Although the Mac offers fantastic support for opening and editing PDFs in the built-in Preview app, the simple act of copying and pasting text from a PDF can still be a nightmare. For instance, selecting text on a two- or three-column document often selects across the whole width of the page, which is totally useless.
Luckily, there’s a better way to copy text from a PDF on a Mac using Apple’s Live Text feature.
Taking a quick screenshot and using Live Text often yields better results when you need to copy text from a PDF or an image. (It also works with photos and old document scans.) Here’s how to do it.
December 19, 2007: Apple settles a lawsuit with reporter Nick Ciarelli, resulting in the shuttering of Think Secret, his masssively popular Apple rumors website. Writing under the screen name Nick de Plume, the Harvard University student broke a number of Apple stories on the site, raising Cupertino’s ire.
December 18, 2006: Apple fans mourn the death of the iPhone before it even launches. Linksys begins selling a new handset called the “iPhone,” and Cupertino watchers must come to grips with the fact that Apple’s rumored smartphone probably won’t bear that name after all.
December 17, 2009: Apple finally triumphs over longtime rival Microsoft … on mobile operating systems market share. New data shows that iPhone OS surpasses Windows Mobile in the United States for the first time, just two years after the ![CalDigit TS5 Plus is a Thunderbolt dock without limits [Review] ★★★★★ CalDigit TS5 Plus standing vertically on a table](https://www.cultofmac.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/caldigit-ts5-plus-front-vertical-1020x638.jpeg)
December 16, 1994: Apple Computer inks a licensing deal with Power Computing, for the first time allowing a company to produce Macintosh-compatible computers, aka “Mac clones.”