Solved: How do I save a PDF as read only on Mac?

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Solved: How do I save a PDF as read only on Mac?

I researched, surprisingly there's not a lot on this out there for such a crucial setting. Options include Preview settings – but somehow its faulty and does not adopt changes for me; acrobat – but either expensive, confusing or not compatible, also sucks to need another app for basic functions; paid apps like Setapp. But I found a very simple method:

Export as png. If you like, you can export the png as a pdf again and there you have it, a completely uneditable pdf file.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 13.4

Posted on Aug 4, 2023 3:10 AM

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Answer 1

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VikingOSX

Level 10

124,310 points

Aug 4, 2023 7:29 AM in response to kineticara

When you open a PDF in Apple's Preview, you can choose Export… and this panel will appear:

If Create Linearized PDF is selected, deselect it so that Permissions lights up. Click Permissions… and a new panel will appear:

You can ignore the top password setting, but as you see, by default, the permissions to do things with the PDF are all disabled by default. Assigning an Owner password prevents anyone from changing the PDF, but not from opening it for reading. Then saving the original PDF with a mnemonic _RO.pdf suffix, click Apply. When you or anyone else opens that PDF, and attempts to change it, a password prompt will appear. Choosing the Preview Inspector will show this panel:

where the grayed out symbols show blocked editing capability requiring that owner password and without any specialized Finder file permissions.

No need to export the PDF pages as images.

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Solved: How do I save a PDF as read only on Mac?

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