PDF Expert - Edit, Read & Sign

What is PDF Expert app?

PDF Expert is a PDF editor app that allows users to enjoy desktop-class PDF editing on their iPads, iPhones and Mac. With 30 million users worldwide, it clearly fits the bill for many users.

With PDF Expert, users can conveniently view PDFs in any situation and have a clear reading experience. The app offers a Reading Mode for iPhone that adjusts the PDF text to fit the screen perfectly. Users can view PDFs with vertical and horizontal scrolling, a two-page view, and night and sepia themes.

The search function enables users to find any word in seconds and even search through their notes. PDF Expert allows users to edit PDF text, images, and links, add beautiful annotations, fill out forms, sign documents, and easily organise PDFs.

Users can delete, reorder, rotate pages, or merge entire PDF documents. The app also has a powerful built-in converter that allows users to turn anything into a PDF and vice versa on their iPad or iPhone.

PDF Expert is perfect for anyone who wants to make editing, annotating, signing, and organising PDFs easy. Teachers can improve their lesson materials and manage them better. Students can annotate, collate, and reword their notes and study guides to build custom learning packs.

What we love about PDF Expert app.

There are two broad areas where PDF Expert's features translate into the benefits we found most valuable.

Reading

PDF readers offer many advantages for users. They allow for convenient viewing of PDF documents on various devices, including smartphones and tablets. With PDF Expert, users can adjust the text to fit their screen and view PDFs in different modes. This helps to make reading easier and with less eyestrain. The night and sepia themes improve this further to reduce your screen's impact on sleep and make reading more comfortable in low light.

Editing

PDF Expert is not a creator of  PDF files but a powerful editor for your existing documents or the ones you receive.

Finding relevant text in PDFs is easy with the find option, and PDF Expert's tools provide intuitive ways of marking, highlighting and annotating words and paragraphs. You don't have to use an Apple Pencil with this app, but it improves the process for those who have one for their iPads.

Within pages, you can edit the documents by making changes within the text fields, adding images, and inserting hyperlinks. At the document level, deleting, rotating, reordering, and merging pages are commonly needed functions that PDF Expert has made easy and accessible.

You can also split your documents if you want to pass on only a few pages. This can be a helpful feature for teachers who don't want to overwhelm students with pages of material.

Of course, other PDF apps have at least some of these features, particularly Adobe Acrobat, but PDF Expert has one more thing we appreciated – its comparatively low price. It has many of the most desired features of Acrobat. It is different but no less pleasant to use. But it is much cheaper and they even offer a 50% educational discount for students and teachers.

Anyone will appreciate the savings, especially those who are moderate users of PDF editors. Such users want improved speed and convenience over working with free apps but might not feel they get enough use to justify an expensive subscription. PDF Expert may be ideal in these cases.

What skills does it teach?

PDF Expert does not directly teach skills and knowledge but supports teaching and learning by offering improved document editing and organisation.

What age is it appropriate for?

There is nothing in PDF Expert unsuitable for children, but its designers have built it for a general audience. Older students and teachers are the most likely users of this app.

Is PDF Expert app easy to use?

PDF Expert is on its third major version now, and its workflow and user interface are as polished and intuitive as you could expect. Productivity apps always have a slight learning curve, but the app guides you through the features skillfully, and its supporting website has a concise but comprehensive help section.

How will students benefit?

Students don't want to have to add admin to the tasks they must complete to progress their studies. PDF Expert makes dealing with copious lesson notes and handouts easy, especially as these will typically be in PDF format.

With more courses requiring that students hand in their work digitally, having an easy-to-use PDF editor can help them add the final polish to their coursework or even make last-minute changes should a final check reveal them to be necessary.

How will parents benefit?

Most of us occasionally need some of the features offered by PDF Expert. Signing documents before emailing, converting files, and reading digital documents might not be daily tasks for everyone, but they crop up for most of us.

When parents have PDF Expert on their phone, they can do all this easily without having to source a new app each time and then struggle with learning it or navigating its limited feature set. It might not be free, but PDF Expert is very reasonably priced for its usefulness and the time and convenience it grants are worth the fee.

How will teachers benefit?

The document editing, organisation, and annotation tools in PDF Expert will help teachers stay on top of meeting notes, course planning documents, and student work. Its tools are comprehensive and easy enough to use that teachers can work as they did with paper but no longer have to carry heavy physical folders.

If students hand in work as a PDF, teachers can use PDF Expert for their marking, assessment, and feedback process. We especially liked the stamp feature, where you can add built-in or custom stamps to the document.

This could be a time-saving feature as once you have a few stamps for common purposes, you can quickly give feedback attractively and clearly. Teachers could use stamps to praise positive aspects of the document or indicate an area for improvement.

PDF Expert will help teachers with a legacy of teaching material in old formats re-access and organise it. The app can convert PDFs to and from images, Word files, PowerPoint, Excel and more.

How much does PDF Expert app cost?

PDF Expert is free to download and comes with a free seven-day trial.

If you're fully bought into the Apple device family, you'll get the best value from PDF Expert. A single subscription covers you on iOS, iPad, and Mac. PDF Expert offer a 50% discount for students and teachers.

Is PDF Expert app safe to use?

PDF Expert does not contain advertisements or anything unsuitable for a general audience.

What can PDF Expert app improve on?

In common with most PDF editor apps, PDF Expert is ideal for adjusting existing PDF files, but creating them from scratch is not its purpose. As this is not necessarily a point non-technical users will realise, we'd like to see this (and most other) PDF editor apps make this clearer.

Overall rating of the app.

PDF Expert feels as polished and professional as the market leaders in PDF editing apps, yet it is much cheaper — especially for Mac and iOS users. Its features are as comprehensive as the majority of users need. Together, these make it an ideal productivity and organisational app for those in education, either as teachers or students. We have awarded PDF Expert 5 stars.