How can I combine multiple PDFs using the command line?

Question

Is there a quick one-liner to combine multiple pdfs into one?

I know it can be done using Preview.app

Answer 1

Have a look at "Combining PDF files on the command line in OSX" in Joining PDF Files in OS X From the Command Line.

It turns out that from Tiger onwards, OSX ships with a Python script that does exactly what you need. The script is already executable, and Python is pre-installed on OS X, so all you need to do to run it is opening the Terminal and typing

   "/System/Library/Automator/Combine PDF Pages.action/Contents/Resources/join.py" -o PATH/TO/YOUR/MERGED/FILE.pdf /PATH/TO/ORIGINAL/1.pdf /PATH/TO/ANOTHER/2.pdf /PATH/TO/A/WHOLE/DIR/*.pdf

Also on the linked page it suggests making a symbolic link for the join.py file to make typing easier however they omitted the -s in ln -s ... ..., and without it, a hard link is created. Probably wouldn't matter, however though I'd mention it.

Newer MacOS versions

On newer versions of MacOS the command is

"/System/Library/Automator/Combine PDF Pages.action/Contents/MacOS/join" -o PATH/TO/YOUR/MERGED/FILE.pdf /PATH/TO/ORIGINAL/1.pdf /PATH/TO/ANOTHER/2.pdf /PATH/TO/A/WHOLE/DIR/*.pdf

Answer 2

Just install Ghostscript using Brew with command:

brew install gs

Then run command with all files listed:

gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=merged.pdf source1.pdf source2.pdf source3.pdf

Answer 3

I found Coherent PDF Command Line Tool to be the best option. It is free (for non-commercial use), very fast, lossless, and does not mess up orientation or hyperlinks as some other solutions did. Format is:

cpdf file1.pdf file2.pdf -o output.pdf

Answer 4

You can use pdfunite which is part of the Poppler package and can be installed via Homebrew (brew install poppler).

pdfunite 1.pdf 2.pdf 3.pdf combined_pdf.pdf

Merges the three PDF files into combined_pdf.pdf.

Answer 5

building on on @Bartosz Petryński's nice answer, we can make own minimal cpdf utility on top of GhostScript:

brew install gs

cpdf () { 
  gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile="$1" "${@:2}"
}

then use it like this:

cpdf merged.pdf file1.pdf file2.pdf file3.pdf

Answer 6

Apple's python script in the Automator action is very slow, as it uses CoreGraphics's CGPDFDocument APIs, rather than the newer PDFKit framework. It also imports the entire CoreGraphics library, rather than just the required APIs.

An alternative, faster python script, can be found here:

This script also adds a Table of Contents to the PDF, listing each component file (and merging existing ToCs), which Apple's does not.

It can be used on the command line (with PDF filenames as arguments), or in an Automator shell script action, to make a Quick Action/Service for the Finder.

Answer 7

FWIW, I've written a quick little program that lets you do this without having to rely on external dependencies like the system python and such. On github here: pdfmerge and pretty simple to use, can either pass it a list of PDF files to merge with pdfmerge in1.pdf in2.pdf ... out.pdf, pass it a list of files to merge in a text file like pdfmerge infileslist.txt out.pdf or just do the current directory in ABC order with pdfmerge out.pdf. I wrote it as a learning project, so free and open and you can get the latest binary from the releases tab on github.

Answer 8

If you want to be able to combine multiple pages onto one sheet, I wrote a tool that can do that (or just a normal combine). Mac PDFNUp

You can get the binary download on the releases button.

Usage: pdfnup --output <out> --nup 1/2/6 <filename>

Answer 9

Homebrew Formulae

brew cask install combine-pdfs

This is a GUI app that supports merging many pdf's. very powerful.

Answer 10

not exactly a commandline utility, adobe now offers an online utility to do just that:

https://www.adobe.com/acrobat/online/merge-pdf.html