PDF Pals

PDF Pals is a native AI PDF assistant for Mac users.

It allows users to open one or more PDF documents locally, ask questions in natural language, summarize lengthy content, extract key information, and trace the answers back to the corresponding source pages for easy context verification. The software supports document processing without file size limitations and features powerful built-in OCR capabilities, recognizing scanned PDFs, complex tables, and forms. It’s suitable for academic papers, technical documents, ebooks, contracts, case materials, and corporate data analysis. PDFPals emphasizes privacy and local processing; files are not uploaded to the cloud or rely on cloud vector databases. The document library is stored in a local SQLite database, and the data is not used to train the AI. PDF Pals Users can choose a local model or access services such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and OpenRouter. It is also compatible with Ollam and LM Studio and securely stores API keys via Apple Keychain. No account registration is required. It supports custom AI model settings and system prompts, making it suitable for researchers, developers, legal professionals, product managers, and Mac users who need efficient PDF reading.