How to Merge and Split PDFs on a Mac Without Uploading Them

Merging and splitting are two of the most common reasons people upload a PDF to a website. Combine three scans into one file for a form. Pull pages 4 to 9 out of a long report to send to a colleague. Break a 40-page bundle into separate pages.

Your Mac can do all of it for free, offline, in under a minute. Here is how, plus the few cases where a dedicated tool is quicker.

Merging PDFs with Preview

Preview is already on your Mac, and it is the most flexible free option.

1. Open the first PDF in Preview. 2. Choose View → Thumbnails to show the sidebar. 3. Drag the other PDFs from the Finder into the sidebar. Drop each one where you want it: above, below or between existing pages. 4. Drag thumbnails around to change the order if needed. 5. Choose File → Export as PDF and save it under a new name.

Step 5 matters. When you drag pages into an open PDF, Preview edits that file, and it saves changes automatically. If you just close the window, your first PDF now contains everything. Exporting under a new name keeps the original as it was. Duplicating the first file before you start (⌘D in the Finder) is another safe habit.

Merging with the Finder’s Create PDF

Even quicker for simple jobs:

1. Select the PDFs (or images) in the Finder. 2. Control-click and choose Quick Actions → Create PDF.

A new PDF appears in the same folder. It is fast, and it works for photos too, which makes it great for turning phone pictures of a document into one file. Check the page order afterwards, since it follows the Finder’s order rather than one you choose.

Splitting a PDF with Preview

To pull out some pages:

1. Open the PDF in Preview and show thumbnails. 2. Select the pages you want. Click the first, Shift-click the last for a run, or Command-click to pick separate pages. 3. Drag the selection onto the desktop. Preview creates a new PDF with just those pages.

Or use File → Print, type a page range like 4 to 9, then open the PDF menu at the bottom left and choose Save as PDF.

To delete pages instead, select them and press Delete, then export under a new name.

Where Preview gets slow

Preview is great for one document and a bit of dragging. It gets tedious when:

• You want one file per page. Forty pages means forty drags.
• You know the range but not the thumbnails. "Pages 1 to 3 and page 7" is quicker to type than to click.
• You have a batch. Splitting ten PDFs is ten rounds of the same thing.
• You are worried about the original. The auto-save behaviour above catches people out.

Merging and splitting with Dhito

Dhito is a search app for your Mac with around 50 local file tools built in. Two of them are Merge PDFs and Split. You can reach them by right-clicking a search result, by selecting several files and using the selection bar, from the Tools tab, or by typing merge or split into the search box. You can also drag PDFs straight onto the window if they are not ones Dhito has indexed.

Merge PDFs joins any number of PDFs into one, in the order they are listed, top to bottom. The new file is named after the first one, so chapter-1.pdf plus the rest becomes chapter-1-merged.pdf, next to the originals. There is no step for rearranging the order, so if you need to hand-pick the sequence, Preview’s sidebar is the better tool.

Split takes one PDF and does one of two things:

• Type a range like 1-3, 7 and you get one new PDF with just those pages. 5- means page 5 to the end. If you type a page that does not exist, it tells you how many pages the document has instead of guessing.
• Leave the range blank and every page becomes its own file, collected in a new folder next to the original rather than scattered across it.

A one-page PDF cannot be split, and Dhito says so before you run it instead of producing a copy of the same page.

The guarantees that matter more than speed

• Nothing is overwritten. The original PDF is never touched. Every result is a new file beside it. If the folder is read-only, the result goes to Downloads and Dhito tells you.
• Undo is the Trash. Undo moves the new files to the Trash, so the Finder’s Put Back works even if Dhito is closed.
• Batches are honest. Select ten PDFs and run Split once. They are processed one after another as a single job with one progress row. If two fail, it names the two and keeps the other eight.
• Clear errors. A password-protected PDF gets a plain message saying so.
• Nothing is uploaded. It works offline.

Once you have merged or split something, the new file appears at the top of the results, so you can run the next tool on it straight away: compress the merged file to fit an email, add page numbers, or watermark it as a draft.

Which to use when

Merging and splitting are about as simple as file jobs get, and none of them needs a server. Preview handles the hand-arranged cases for free. For ranges, batches and one-file-per-page, a tool that writes a new file and never touches the original takes the worry out of it. If you were weighing up an online tool for this, our look at whether iLovePDF is safe for confidential documents covers that side.