Best Free Software
Robert Irvine recommends new programs that won’t cost you a thing
PDFgear 2.1.13
PDF EDITOR
www.snipca.com/57092
What you need: Windows 10 or 11, or macOS
It’s been nearly a year since PDFgear was last updated, though its developer hasn’t been idle in 2025. Last summer, they released the brilliant AI-powered scanning app PDFgear Scan (www.snipca.com/57085), for Android and iOS – see our Workshop in Issue 719 (page 38).
However, it’s the desktop version of the free PDF editor we’re most interested in, and this update justifies the wait. It adds a host of useful tools and makes welcome tweaks to the program’s interface without sacrificing its simplicity.
The biggest design change is the addition of a Files menu in the top-left corner of the main window. This gives you easy access to your recent PDFs, essential options such as export, merge and split, and PDFgear’s Settings panel. The Print window has been redesigned and added a new setting for printing multiple pages per sheet of paper. The ‘PDF to Image’ and ‘Image to PDF’ conversion tools have also been improved. PDFgear can now create PDFs directly from your scanner and its enhanced OCR feature can turn scanned documents into searchable text. A new Redact tool lets you black out sensitive information in documents, and you can delete selected text without messing up the layout.