PDFs

1. Open & navigate

Drag a PDF onto OwnClip or press ⌘⇧O. The document opens at 144 DPI and shows a Page X/Y indicator. Walk through pages with the arrow buttons or by typing a page number directly. Each page renders fresh: no cached blur, no scaling artifacts.

Shortcut: ⌘ + ⇧ + O

• Drag-drop works from Finder or any other app
• Pages render at 144 DPI: sharp on Retina, fast even on older Macs

2. Annotate any page

Every screenshot annotation tool works on PDFs: pen, marker, highlighter, all eleven shape variants, text, step numbers, stickers, and blur. Color, stroke weight, opacity, and per-annotation rotation are all configurable. Annotations are non-destructive until you export, so you can always undo.

• Step numbers auto-increment, perfect for walkthroughs
• Blur with intensity slider works on private PDFs (NDAs, contracts)
• 50+ levels of undo via ⌘Z

3. Sign with the trackpad

Draw your signature directly on the trackpad. Strokes are pressure-sensitive, so they read like the real thing. Save signatures to a personal library so you can re-use them across documents. Once signed, OwnClip stamps an audit trail (date, device, IP) below your signature and locks the PDF with an owner password. Viewers can read and print, but not edit, comment, or extract.

• Pressure-sensitive on trackpad and Apple Pencil, with a natural pen feel
• Saved signatures live in ~/Library/Application Support/OwnClip/
• Audit trail is rendered as visible text under the signature, not metadata

4. Extract text with OCR

Run on-device OCR over any PDF page, even scanned documents. OwnClip uses Apple's Vision framework, so 18+ languages are supported and nothing leaves your Mac. Click any extracted block to copy it, or hit Copy all to grab everything at once.

• Apple Vision OCR: the same engine the system uses for "Live Text"
• Works on scanned PDFs as well as digitally generated ones
• Copies preserve reading order; paragraphs come out as paragraphs

5. Export with compression presets

Save flattens your annotations into the PDF, so viewers can't remove them. Pick from three compression presets: Original quality (lossless on un-annotated pages), Balanced for most uses (40–65% smaller), or Small for email (70–85% smaller). Or export a single page as PNG, JPEG, or HEIC for quick sharing.

Shortcut: ⌘ + S

• Balanced is the sweet spot: it keeps quality and halves the file size
• Small mode rasterizes at 100 DPI. Perfect for email attachments
• Annotations are baked in on export, not stored as PDF objects