What “free” usually means on Mac
For Mac users, the typical “free PDF editor” question gets three answers: the built-in Preview app, LibreOffice Draw, and an online service. Each has limits.
- Preview can do markup, signature, and basic page rearranging — but it can’t edit text on an existing PDF or save substantial structural changes.
- LibreOffice Draw can edit text on a PDF page, but the result is messy on complex layouts and the app is 600+ MB to install.
- Online services (iLovePDF, Smallpdf, PDF2Go) can do everything but upload your file.
Where ToolConvoy fits
ToolConvoy doesn’t try to be a full PDF editor. It’s a private conversion utility: split, merge, compress, convert to text/image, repair. For tasks Preview and Draw can’t do well — extracting specific pages into a new PDF, compressing a 200-page PDF to email-friendly size — ToolConvoy handles them in the browser without uploading.
The use case we see most: a Mac user has a PDF they don’t want to upload (lease, contract, tax form), needs to extract a few pages or compress the whole thing for email, and wants the file gone the moment they’re done. ToolConvoy is the only free option that satisfies that.
Recommendation
For “mark up the PDF and email it back”, use Preview.
For “extract pages, compress for email, convert to text or JPG, fill forms by hand” — ToolConvoy.
For “deep edit of a scanned PDF or bulk redaction”, use a paid tool. There’s no free option that handles those well.