PDF is a familiar file format for most people. Adobe first introduced it in 1993, and later standardized it in 2008 to allow anyone to create PDF files and the tools necessary to do so.
Must Read: 8 Best Media Center For Mac. One of the best free audio tag editors for Mac, Kid3, can efficiently edit tags for your MP3, WMA, Ogg, FLAC, MPC and more. Let’s take a look at the features of Meta bliss: It enables you to edit and convert between ID3v1.1, ID3v2.3 and ID3v2.4 tags of MP3 files. With it, you can organize and tag most of the popular audio formats, and it comes with a built-in player. TagScanner can automatically fill in music file metadata using online databases like Amazon and Freedb, and it can auto-rename files based on existing tag information.
These days there are too many PDF editors to choose from, and they all seem to do the same task. Most of them aren’t worth your time, but it’s also quite difficult to get much done for free.
So here are our top picks for editing and creating PDFs on your Mac.
How to Print to PDF in macOS
Your Mac can create PDFs natively, which means just about any desktop publishing app can become a PDF editor. You’ll miss out on features like interactive forms, but there’s no quicker way to share a document or web page as a PDF.
To export as a PDF in macOS:
- Click File > Print in your editor, browser, or other relevant application.
- Find the PDF drop-down at the bottom of the Print dialog. Click it and choose Save as PDF.
- Give your file a name, specify a password if required under Security Options, then click Save.
Editing PDFs With Preview
In short: Part of macOS. Fine for markup, signing documents, and simple PDF management; not a “true” PDF editor or creator.
Preview is an app that comes pre-installed as part of macOS. It’s a barebones document viewer, but it also includes a few handy PDF tools. Unfortunately, it’s not a PDF creator. You can’t design interactive documents or forms from scratch using Preview, but you can make rudimentary edits to existing ones.
Its best features are its markup and annotation toolsHow to Create, Merge, Split & Markup PDF Documents on a MacHow to Create, Merge, Split & Markup PDF Documents on a MacDon't pay for PDF software! Convert documents, merge or split PDFs, and annotate and sign forms for free on your Mac.Read More. Preview also allows you to rearrange page order, delete pages, import new pages, and export individual pages as separate documents. You can’t edit existing PDF elements or create new ones, which means you can’t “edit” the PDF so much as annotate it.
Preview functions as a better PDF viewer than an editor. You can sign forms using its in-built signature feature, enter text into forms and save the input, and mark up a PDF with shapes, arrows, custom text, and your own scribble. These tools are easy to use and look great on the page, but it’s a far cry from a proper editor.
Some users report that Preview does not display its changes correctly in other editors, though I’ve had no problems arise from this when using the app to sign and return forms.
Editing PDFs With LibreOffice Draw
In short: Proper free PDF editing and creation with an open source look and feel, warts and all.
There’s a lot to love about the open-source office suite LibreOfficeThe 7 Best Free Microsoft Office AlternativesThe 7 Best Free Microsoft Office AlternativesMicrosoft Office is the king of office suites, but that doesn't mean it's the right one for you. Here are some other office suites you might like better!Read More, not least the Draw app’s ability to edit PDF files. We’re not talking simple markup a la Preview, but full-blown PDF editing. To get started, launch Draw and point it at the PDF file you want to edit.
Once Draw opens your file, it converts shape elements into fixed images which you can resize and move. You can also move or fill text boxes, though any pre-filled data will be lost upon import. You can add your own shapes and boxes, form elements, charts, tables, and so on.
The biggest problem with LibreOffice Draw is its interpretation of certain PDF files. The formatting can appear slightly off, with weird text kerning and style interpretation. It’s also a fairly limited PDF creator. Form creation tools are hidden away under View > Toolbars > Form Controls. These can even create working interactive forms, but the tools are far from advanced.
Download:LibreOffice (Free)
Editing PDFs With Adobe Acrobat Pro DC
In short: Pricey but complete, perfect for editing and creating PDF files from scratch. It’s also the only app on this list to include optical character recognition (OCR).
Adobe created the PDF, and it’s still providing one of the best solutions for PDF editing, creation, and all the basic tasks in between. DC stands for “Document Cloud” which should give you an idea of what Adobe is going for: a cloud-reliant subscription-based all-in-one solution. At $15 per month, the biggest barrier to entry is the price, though you can try for free before you buy.
For your money you get one of the best tools of its kind. Acrobat allows you to take the standard “desktop publishing” blank page route, but it’s also a master of conversion. This means you can design your document in Pages, Word, or even an app like Illustrator, then convert with Acrobat, add some PDF jazz, and keep it all handy in the cloud. You can even snap a picture with your camera, then turn it into an interactive document.
Every time you open a PDF, Acrobat will scan it and make text searchable using OCR. Editing tools are second to none, and you won’t have to worry about the weird formatting issues seen in free solutions like LibreOffice. A clear differentiation between edit and view mode means you won’t accidentally screw up formatting while trying to fill out a form. If you can afford it, you won’t be disappointed.
Download:Adobe Acrobat Pro DC (Free trial, subscription required)
Editing PDFs With PDF Expert
In short: An affordable single-license premium PDF editor that lacks some creative tools, but plays nicely with most PDF files.
Readdle’s PDF Expert is a premium tool, but it’s a one-off purchase. For $60 you’ll get a competent editor that allows for proper PDF document editing that’s a step above what Preview offers. Unfortunately PDF creation from scratch isn’t an option here, and a few of the editing tools leave something to be desired.
Text Editor For Mac Free
The app is a competent editor for basic text, markup, and image-related duties. You can fix typos, add a new photo to your resume, or add hyperlinks, but there are no tools for adding new shapes and form fields. However, it does include tools for merging, annotation, signing documents, and a fast search.
Best Free Tag Editor
If you need a good editor and can’t commit to a Creative Cloud subscription, PDF Expert might just fit the bill. There’s a seven-day free trial upon downloading, so you can test out the features and decide if the app goes far enough with its limited tools. It’s worth noting that the app enjoys positive reviews and a 4.5/5 star rating on the Mac App Store.
Download:PDF Expert ($60)
Forget the Other PDF Editors
I tried a fair few PDF editors while coming up with this list, and Adobe Acrobat Pro DC was probably the best solution. Windows users can use apps like Nitro and Foxit for common PDF tasks, but the scene is a little more limited on a Mac. In particular, look out for fake landing pages masquerading as official websites, especially if they suggest using a third party “installer” app for downloads.
For online tools, check out our roundup of browser-based PDF editors that let you edit documents for freeHow to Edit All Your PDF Files OnlineHow to Edit All Your PDF Files OnlineYou don't have to install software just to fill in or edit a PDF. We have compiled online solutions you can turn to for all your PDF editing needs.Read More.
Explore more about: PDF, PDF Editor.
macOS provides a free but little known utility to modify your PDFs. Not to edit text, but to change the size. Try the ColorSync Utility. It can open PDFs and apply filters to it to reduce the size significantly. Tip: do not the standard “Reduce size” but construct your own filter. Then open a PDF with ColorSync Utility, apply the filter and “Save As...” the result.
Remember the days when everyone used to have a giant music collection of illegally downloaded MP3 files along with Winamp to manage it all? Nowadays, most people stream their music directly to their device rather than downloading and maintaining large libraries of music.
However, there’s still a lot of music that isn’t available on streaming services, especially if you listen to a lot of foreign music. Tagging these non-mainstream music files can be challenging and in some cases requires manually editing the metadata.
Depending on the size and complexity of your music collection, there are a whole host of free and paid programs that will make tagging your MP3 files a lot easier. In this article, I’m going to mention the five best paid and the five best freeware programs that get the job done.
The paid programs obviously have more features and bigger databases, so it’ll be easier to tag your music, even if it’s something less mainstream. For smaller music collections and fewer tricky songs, the free programs will work just fine for most people.
Paid MP3 Tagging Programs
Let’s start off with the paid programs first as they have more features and can handle bigger music collections. I will list out the programs in order of best to worst and if you think I’m missing a program that should have made it on the list, feel free to post it in the comments.
Tag & Rename
Tag & Rename is $29.95 and totally worth the money if you have a really huge collection of music. I have found this program to be extremely fast and easy to use. Some of the other programs can be a bit confusing, but Tag & Rename has a certain finesse to it that I haven’t seen in any other program.
In addition to the normal fields, the program supports a bunch of other fields like lyrics, composer/conductor (for classical), disc #, part of a compilation, rating, mood, etc.
You can batch edit tag files and it can automatically fix or complete tags using freedb. In addition to loading album titles and cover art, it can get tag information from the file name and the directory structure. It can also rename files based on the tag information.
MediaMonkey
MediaMonkey is a powerful music organizer that you can use if you hate iTunes. It’s $25 for the Gold version and $50 for the current version with free upgrades forever. The free version of the program can actually do quite a bit actually, but if you need to automatically tag a bunch of files, you’ll have to purchase the Gold version.
MediaMonkey is an audio and video organizer, player and encoder. It can do pretty much everything that any other program can do in terms of tagging audio, but it also can rip CDs, encode audio files, automatically monitor folders for new files, find duplicates, automatically lookup lyrics, share media to DLNA devices and lots more.
If you’re looking for a program that can do it all, this is the one. It’s been around for a long time and is actively developed. It even supports multi-core processors to perform conversions, etc.
TuneUp
If you like using iTunes or Windows Media Player, then TuneUp is a good program to use alongside it. I used to use iTunes to manage my music library, but found that there were other tools that were much better at tagging, renaming and organizing the files.
If I had known about TuneUp, I might have ended up sticking with iTunes. Basically, it will scan all your music files and add all the appropriate tag info and cover art automatically. It’s not as good as some of the free tagging programs, but it works well with iTunes and if you don’t have a massive collection. I don’t recommend this program if you have tens of thousands of songs as it probably won’t work well in that scenario.
Overall, it does a very good job and is perfect for anyone who manages their music libraries using iTunes. The one big downside is that it’s a whopping $40 for a single license! That’s far too expensive in my opinion.
Magic MP3 Tagger
I haven’t used Magic MP3 Tagger myself as of yet, but I’ve heard some good things about it and that’s why I’m including it. The program costs $19, which is a bit cheaper than the rest. It has the basic features like automatically fixing tags, organizing into folders, searching, etc.
This program only focuses on fixing tags, not downloading cover art. This is true of several free programs, but most of the paid programs have this feature built in. Since it’s $20 and doesn’t include this feature, it’s hard to recommend this program over the other paid options or even some of the free ones.
Stamp ID3 Tag Editor
Stamp ID 3 Tag Editor is the only other paid tag editor I’m going to list, though it’s still hard to make a case for it considering the first couple of paid options, which are much better. The one thing going for this program is that it’s a bit cheaper than the others: $15.
It’s got a very simple interface and not a lot of features. The main problem with this program is that you have to manually update the tags on files, which is not possible if you have a large music collection.
Free MP3 Tagging Programs
Now for the free programs! If you’re wary of spending money to tag your music, you should first go ahead and download some of the free programs and see if they work for you. I’ve been using MP3Tag for years and it’s been perfect for my small music collection.
MP3Tag
MP3Tag is the one I use and probably my favorite free tagging program. It supports a whole range of tag formats including ID3v1, ID3v2.3, ID3v2.4, WMA, iTunes MP4 and more. It also supports a bunch of different audio formats including ones I had never even heard of like True Audio (tta), Musepack (mpc), and OptimFROG (ofr).
The ability to batch edit files is what makes MP3 tag awesome. The program can write tags to multiple files at once and save you loads of time. It also does a great job of downloading cover art for albums, which is a must for me. I hate when I browse my music library and find an album with blank cover art!
The program imports tags from several different databases including Amazon, discogs, MusicBrainz, freedb and others. I have found that MP3Tag does a great job of automatically tagging files, even a lot of my Hindi music that I listen to.
However, one of the best features that I like is the ability to rename files based on the information in the tags. For whatever reason, when I had ripped a bunch of old music CDs, the files were all given generic names. MP3Tag was able to rename the files after downloading the correct tag info.
Best Html Editors For Mac
TagScanner
TagScanner is a program I had never used till recently and it’s slowly replacing MP3tag as my favorite. It has all the features that a tagging program should have and it’s really easy to use. You basically have a couple of tabs across the top of the UI to perform various tags.
There is a bit of a learning curve to using TagScanner, which is why I still call MP3Tag my favorite, but once you learn to use it, it’s hard to switch. It supports many audio formats and tag formats. It can pulls tags and cover art from online databases and rename files according to folder structure, file names or tag info.
What makes this program a bit better is that it also has a built-in player for many of the common audio formats. In addition, it supports embedded lyrics, which is great for someone like me who doesn’t know the lyrics to 90% of the songs in my library.
MusicBrainz Picard
MusicBrainz Picard is a great program for tagging and renaming files. I would normally use this program in conjunction with another program that can handle album art.
It has a feature called AcoustID that lets it identify a song by the actual music itself (audio fingerprinting). I have found this program to be great at identifying songs that have absolutely no metadata and no file or folder information that could be used to tag it.
It also has a bunch of plugins that can be installed to customize the behavior of the program. Lastly, it is open-source and stored on GitHub, meaning it is actively developed. It is definitely worth using for tagging and renaming of music files.
foobar2000
foobar2000 is another tool that you can use for tagging your music collection. It’s billed as an audio player, but it has an advanced tagger that, if configured properly, can out-tag any other program out there.
You will have to do a bit of research to see which components to add to foobar2000, but once you have those installed, you can access a variety of online databases and tag tons of music. Again, like Picard, its strong point is tagging, not album and cover art.
Kid3
Kid3 is another great free audio tagging program that supports everything I have already mentioned above. It’s really easy to use and the interface is clean and nice looking. I found that it did an excellent job of tagging some really hard songs that other programs could not tag.
It pulls data from multiple online databases and supports all the features you would expect from an audio tagger. You will have to use this program with another one in order to download all album and cover art. However, it terms of tagging, the results are impressive.
So those are five of the best free tag programs, but there are also quite a few others that work well. I’m going to just list out a couple in case you are interested in checking them out. I think the 5 mentioned above, however, will work just fine for most people.
MetatOGGer – This program has all the features of most of the other top free programs mentioned above: auto-tagging, downloading cover art, downloading lyrics, etc.
TigTago – If you like Excel spreadsheets, you’ll love TigTago. It’s a spreadsheet based tag editor that is perfect for mass tagging or mass renaming operations. It can import tags from online databases and then let you preview/edit them before saving to the file.
MPTagThat – This program will fix tags, download covers, download lyrics, rip CDs, burn CDs, convert audio and more.
Text Editor In Mac
Hopefully, the above paid and free tools will be enough for any size music collection out there! If you have any questions, feel free to post a comment. Enjoy!