As you may know, Apple has always made the PDF format a first-class citizen in its operating systems going back to the original Mac OS X. In fact, OS X was the first operating system that used PDF technology within the operating system itself. Apple called this technology ‘Quartz’. Quartz is a layer of software that runs on top of Darwin, the core (or kernel) of the Mac OS X operating system, and is responsible for the rendering of all 2D objects.
As is now customary, Apple held their World Wide Developer (WWDC) conference in June where they announced iOS 15 and iPadOS 15. These software updates come with a plethora of new features however, one that is not mentioned in any highlight reel, is some new functionality when it comes to processing PDF files. Using the built-in Files app, you can now handle the following PDF functions:
- Rotate PDF pages
- Insert blank pages into a PDF document
- Insert a PDF from file
- Scan Pages into an existing PDF
- Delete pages from a PDF
Here is how this works in iOS and iPadOS 15:
- Start by opening a PDF document in the Files app
- From the left edge of your iPhone or iPad, swipe to the right to expose the page thumbnails
- Press and hold on a page or double-tap a page to open its edit menu
- You can now select the PDF function you would like to invoke from the menu. Handy right?
Have you found any other PDF function hidden in iOS or iPadOS 15? Let us know on Twitter @allaboutpdf