Technologies

It’s free and easy to combine multiple PDFs on Windows or Mac. Here’s how

You don’t need to pay for Adobe Acrobat to combine your PDFs into one document. Here are two ways to do it.

Merging multiple PDFs together shouldn’t be stressful. Sure, working with lots of different documents can get tricky, but there are a few easy ways you can combine PDFs together, whether you’re constructing a portfolio or just looking for ways to cut down on file clutter.

One of the most popular tools for combining PDFs is Adobe Acrobat, but that software will cost you at least $13 a month for a subscription. Luckily, there are a few other ways you can combine PDFs for free, no matter what type of computer you’re using.

Here’s how to combine multiple PDFs for free, whether you’re working on a Windows device or a Mac. (We’ve also got tricks for how to easily sign PDFs, and four free apps for better PDF editing.)

How do I combine PDFs on Windows?

If you’re using Windows, you’ll need a third-party app to help you combine PDFs. We tested a few, and found a solid option in PDF Merger & Splitter by AnywaySoft. It’s available through the Microsoft Store for free.

Here’s how to merge PDFs with this app:

Open the app, and choose Merge or Split. If you just need to merge two documents without changing the order of any pages, choose Merge.
Click Add PDFs, and select however many you want to merge. You have the option to move them up or down, or sort by name. You can also preview what the merged documents will look like.
Once your documents are in order, hit Merge, and name and save the new merged PDF.

If you want to customize your merger a bit more, such as by changing the order of pages or only adding in certain parts of each PDF, you’ll have to split them first. To do that, select Split when the app opens. Choose which individual pages or page ranges you want to pull out. You can save them as one PDF, or as individual PDFs.

Read more: How to download Windows 11 free

How do I combine PDFs on Mac?

On Mac, you can combine PDFs with a built-in tool found in Preview, according to Apple Support.

Here’s how to combine two PDFs:

Open a PDF in Preview.
Go to View > Thumbnails. You’ll see page thumbnails in the sidebar.
Select the thumbnail for the page where you want to insert the other document.
Click Edit > Insert > Page from File (if the Page from File selection is dimmed so you can’t click it, make sure that the file you have open is a PDF. Some encrypted PDF documents can’t be merged, according to Apple. Check the permissions of a PDF by choosing Tools > Show Inspector, then click the lock icon).
Select the PDF you want to add, and click Open.
Choose File > Export as PDF to save.

And here’s how to combine parts of one PDF with another PDF:

Open the PDFs you want to combine in Preview.
In each document, choose View > Thumbnails. You’ll see page thumbnails in the sidebar.
Press and hold the Command key, and select the page thumbnails that you want to add to the other document. Let go of the Command key.
Drag the selected thumbnails to the sidebar of the other PDF, and release where you want them to go. (If you have macOS Sierra or earlier, drag the thumbnails directly into a thumbnail in the other PDF.)

You can rotate, delete and reorder pages from the thumbnail section, too.

Now that you’ve mastered combining all of your PDFs, make sure to check out other hidden Mac tips and secret Windows 10 tips, and how to download Windows 10, Windows 11 and Microsoft Office apps for free.

Technologies

Major Amazon Prime Benefit Faces Crackdown Next Month

Amazon plans to end its Prime Invitee program soon. Here’s how this could affect your deliveries.

If you’re using a friend or family member’s free Prime shipping and you don’t live in the same household, you might need to pay another monthly cost. According to Amazon’s updated customer service page, first reported by The Verge, the retail giant is ending its Prime Invitee benefit-sharing program on Oct. 1.

Amazon isn’t the first company to prevent membership sharing between family and friends. The e-commerce giant is just the latest to follow Netflix’s account-sharing crackdown. We also saw it done with Disney-Plus last year. While it’s unclear whether this change will work for Amazon, Netflix gained over 200,000 subscribers following its policy change.

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Amazon’s Prime Invitee program is being replaced by Amazon Family, which includes many of the same benefits. However, Amazon Family only works for up to two adults and four children living in the same «primary residential address» — a shared home. While you’ll still be able to use free shipping to send gifts elsewhere, your Prime Invitees will no longer be able to use the perk.

Read more: More Than Just Free Shipping: Here Are 19 Underrated Amazon Prime Perks

What this means for you

If you’re the beneficiary of someone else’s Prime Invitee benefits, you have one more month to take advantage of the current program before the changes take effect.

Starting in October, you’ll have to get your own Amazon Prime subscription in order to benefit from the company’s free shipping program. First-time subscribers get a year of Prime membership for $15, but you’ll be stuck shelling out $15 a month to maintain your subscription thereafter.

Read more: Your Free Pass to Prime Day Deals (No Membership Required)

Why is Amazon ending the Prime Invitee program?

This move follows shortly after Reuters reported that Amazon’s Prime account signups slowed down recently despite an extended July Prime Day event. While the company reported blowout sales numbers, new Prime subscriptions didn’t meet internal expectations. In the US, they fell short of last year’s signup metrics.

According to Reuters, Amazon registered 5.4 million US signups over the 21-day run-up to the Prime Day event, around 116,000 fewer than during the same period in 2024, and 106,000 below the company’s own goal, a roughly 2% decline in both metrics.

By forcing separate households to have their own subscriptions, Amazon could be looking to attract more Prime accounts after previously failing to do so.

The new Amazon Family program (previously known as Amazon Household) offers Prime benefits to up to two adults and four children in a single home, including free shipping, Prime Video, Prime Reading, Amazon Music and more. The subscription also includes benefits for certain third-party companies, such as GrubHub.

Impulse Buys Under $25 on Amazon That Make Surprisingly Great Gifts

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Technologies

Premiere Pro for Free: How Adobe’s New iPhone App Will Let You Edit Videos at No Cost

Adobe Premiere users will only have to pay for extra AI credits and cloud storage.

Thanks to social media apps like TikTok and Instagram, everyone is an video editor these days. And soon you won’t have to sit down at a laptop to use one of the most popular video editors on the market.

Adobe announced on Thursday that it is releasing a new video editing iPhone app named Premiere on Sept. 30. You can preorder the app now in the Apple App Store, with an Android app currently in development.

The iOS app should feel familiar to Premiere users, with its multitrack timeline and preview screen. The app can be used for all your usual video editing: trimming clips, overlaying audio and adding synchronized captions. You can also use Adobe’s new voice-to-sound effects tool and record voiceovers.

Premiere should be a big upgrade for Adobe users who have only used Premiere Rush, a barebones version of its video editor. As more content creators become mobile-first, Adobe is hoping to draw them in with revamped mobile apps.

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You should be able to use the Premiere iOS app for free. Adobe says you may need to pay for generative AI credits and additional storage, like through Adobe Creative Cloud, though more pricing info is expected closer to the Sept. 30 launch. This is very different from the desktop app, which starts at $23 per month.

A truly free Premiere mobile app would be a win for content creators, especially for anyone who wants to explore editing in Premiere but doesn’t want to pay for another subscription.

In an era of mobile-first content creators, tech companies have raced to introduce user-friendly mobile editing apps. TikTok creators use the ever-popular CapCut, with Meta adding its own contribution, a new app called Edits. Adobe has long been the industry standard for professional content creation and editing, but its mobile offerings were usually less feature-packed versions of its flagship programs under different names.

That changed this year as Adobe released true mobile versions of Photoshop and Firefly AI. The new Premiere app helps Adobe make a competitive entrance in a crowded market, in addition to giving loyal Adobe users a new way to access their tools on the go.

Adobe has also been focused on integrating generative AI into its software. Premiere Pro got its first-ever AI tool, generative extend, which uses AI to add a few extra seconds to clips you upload. It’s meant to help smooth transitions between clips, particularly when you might have turned off the recording a smidge too early and need a few extra seconds of film.

AI is a contentious issue among creators, with some voicing concerns over the training and deployment of AI models. Adobe’s Firefly AI has been fully integrated into the new Premiere iOS app, though the company’s AI guidelines state that it never trains on customer data and that its AI-generated content is commercially safe.

For more, check out what to know about the iOS and Android Photoshop apps and good alternatives to CapCut.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Saturday, Sept. 6

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Sept. 6.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s Mini Crossword is extra-long, as usual on Saturdays. And a couple of the clues were stumpers! Need answers? Read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.