PDF Squeezer

Almost everyone hits this problem eventually: a scanned contract or an image-heavy deck is 40MB, and the portal or mail server will not take it. PDF Squeezer solves that one problem and leaves everything else alone. Drop the file on the window, choose a profile, and it rewrites the embedded images at a lower resolution and quality while leaving the text layer intact, so the result is still searchable and selectable. You can point it at a folder and walk away, and the comparison view lets you check what the compression cost you before you replace the original.

The appeal is the shape of the purchase as much as the app. Twenty dollars, once, for a tool you will use a handful of times a year but will be very glad to have on those days, versus a web service that wants a monthly fee for the same operation and asks you to upload the document to someone else's server to get it.

Be honest about how often you need it. If it is twice a year and the files are not confidential, the free online compressors are fine. If you already pay for Setapp, it is included there, so there is nothing to buy. And if what you actually want is to edit the document, this is the wrong app entirely.