PDF Compressor 4+

This app should be on the top of the list in search results. Its straight to the point. No subscriptions. Quick interface. In settings you can choose where it saves and it can also combine PDF files. Compressed 8.2mb down to about 2.4mb and I see no difference in image quality to the images inside the PDF file.

This app was probably made by a person who needed to compress a PDF file one day and realized every app was a subscription. He fixed it. We need more developers like this.

It looks like I’m the first reviewer so… take this with a grain of salt. However, this app is simply not ready.

It took me a while to figure out how to get a PDF into the app in the first place. (It’s the ⊕ in the toolbar.) There’s a lot of empty state messaging about having no PDFs selected, none in the queue, none from past jobs, and so on. (But only that ⊕ icon in the toolbar will work. Hint: Allow drag-and-drop. Hint: Put the “add some PDFs” functionality in the File menu in addition to the toolbar.)

Once I figured how to get a PDF into the app, I couldn’t figure out how to get the compressed version out. (It’s buried in the file hierarchy under the ~/Library folder, which is hidden these days so….)

The comprssed version, BTW, is a miraculous 99% smaller than the original (90 KB vs 8.6 MB). But that’s unsurprising given that the quality is mis·er·a·ble. It’s JPEG—i.e., lossy—compressed to within an inch of its life. If you hate reading, you’ll love what it does to your text. There aren’t any dials or levers to pull either so, yeah… an illegible, unusable, JPEG artifact bespangled, yet miraculously small file is what you get.

Maybe it will improve? I hope it does.