Have you ever noticed how strict websites are on PDF sizes? Whether it was uploading a resume, submitting a school project, or sending an important file to a colleague, most of us probably had to compress a PDF in order to meet the secret PDF size limits of a website.

While Adobe Acrobat DC is the best way to compress PDF files. If you haven’t used the app before, a seven-day free trial is available. However, you will have to pay after your free week is up. Fortunately, there are several free ways to shrink a PDF to a manageable size in no time on PC and Mac.

Shrink your PDF with Adobe online (Mac, Windows)

Adobe offers a free online PDF compressor that anyone can use. While it only supports files up to 2GB or smaller, this should be enough for most users, and there are three levels of compression – high, medium, and low – to choose from.

  1. Open that Adobe Acrobat online PDF compressor.
  2. click “Choose” to upload a PDF file, or drag and drop the file from your computer onto the page.
  3. Select the compression level you want, then click “Compress.”
  4. click “Download” to save the file on your device.

Resize Your PDF Using MacOS Preview (Mac)

Mac users have a built-in PDF compression tool in the preview app.

  1. Open a PDF file in preview.
  2. Go to File> Export or File> Export As … if you want to export the compressed copy under a new name.
  3. Set up the format “PDF”
  4. Choose “Reduce file size” from the Quartz Filter drop-down menu.
  5. click “To save.”

Compress your PDF with Wondershare HiPDF (Mac, Windows)

Wondershare offers a free PDF compression tool that is supported by the HiPDF website as a browser extension or as an offline desktop app.

Like Adobe Online Compressor, HiPDF lets you choose between three compression levels, but only supports files up to 10MB or 50 pages in length, and free users can only convert two files per day. These restrictions are lifted for Pro version Subscribers (starting at $ 6 / mo for web, $ 8 / mo for web and desktop), and the Pro version can even compress multiple files at once.

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For now, however, we’ll cover how the free version works:

  1. Open that HiDPF compression page.
  2. click “Upload” to select a PDF file saved on your computer, or click the down arrow to upload from your OneDrive, Dropbox, or Box cloud drive.
  3. click “Add” to upload additional PDFs to compress.
  4. Use the slider to select the compression level you want.
  5. click “Compress” to start the compression process.
  6. click “Download” to save the compressed file.

[TechStory]

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