Starkive PDF for Mac
Your PDFs,
supercharged.
Mark up, fill, sign, redact and ask your documents anything. Merge, split, convert and protect them too. All in one fast Mac app that never sends your files anywhere.
- No account
- No subscription
- Works offline
Free to open and try every tool. A one-time unlock saves your work. Mac: macOS 13 or later.
Ask this PDF · on-device AI
Ask your PDF anything.
Click Ask in the corner of any document and talk to it like a person. Get a summary, find the dates that matter, or ask the question you actually opened it for.
Answers from the document
Ask reads the PDF you have open and answers from what is actually in it, in plain sentences, with bullet points when a list makes sense.
Summaries in one click
Summarize walks the whole document in sections and pulls the gist together, so a long report comes back as a few lines you can act on.
Pull fields into a spreadsheet
Name the values you want, like invoice number, total and due date. Each one is checked against the PDF's own text before it goes in the sheet.
It reads your latest edits
Ask works on the document as it is on screen, even before you save, so you never have to save just to ask a question.
Nothing is uploaded
It runs on Apple's on-device Foundation Models. Your document never leaves your Mac and is never used for training.
Or tell it what to do
Ask can set up actions like extracting pages, converting to Word or protecting the file. Nothing runs until you confirm it.
Ask, Summarize and Pull fields need an Apple silicon Mac on macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence turned on. On any other Mac they are switched off and say why, and every other tool on this page still works.
Markup
Say it right on the page.
Highlight the line that matters, circle the number, draw an arrow, leave a note. Pick a color and go.
- Highlight
- Underline
- Strikethrough
- Text note
- Rectangle
- Oval
- Arrow
- Draw
Real PDF annotations
Every mark is saved as a standard annotation, so Preview, Acrobat and everything else shows it exactly as you drew it.
Undo everything
Every change goes through undo and redo, and the window shows when you have unsaved work.
Make it permanent
Flatten fuses your markup into the page when you need a copy nobody can change.
Fill & Sign
Fill it. Sign it. Done.
Type straight into fillable forms, tick the boxes, draw your signature once and place it where it goes.
Every field in one list
The form panel lists every field in the document with how many are filled, so nothing on page 9 gets missed.
Your signature, drawn once
Draw it with your trackpad or mouse, then click where it goes. Need a different one? Draw it again.
Build your own forms
Add text boxes, multi-line boxes and checkboxes to any PDF to make a form other people can fill in, and it keeps working in other PDF apps.
Redaction
Redaction that really erases.
A black box drawn over text can hide it on screen and leave it in the file. Starkive takes the words out for real.
It finds things for you
Find things to redact spots names, places, organizations, email addresses, and phone, card and account numbers. Nothing is ticked until you tick it.
It checks what you missed
Before you export, it searches the document for the same wording anywhere else and warns you if it is still there.
All or nothing
Marked pages become images with the words gone, saved as a new copy. If any marked page can't be redacted, nothing is saved at all.
Page tools
Every page tool you need.
Merge, split, crop, rotate, number, stamp and reorder. Every tool has its own button, right in the toolbar.
- Merge
- Extract pages
- Split into files
- Alternate & mix
- Crop
- Resize
- Rotate
- Pages per sheet
- Watermark
- Page numbers
- Header & footer
- Bates numbering
- Greyscale
- Contents list
- Bookmarks
- Reorder pages
Split it your way
One file per page, every N pages, or one file per bookmark, so a long manual splits into its chapters.
Built for legal work
Bates numbering with your prefix and zero-padded numbers, plus headers, footers and page numbers placed where you want them.
Rearrange by hand
Move, rotate or delete any page from the sidebar, and insert pages from another PDF right where you want them.
Convert
Get it out in any shape.
Tables to Excel, text to Word, pages to images, scans to searchable text. The PDF stops being a dead end.
Tables to spreadsheet
Every table it finds comes out as its own Excel sheet or CSV file, ready to sort and sum.
Make a scan searchable
Apple's Vision framework reads the words on a scanned page and adds an invisible text layer. The page looks the same and becomes searchable. No AI hardware needed.
Word, text and images
Convert to an editable Word document, save all the text, export pages as PNG, JPEG or TIFF, or save every picture inside the PDF.
Smaller and fixed
Shrink a heavy file by re-encoding its images, or save a rebuilt copy of a PDF that upload forms and other apps refuse.
Protect
Lock it down before it leaves.
Add a password, stop printing and copying, strip the details you did not mean to send, and see what a stranger’s PDF is hiding.
- Password-protect
- Save an unlocked copy
- Inspect hidden contents
- Edit document info
- Flatten
- Remove all annotations
- Clear document info
Passwords that stick
Require a password to open the file, or set limits on printing and copying. Protection is kept every time you save.
See what's hiding
Inspect hidden contents lists scripts, attachments and links that never show on a page. It runs in a separate sandboxed helper with no network and no access to your files.
Clean before you send
Clear the author, title and dates, or remove every note and highlight from a copy before it goes out.
All tools
45 tools.
One window.
Can’t remember where something lives? Open All tools and search for crop, OCR or smaller, and jump right to it.
Private by design
Your files stay yours.
Starkive Studio for Mac ships without network access, so macOS itself stops it from connecting anywhere. It never sends your files anywhere.
No account
Nothing to sign up for and nothing to sign in to. Open the app and start.
On-device AI
Ask and Summarize run on Apple’s on-device models. Nothing is uploaded or used for training.
Try before you buy
Every tool is free to open and use. One optional, one-time unlock saves your work. Never a subscription.
One app, four tools
The unlock also covers the Vault. Encryption and Trust Split are free outright.
Open a PDF and go.
Free to download and try. Your documents never leave your Mac.