When it comes to reading and working with PDFs, most applications cover the basics—open a file, read it, search through it, maybe highlight a few lines. But if you work with long documents, technical papers, or research material, you quickly realise the built-in basic features ain’t enough.
For me, a good PDF reader needs to do three things well:
- Dark Mode Support – Reading late at night is much easier on the eyes with dark backgrounds.
- Search with Previews – It’s not enough to know that a term appears 10 times. I want to see all 10 sentences in one place, so I can jump directly to the right spot.
- Annotation Management – Highlights and notes should be easy to access. Ideally, I want a single view that lists all my annotations, without forcing me to dig through pages one by one.
With those criteria in mind, I evaluated several PDF readers on macOS (plus a couple of web-based options). Here’s what I found.
macOS Preview
Apple’s default Preview app is surprisingly powerful. It supports highlights, annotations, and even free drawing. It also provides a sidebar for both search results and annotations.
- ❌ Dark Mode: No dark mode support.
- ✅ Annotations: All highlights appear in one list, though the sidebar cuts text after a sentence or two and could use more space.
- ✅ Search: You get text previews, but only one per page. If a keyword appears multiple times on the same page, it won’t show all occurrences.
Despite its limitations, Preview is one of the strongest default apps on any operating system. I use it often when I’m researching or working through already-annotated documents.
Adobe Acrobat Reader
I’ve disliked Acrobat Reader for years, and that hasn’t changed. It’s heavy, bloated with pop-ups, and constantly nudges you toward subscriptions or “AI” add-ons.
- ✅ Dark Mode: Supports it via a “Replace Colors” option. This is genuinely useful for night reading.
- ✅ Annotations: Supports highlighting, but offers no central place to review all annotations.
- ❌ Search: You get a count of results, but no previews.
For me, Acrobat is a backup reader—useful only when I need dark mode or when dealing with encrypted/complex PDFs that other apps can’t handle.
Highlights
The app Highlights is named well because that’s exactly what it does best. It provides a beautiful, wide sidebar where you can see all your annotations in one place.
- ✅ Annotations: Probably the best view of highlights among the apps I tested. Expandable, clear, and easy to navigate.
- ❌ Search: Buggy. Jumping between search results often resets to the first occurrence, which is frustrating.
- ❌ General use: Beyond annotation previews, it doesn’t add much value.
In short: great for reviewing highlights, but not worth keeping installed as a main PDF reader.
PDF Expert
PDF Expert is one of the most polished PDF readers I tried.
- ✅ Dark Mode: Fully supported.
- ✅ Search: Excellent. You get previews of every result, not just counts.
- ✅ Annotations: Can display them in a preview view.
- ✅ Multi-document search: Lets you search across multiple open PDFs at once.
- ✅ Page Thumbnails: Includes a “full page” thumbnail grid for quickly scanning large documents.
- ❌ Free version: You can’t actually add annotations—only view existing ones.
So while it’s an excellent reader, you’ll need another app (like Preview) if you want to actively annotate.
My Current Setup
In practice, I’ve ended up keeping three readers on my Mac:
- Preview → My default tool for reading and annotating.
- Acrobat Reader → Backup for encrypted PDFs and nighttime reading (dark mode).
- PDF Expert → Great for reviewing, searching across docs, and quick navigation.
Highlights didn’t make the cut, but Preview + Acrobat + PDF Expert cover almost all use cases.
Web-Based Options
Beyond desktop apps, I also explored browser-based solutions.
- PDF.js (Mozilla) – Works inside Firefox, but buggy on Safari. Functional, but not impressive.
- Embed PDF (based on Google’s PDFium) – The best web option I tested. Runs smoothly, supports search previews, and even annotation previews. Uses WebAssembly for speed and can be embedded into frameworks like React, Vue, or Preact.
Final Thoughts
There’s no single “perfect” PDF reader, at least not yet. Each one I tested had strengths and trade-offs. Preview remains the most balanced option, Acrobat is unavoidable for edge cases, PDF Expert is a polished reader (with a paywall for annotations), and web-based tools like Embed PDF show real promise.
If you care about dark mode, search previews, and annotation management, you’ll probably also end up juggling more than one app.
