A small macOS app that combines files of almost any format into one PDF. Drop files or folders on the window or the Dock icon, drag them into order, and click Combine.
- Download
Binder.dmgfrom the latest release. It runs on macOS 13 or later, on Apple silicon and Intel Macs. - Open it and drag Binder into Applications.
- The app isn't notarized by Apple, so macOS blocks it the first time:
- macOS 15 or later: open Binder, click Done on the warning, then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down and click Open Anyway.
- macOS 13 or 14: Control-click Binder in Applications, choose Open, then click Open.
| Input | How it becomes pages |
|---|---|
| Pages copied as they are | |
| Images (JPG, PNG, HEIC, TIFF, SVG) | One Letter page each; multi-page TIFFs give one page per frame |
| Word, Excel, PowerPoint (including .doc, .xls, .ppt) | Converted with LibreOffice if installed; otherwise with macOS's built-in Office previewer. Every sheet and every slide is included, slides at their own page size |
| OpenDocument (.odt, .ods, .odp) | LibreOffice if installed. Without it, .odt still converts; .ods and .odp need LibreOffice, since macOS cannot read them |
| Pages, Keynote, Numbers | Exported by the app itself through AppleScript |
| RTF, HTML, text, Markdown, code | Split across Letter pages |
| Anything else | A Quick Look preview of the first page |
The output has one bookmark per source file. When it finishes, Binder reveals the PDF in Finder.
Binder suggests a name for the combined PDF from the input file names, using SmolLM2 360M running locally through llama.cpp. Without them it falls back to a simple rule based on the file names.
brew install llama.cpp
mkdir -p ~/"Library/Application Support/Binder/Models"
curl -L -o ~/"Library/Application Support/Binder/Models/SmolLM2-360M-Instruct-Q4_K_M.gguf" \
https://huggingface.co/bartowski/SmolLM2-360M-Instruct-GGUF/resolve/main/SmolLM2-360M-Instruct-Q4_K_M.ggufOnly needed to work on Binder itself. Requires macOS 13 or later, and Xcode or its command line tools.
./build.sh # builds and installs to ~/Applications
./build.sh --no-install # builds to build/Binder.app onlyThere is also a command line mode:
Binder.app/Contents/MacOS/Binder --combine out.pdf file1 file2 ...