one you think you are attaching.
Choosing how to send it
| Route | Good for | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Almost everything | Size limits, and that a copy now exists on at least two mail servers | |
| AirDrop | Someone in the room | Nothing much — it is direct and quick |
| A cloud folder link | Large documents and ongoing collaboration | The document is now on somebody else's servers, and a link may be forwardable |
| Messages | Something small and informal | It lands in a conversation history that may be backed up |
| An encrypted copy plus a separate password | Anything confidential | The password must genuinely go by another route |
Sending to someone who does not have a PDF app
Everyone has a PDF app — every Mac, every phone and every browser opens one. What people sometimes lack is a way to edit it. If the recipient needs to change the content, sending an exported Word document alongside the PDF saves a round of messages.
What Verso does not do
There is no upload, no share link, no cloud and no account. Sharing hands the file to macOS and macOS hands it to whatever you chose. Where it goes after that is between you and that service.
Frequently asked questions
How do I share a PDF from a Mac?
Use Share from the document actions panel, which hands the file to the standard macOS share sheet — mail, messages, AirDrop, a cloud folder, or another app.
What should I check before sending a document?
Whether anything needs redacting, whether its own details and comments need clearing, whether marks should be flattened, and whether it is small enough to arrive.
How do I send a PDF that is too big to email?
Compress it, or extract only the pages the recipient needs. A cloud link works too, at the cost of the document sitting on somebody else's servers.
Does Verso upload documents when I share?
No. It hands the file to macOS, which hands it to whatever you chose. There is no upload, no share link and no cloud of ours.
How do I send a document securely?
Encrypt it with a password and send the password by a different route. Redact anything the recipient should not see first — encryption protects the document, not you from having sent the wrong thing.