Open a thousand pages like one.
Drop in a folder, a data room, a case file, or a reading list. PageHawk lines up every document, compares every version, and takes you straight to what changed. On your Mac. Nothing uploaded. And it is still the complete everyday PDF app you make your default.
PageHawk on a 512-document legal data room: every file scored, the keeper flagged, the diff in the panel, the whole collection on your Mac. Shown with real public court records as sample data.
The tools you already own choke on the files you actually work with.
Ask anyone who lives in large documents: researchers, analysts, students, lawyers, writers. Their reviews say the same things, over and over: freezes on open, stutters on scroll, a reader that feels like a bloated platform, and hours lost fighting the tool instead of doing the work.
“What was once a simple PDF reader now feels like a bloated platform full of forced features... closer to adware than professional software.”
Adobe Acrobat Reader Community, an industry voice describing the status quo (not a PageHawk customer)We took Acrobat apart on a Mac and counted: 30 preference panes behind 7 tools, a Compare tool capped at exactly two files, and a 1.68 GB update downloaded without asking. The bloat is not an accident. It is the roadmap.
“If I have documents that use a lot of data, Adobe Acrobat Reader is one of the slowest tools on the market.”
Capterra review of Adobe Acrobat Reader“I am a lawyer and I have to often save court documents. Many times I get Error 18 when saving.”
Adobe Acrobat CommunityThe cost shows up in every profession that reads for a living: a literature review means screening hundreds of papers to keep dozens; a deal means reading every draft of every document. The legal numbers are simply the best documented:
And the workaround people reach for, pasting confidential work into consumer AI chat tools, now carries its own cost: a February 2026 ruling (US v. Heppner) found that running privileged legal work through a consumer AI tool can forfeit attorney-client privilege. Every minute lost to a freezing, cluttered reader is billed time spent fighting the tool, and it compounds across every document in every matter.
Click a defined term. Land on its source. Jump back.
The most repeated ask in professional document work: stop scrolling to find where a term was defined. Try the loop below, then imagine it across a 400-page agreement.
11.2 Effect of Termination.
Upon any termination under Section 11.1, Client shall pay the Termination Fee within thirty (30) days, except where such termination follows a Change of Control of Provider, in which case the schedule set out in Exhibit C governs.
Click any underlined term above to jump to where it is defined.
This is an interactive simulation of the reference-jump loop coming to PageHawk, shown here so you can feel it. It is a preview, not a recording of the shipped app. Three independent tools (CoParse, Macro, Sioyek) each built an entire product around this one loop; PageHawk is building it into the reader you already work in. The same loop reads a paper: citation to reference and back.
See the whole set, not one file at a time.
Reading a big stack of documents is slow because you can open only one at a time. PageHawk lays the whole set out at once, compares and scores it, and takes you straight to what matters.
- 1GatherDrag in a folder, a data room, a case file, or a stack of PDF versions. PageHawk reads them all and lays them out together.
- 2CompareEvery document, side by side, scored on your focus query, recency, and what changed between versions. Near-duplicates are grouped.
- 3KeepKeyboard-first review, fast enough that you never reach for the mouse. Flag the keepers, and export them where they need to go.
A few moves over your whole document library.
The slow parts done for you. The call left to you.
Rank what matters.
Point PageHawk at what you care about: a clause, a metric, a method. It scores every document on that focus, plus recency and what changed, so the page you need rises to the top.
Group the near-duplicates.
A folder of 142 files collapses to 38 groups, each holding its best copy. You review groups, not forty versions of the same memo.
Export a review list.
Flag the keepers and send them on: a PDF bundle, a citation list, or a copy-paste set. The export stays on your Mac.
Ask your documents. Privately.
Ask a question of one document or a whole folder and get an answer with page citations, generated on your Mac. Summaries, key terms, and an AI-built table of contents for the PDFs that ship without one. Nothing goes to a server, so the answer never costs you the privilege.
The real Ask panel, answered on device.
The legal pack: redline, redact, and stamp.
Word-level compare with tracked-changes and PDF redline exports, shipped today. True burn-in redaction that removes the text and strips the metadata, not a black box drawn over it, shipped today. Batch Bates numbering for discovery productions, shipped today: stamps burned into the page as real content, a JSON audit manifest, and a CSV load file that imports into Relativity and Concordance.
A real PageHawk redline, rendered on device.
Make it your default. It earns the double-click.
Everything you open Adobe for: signing, shrinking, covering up, filling, reading. Fast, on your Mac, nothing uploaded. The folder powers above are the bonus no other reader has.
Sign, and it's really signed.
Draw, type, or import your signature, drop it on the line, and PageHawk burns it into the page itself, not a sticker another app can peel off. The document's text stays selectable.
Shrink big PDFs.
A 5 MB scan-heavy file becomes a fraction of itself: images are recompressed for screen while the text stays razor sharp. It shows you the before and after sizes, and skips honestly when there's nothing to save.
Whiteout, fill, and stamp.
Cover anything with a burned-in white block, fill forms in place, add notes and highlights, Bates-stamp productions. For true removal, Redact destroys the text underneath: whiteout covers, redact removes.
Clean metadata, in one tap.
Its own action, separate from redaction: strips the hidden author, software, and date fields and the embedded XMP packet before you share. It shows you what it found first, and it never redacts or alters a page, so the text stays selectable.
Reads like the best of them.
Page thumbnails, continuous scroll, find, dark reading themes, read-aloud. And every document reopens exactly where you left off.
Opens more than PDFs.
Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and iWork files open straight in the same fast reader, converted on your Mac and cached.
One click to make it yours.
PageHawk offers once, never nags, to become your default PDF app. One click, reversible anytime in Finder's Get Info.
See it for your work.
The same app, the work that looks like yours. Open a use case.
Triage two hundred papers for a literature review, compare revisions, and surface the ones that actually matter.
Group related papers and methods, read figure-heavy preprints side by side, with nothing sent to a server.
A semester of readings and sources in one place: find the passage you half-remember, keep the sources that earn their citation, and export the list.
Compare filings, proposals, and deal drafts at the pace of the deal: quarter over quarter, version over version, in one pass.
Find the changed clause across a 500-document data room, and the near-duplicate pleadings buried in a discovery production.
Review OCR-heavy archives: registers, manifests, and declassified files, read and matched on your Mac.
Every screenshot is the real interface, populated with genuine public records: court opinions, SEC and central-bank reports, arXiv papers, national-archive scans. In PageHawk they would be your own files, read and scored on your Mac.
See exactly what changed.
Line up two versions of a contract, a manuscript, a filing, or a draft. PageHawk marks every change, by page and by clause, so you keep the right one with proof instead of memory.
- Word-level redline, insertions and deletions colour-coded
- Three views: Side by side, Redline (insertions underlined right on the page, deletions marked in the margin), and Summary, with a change rail running between the two documents
- Export a Word tracked-changes file or a PDF redline
- Batch compare: drop in two folders of versions, PageHawk auto-pairs them by filename and redlines every pair in one pass, all on-device, with a results table you open any pair from
- Compare inside Microsoft Word, in beta: launch a comparison from a task pane and get native Word tracked changes back, on Word for Mac, Windows, and the web, without the documents ever leaving the device
- Word-level compare in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Thai, alongside every language written with spaces
Built to be shared: finish a comparison in the browser and one click turns it into a private link you can send to anyone. They see the redline, never your original files, and can run their own comparison free. The leading online compare tool uploads your documents to its servers just to diff them, and sells offline as its premium tier. PageHawk compares on your device; sharing is a choice you make, never a default.
A real PageHawk comparison, rendered on device.
Your files never leave your drive.
No document upload. No cloud processing. No account needed to open your files. PageHawk reads, scores, and compares everything on your Mac, and the index it builds stays on your drive.
The work you are choosing between is often the work you most need to keep private: client files, unsigned contracts, unpublished research, drafts no one else should see. They stay where they are.
- The full app before any account. Sync is a setting, not a wall.
- Every ask carries “Don't ask again” the first time we ask.
- Update checks are quiet, never modal, always declinable.
- No background downloads without asking first. Ever.
We wrote these after auditing, tool by tool, what the incumbents do to their users. The difference is the product.
Do what the cloud tools do. Without the cloud.
Compare, ask, summarize, and redline like the best tools on the market, with the one thing none of them offer: every document stays on your Mac. Where a rival has a feature but uploads your file to get it, you'll see it marked.
| Feature | PageHawk | Preview (built into macOS) | Adobe Acrobat Pro | Foxit Editor+ | PDF Expert | LiquidText |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fast on 200+ page, 30MB+ files | ✓reading-first engine | ✓one file at a time | users report freezes | lags on complex files | ✓ | reported |
| Whole-folder triage: rank, group, score every document at once | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Distraction-free by default (no popups, no forced panels) | ✓ | ✓ | ✗users: “adware-like” | partial | ✓ | ✓ |
| Ask your documents (AI Q&A, page-cited) | ✓on device | ✗ | ✓cloud | ✓cloud | ✓cloud | ✗ |
| Ask across a whole folder | ✓on device | ✗ | ✓cloud | partial | ✗ | ✗ |
| Compare PDF, Word & text + redline exports (Word tracked-changes, PDF) | ✓ | ✗ | PDF-centric | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| True redaction (text removed, metadata stripped) | ✓ | no metadata strip | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Bates numbering for discovery | ✓burned in + load file | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| Jump-to-citation / defined-term navigation | in preview, above | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ | partial |
| OCR scanned / image-only documents | ✓ | basic text capture | ✓ | ✓ | paywalled add-on | ✗ |
| 100% on-device, works offline / air-gapped | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | partial | partial |
| Windows / PC | on the roadmap | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ |
| Real annotation in the free tier | ✓ | basic markup | Reader is view-only | partial | partial | tier confusion |
| Transparent pricing, no auto-renew surprises | ✓one-click cancel | ✓free | ✗FTC action, 2024 | ✗billing complaints | partial | confusing tiers |
| Price per year (single user) | $0–$129or $99 once | Free | ~$240 | ~$130–$160 | ~$80 | ~$20 once + tiers |
The math: Acrobat Pro runs about $240 a year on its own, and its own users report it freezing on exactly the large files a real matter produces. Add Adobe's AI Assistant, a separate paid add-on, and AI-inclusive Acrobat runs $300 to $340 a year. PageHawk Pro bundles ask, redact, and compare for $129 a year. If your hours bill at professional rates ($200 to $400 an hour is common in law and consulting), recovering 15 minutes a day pays for a year of PageHawk Pro in a single week. The real cost was never the software; it was the time you were losing to it.
The honest answers.
Does PageHawk upload my photos or documents?
No. Everything is read and compared on your Mac. No file is uploaded, and there is no account to create.
Does it decide for me?
No. PageHawk scores and groups to make the choice fast, but the keep and cut calls are yours. The scores inform you; they do not overrule you.
What file types does it read?
PDFs, Word and text documents, and scanned or image-only files. If there is a format you live in, tell us and we will look at supporting it. For photo culling, see Gander.
How large a collection can it handle?
PageHawk is built for big sets: a folder of hundreds of PDFs, a full data room, a research reading list. It reads and compares them on your Mac, so the limit is your disk and memory, not a server.
What does it cost, honestly?
The base reader is free, with real annotation, not a crippled trial. The full app is $99 once, or $59 a year if you'd rather. Pro, with the legal pack, is $129 a year. No auto-renew surprises, no cancellation fee, and cancelling is one click. For contrast, Acrobat Pro runs about $240 a year on its own, and Adobe's AI Assistant is a separate paid add-on on top of that, putting AI-inclusive Acrobat closer to $300 to $340 a year.
What do I need to run it?
A Mac on macOS 26 with Apple Silicon. Nothing else, and no connection required to do the work.
Is PageHawk just for lawyers?
No. PageHawk is for anyone who lives in many documents: researchers running literature reviews, students with a semester of readings, analysts with filings, writers with drafts. Legal work is deeply covered too (compare, true redaction, Bates numbering), and legal teams get their own dedicated page: PageHawk for legal work.
Is PageHawk available on Windows?
Not yet, honestly. PageHawk is Mac-first today; Windows and web are on the near-term roadmap, and they are a priority precisely because most legal teams work on Windows. If you want to be told the day it ships, request early access and say so.
Does PageHawk do Bates numbering and redaction?
Redaction: yes. True burn-in redaction that removes the text and strips document metadata, not a cosmetic black box. Bates numbering: yes. Batch-stamps a whole production with the stamp burned into the page as real content, originals untouched, plus a JSON audit manifest and a CSV load file (BegBates, EndBates, Pages, File) that imports into Relativity, Concordance, and similar tools.
Does PageHawk work inside Microsoft Word?
Yes, in beta. A task pane in Word launches a version-vs-version comparison and returns the result as native Word tracked changes, so you accept or reject each edit right there. It works in Word on Mac, Windows, and the web, and your documents never leave the device to get it.
Is on-device AI safe for privileged work?
PageHawk's Ask, summarize, and table-of-contents features run on your Mac; the document is never sent to a server. That matters more in 2026: a February ruling (US v. Heppner) found that running privileged legal work through consumer cloud AI tools can forfeit attorney-client privilege. Nothing on this page is legal advice, but keeping the document on the device is the conservative answer.
Start free. Yours to keep.
Honestly: the free tier may be all you need. It is a complete, fast reader with real annotation, and it never expires. When your work turns into folders of versions, data rooms, and productions, that is what Pro is for. No auto-renew surprises, no cancellation fee, and cancelling is one click.
- The fast reader, on any size file
- Real annotation: highlight, underline, notes, ink
- Open and browse whole folders
- Compare two documents & share the redline · free, on device
- Organize with AI: scan, review, and preview any folder; your first applied folder is free
- Fully on-device, nothing uploaded
- Everything in Free
- Rank a folder by relevance · group near-duplicates
- Ask, summarize & extract key terms on device, page-cited
- OCR for scans · AI table of contents
- Export review lists, bundles & citations
- Everything in PageHawk
- Batch compare whole folders · Word tracked-changes export · Departures table & changes reports
- Compare inside Microsoft Word, in beta · Mac, Windows & web
- True burn-in redaction with metadata strip · clean metadata in one tap
- Bates numbering for discovery
- Unlimited Organize-with-AI applies · batch data-room review
- Support that actually answers
Students & researchers: everything in Pro for $39, verified with your .edu email. Legal teams: the legal workflow (compare, true redaction, Bates) has its own page. The fairness bar: no auto-renewal you didn't ask for, no early-termination fee, cancel in one click, and billing support that responds. Acrobat Pro runs about $240 a year on its own, more like $300 to $340 a year with Adobe's AI Assistant add-on; one recovered hour on one large project pays for years of PageHawk.
Read your documents in a fraction of the time.
Start free, with real annotation. Rank, compare, redline, and ask your documents, all on your Mac, with nothing uploaded.