You do not need a printer — or printer drivers, or ink, or anything plugged in — to "print" to PDF on a Mac. Every app with a Print command can save its output as a PDF file instead of sending it to paper. It is built into macOS at the system level, which means it works identically in Safari, Mail, Word, Pages, Preview, and every other app you own.
The 10-second version
- Open the page, email, or document you want to save.
- Press ⌘P (or File → Print).
- At the bottom of the print dialog, click the PDF menu.
- Choose Save as PDF, pick a name and folder, click Save.
That is the whole feature. No printer needs to be connected or even set up — if your printer is being difficult, printing to PDF still works fine (and see our printer troubleshooting guide for the actual fix).
Where the PDF menu hides in newer macOS
Apple redesigned the print dialog in macOS Ventura, and the PDF option moved around enough to confuse people who had used it for years. What to look for:
- macOS Ventura and later: a PDF dropdown button sits at the bottom of the print dialog, next to the Cancel and Print buttons. Click it and choose Save as PDF.
- Older macOS (Monterey and earlier): a small PDF pop-up menu in the bottom-left corner of the dialog.
- If the dialog looks tiny and stripped down, click Show Details first — some apps open the collapsed version of the dialog and hide half the options.
The same menu also offers Open in Preview (look at the PDF before committing to it) and Send in Mail (attach it to a new email in one step).
The double ⌘P trick: a real keyboard shortcut for Save as PDF
Power-user favorite. macOS lets you assign a keyboard shortcut to any menu item — including the "Save as PDF…" entry inside the PDF menu. Assign it to ⌘P and you get a lovely behavior: press ⌘P once to open the print dialog, press ⌘P again to jump straight to Save as PDF.
- Open System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → App Shortcuts.
- Click +, leave Application set to All Applications.
- In Menu Title, type exactly: Save as PDF… — that ellipsis at the end matters. Type it with Option-semicolon, not three periods.
- Set the shortcut to ⌘P and click Done.
From then on, ⌘P ⌘P saves a PDF from any app. It is the closest thing macOS has to a universal "export this to PDF" hotkey.
Print only some pages to PDF
The PDF respects everything you set in the print dialog. Want pages 3–7 of a 40-page document? Set the page range first, then choose Save as PDF — the file contains only those pages. Same for paper size, orientation, and scale. This is also the easy way to pull one page out of an existing PDF: open it in Preview, ⌘P, set the range to that single page, Save as PDF.
Safari: two different PDFs, pick the right one
Safari gives you two ways to turn a web page into a PDF, and they produce different results:
- File → Export as PDF saves the page as one long continuous sheet — good for reading on screen, bad for printing later.
- ⌘P → Save as PDF paginates the page into normal letter-size pages with margins — the one you want if a human might ever print it, or if you are saving a receipt or confirmation page for records.
After you save: lock it, shrink it, sign it
Everything downstream of the PDF happens in Preview, which ships free on every Mac:
- Password-protect: when saving from the print dialog, click Security Options to require a password to open the file. Or later in Preview: File → Export → check Encrypt.
- Shrink a huge PDF: Preview → File → Export → set Quartz Filter to Reduce File Size. Scanned pages compress dramatically.
- Sign it: open the PDF in Preview, click the Markup toolbar (pen tip icon), then the signature button — trackpad, camera, or your iPhone can capture your signature.
- Merge several PDFs: drag pages between Preview sidebars — full steps in our scanning guide, which covers combining pages into one PDF.
Related guides
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- How to scan a document on a MacBook
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Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need a printer connected to print to PDF?
No. The PDF menu works with zero printers set up. macOS renders the document to a file instead of sending it to hardware — a printer is never involved.
Where does the PDF actually save?
Wherever you choose in the save dialog — macOS remembers the last folder you used. If you saved one and cannot find it, check your Downloads and Documents folders first, or search the document's title in Spotlight (⌘Space).
Why is the PDF button greyed out or missing?
A handful of apps (some Adobe apps, some corporate tools) draw their own custom print dialogs that skip Apple's PDF menu. Look for the app's own Export or Save as PDF command instead — or open the document in Preview or Safari and print to PDF from there.
Is Print to PDF the same as Export as PDF?
Not quite. Print to PDF paginates the document exactly as a printer would — page breaks, margins, headers. Export as PDF (in apps that offer it) usually preserves the document's own layout in one pass. For receipts, forms, and anything destined for paper, the print-dialog version is the safer choice.
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