Others are added when they are installed in a Library/PDF Services folder.

Some items in that menu are added by macOS and its bundled tools. When using the standard print dialog, at the bottom left is a popup menu offering PDF services. Printing effectively takes place by the app generating the document to a page-based virtual display to create a PDF intermediate, which is then converted by the printer driver into the data required by the print engine. Creating PDF documents is supported in every app which supports printing. You may not need to buy anything at all.īecause support for PDF as a format is built very deeply into macOS, there’s a great deal you can already do before you get any additional apps. Before even suggesting that you should dip your hand into your pocket and pay for software to work with PDF documents, I should explain what you get free with macOS.