Share-Save-As-PDF

Have you run across a long Web article that you’d rather read as a PDF? Or do you want a photo preserved in the PDF format?

Well, you’re in luck if you own an iPhone, Touch, iPad or iPad Pro. No need to buy an app for this purpose. Adding to the fun, the PDF feature will work not just with Safari but also with other apps using Apple’s Sharing feature, shown above. PDFization—ok, an ugly word—is easy:

1. Within Safari or another app, tap the Sharing icon at the top. It’s the upward-pointing arrow to the right of the Web address bar. You should then see a view similar to the one here.

2. Slide within Sharing until you see “Save PDF to iBooks.” You may first have to hit “More” and toggle in the option to display “Save PDF.” Once you’re there, tap on it!

3. From iBooks, via the Sharing feature within it (upward arrow!), you can print the PDF or e-mail it. And after receiving an email from yourself, you can open up the file with another PDF-capable app. Worked great this way with the Mantano e-reader for iOS.

The same Sharing feature will work with images from within Apple’s photo app.

Big thanks to the iDownload Blog for the above tip. Incidentally, an iDownload commenter says, “Dropbox can do this too, it takes more time and data but you can share and export everywhere.”

Question: Does desktop Safari include the PDF feature? I don’t own a Mac. Perhaps someone can educate me.

And a reminder: PDF is hardly the ideal format for long reading. But you may want to preserve a page’s appearance or have other reasons for using the “Save PDF” feature.

3 COMMENTS

  1. Another Mac option is to create an ePub. This is easily done in Pages (bundled with all new Macs) following this recipe: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202066
    I use this frequently to capture web articles, especially the serialized ones, that I want to assure continuing access to.
    It’s also possible to use the Mac’s automation tools to create ePubs. Here’s an example: http://www.macosxautomation.com/lion/epub/index.html

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