An Effortless Way to Highlight PDF in Preview on Mac

PDF documents can be viewed easily on any device while still retaining their original formatting. If you're dealing with a large PDF document containing many pages and you want to mark specific sections, then the highlight tool can be a huge help. Highlighting your document makes it easier to organize information and take notes. Mac's built-in Preview application lets you highlight PDF. Find out how to highlight PDF in Preview in this article below.

How to Highlight PDF without Preview on Mac

Looking to do more than highlight your PDF? Try PDFelement for Mac. This intuitive software lets you annotate and highlight PDF files, plus perform other functions such as reading, editing, and converting PDF files.

Step 1. Upload PDF

After downloading and installing PDFelement, open the program. Click on the "Open File" button or tap on "Open" on the Home screen, and select the PDF file you want to upload.

Step 2. Highlight Text in PDF

In the left toolbar, click on the "Comments" button and select "Highlight". The "Highlight" window will appear on the left side. Select the color that you prefer. From there, go to your PDF and select the text you want to highlight. It will then be highlighted.

Step 3. Add Sticky Notes and Draw Markups

Now, click on the "Comments" tab in the top toolbar. Press the "Sticky Note" button in the submenu and select the text where you want to apply the sticky note. You can also use Strikethrough/Underline/Squiggly tools to highlight important parts in your PDFs.

Step 4. Add Handwritten Notes to PDF

If you have handwritten notes, PDFelement allows you to take photos of the notes with your iPhone/iPad and add the photos to Mac. On your Mac, click Edit > Add Image and select Import from iPhone. There are three ways to import photos from iPhone to PDF on your Mac: Take Photos, Scan Documents or Add Sketch.

---

How to Highlight PDF with Preview on Mac

Step 1. Open your document in Preview by pressing control-click and choosing "Open with Preview" or dragging and dropping the file into Preview.

Step 2. Navigate to the top right corner. Click on the highlighter pen.

Step 3. Select the text you want to highlight and apply it. You can change the color of the highlighter on the toolbar. You can then save your document.

---

Should I Highlight PDF with or without Preview?

macOS Preview and PDFelement both let you mark up PDFs, but they differ significantly in scope and flexibility. Preview's Markup toolbar lets you highlight, underline, add notes, shapes, and simple annotations, which is ideal for quick feedback and basic review tasks.

However, PDFelement for Mac provides a much richer annotation experience, including customizable highlight colors, area highlights, sticky notes, stamps, drawings, and more extensive commenting tools. This makes PDFelement better suited for detailed document reviews and professional workflows where advanced markup and editing matter.

Free Download or Buy PDFelement right now!

Free Download or Buy PDFelement right now!

Buy PDFelement right now!

Buy PDFelement right now!

---