Replace text in PDFs
• 128 words • 1 min • updated
Problem statement: Given an existing PDF file, replace text in it.
Preview.app on macOS cannot replace text; it can only add annotations. It is
possible to use it in a hacky way: add a white square on top of the text you
want to replace, then add another piece of text atop.
I found that PDFGear does the job well. It is not open source, but it is free. On macOS it needs to be manually downloaded and installed from the Mac App Store, as it’s not in Homebrew. It’s also available on Windows. It is quite well-rated in Trustpilot (4.9 stars, 6500+ reviews).
On Linux I would probably try Xournal++, however
it is really a PDF annotation tool. It is also available on macOS: brew install xournal++.