Merge PDFs on a Mac

How to merge PDFs on a Mac

1. Open this page in Safari, Chrome, Firefox or Edge.
2. Select your PDFs in Finder (hold ⌘ and click to pick several) and drag them onto the box above. Or click the box to choose them.
3. Use the ↑ and ↓ arrows to set the order. The top file comes first.
4. Click Merge, then Download merged PDF. It goes to your Downloads folder as merged.pdf.

Can’t I just use Preview?

Yes, and it is worth knowing how. Open the first PDF in Preview, choose View → Thumbnails, then drag the other PDFs into the thumbnail sidebar and save. Preview is free, built in, and also works offline.

FilesStay is handy when you would rather drag a few files into one box and click once, when you are on a Mac that is not yours, or when you also need to compress or split the result in the same place. It works the same way on Windows, so the steps do not change between computers.

Do the files leave my Mac?

No. The merge code runs inside the browser tab. Your PDFs are read from disk, combined in memory and saved straight to Downloads. You can check: load the page, turn off Wi‑Fi from the menu bar, and merge. It still works.

Good to know

• Password-protected PDFs cannot be opened. If you know the password, open the file in Preview, choose File → Export, untick Encrypt and save a copy, then merge that copy.
• Bookmarks and fillable form fields are not rebuilt in the merged file.
• If the merged PDF is too big to email, run it through Compress PDF for email.