Compress PDF files on Mac without losing quality

Mac PDF Compressor software. Makes it really easy to reduce PDF size on Mac.

Download For Mac 
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  •   Over 3 million users worldwide
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Compress PDF Mac

Trusted by 3+ million happy customers

“Love NXPowerlite - use it all the time for PDF compression. It works a treat”

— Geoff Wheatley, Theatreserve

Mac PDF compressor features

Trusted PDF Compressor Software

NXPowerLite was first released in 2001 and the software has been regularly improved ever since. It is super-reliable and backed by incredible support.

Official Adobe® PDF Technology

NXPowerLite uses the official Adobe® PDF Library, the same technology that Adobe® use to build Acrobat®. This library provides the perfect strong foundation for our Mac PDF compressor.

Offline PDF compressor

Compress PDF files on your local Mac computer, without the need for an Internet connection. It's 100% offline software. Compress files directly from Finder using the right-click menu options.

Avoid PDF Split & Merge

Avoid having to split and merge PDF files in order to send them, compress pdf files instead and keep your documents small and intact.

Compress PDF For Email

No more bounce backs with large emails. Our simple PDF compressor automatically reduces email attachments so they fit within mailbox limits.

Compress + No format change

Compressed PDF files stay in the same format with the same .pdf file extension.

NXPowerLite is a great tool when you are dealing with so many PDFs like I do. Not everyone takes the time to compress a PDF to a reasonable size and when storing these items, a tool like this is so handy to utilize from the Finder window and only takes moments. I have been using them for some time now, 5 years and counting!! One of the best tools in my software arsenal to help me do my job! Thank you Neuxpower!!!

— M A Crawford

How to compress PDF files on Mac in four easy steps

Steps

  1. Install NXPowerLite PDF compressor software for Mac.

  2. Drag your PDF file onto the NXPowerLite icon.

  3. Hit the 'Optimize' button to reduce file size.

  4. NXPowerLite will compress and deliver you a smaller file.

How does the Mac PDF compressor reduce the size of PDF files?

PDF files are most often scanned physical documents or documents that have been created entirely digitally often referred to as 'native' or 'born digital' PDFs. NXPowerLite is able to reduce the size of both types of PDF by resizing images, adjusting image formats and quality levels while removing background or hidden data that isn't needed for normal use of the file.

Scanned PDF files

Scanners often capture document pages as high resolution images without compression. So even documents that appear to be just text can often be entirely images. By reducing the resolution of these images and choosing an efficient image encoding these files can be dramatically reduced.

Native PDF files

PDF files generated from an electronic source - such as a Word document, a computer generated report, or spreadsheet data - will usually be formed of a combination of text and images. For this type of file NXPowerLite ignores the text and focuses on resizing and choosing the best format for the embedded images.

How it works

Resize images

Images are often inserted into PDF files at much larger sizes than necessary. For example, a photograph taken by a digital camera might contain five million or more pixels, but most of this detail will not be visible unless 'zoom' controls are used. NXPowerLite can scale these images down to target a particular resolution for display or print.

Convert images to more efficient formats

PDF files allow a wide range of inefficient image formats to be stored inside them natively. NXPowerLite converts bi-level (black and white) images to lossless JBIG2 encoding, which typically generates files one third to one fifth the size of CCITT Group 4 encoding. NXPowerLite also converts many other image types to JPEG where appropriate.

Adjust the JPEG quality of images

NXPowerLite can also apply additional compression to images that are already in the JPEG format. This can squeeze out impressive additional savings without noticeable loss of quality, even at 100% zoom.

Remove private application data

Applications that create PDF files, such as Adobe Photoshop or Acrobat, can store information within a PDF for use when editing the file. This information can only be used by the application which created the file and is not needed to display the PDF. For most cases we recommend deleting this data, as it will have no effect on the use of the PDF file.