PDFtk hanging on MacOS Sierra

Question

PDFtk Server seems to be hanging indefinitely on MacOS Sierra. Looks similar to the problem it had on El Capitan.

I'm trying to run this command:

pdftk test1.pdf test2.pdf cat output out.pdf verbose

And am getting no output, just an indefinite hang. Same with every other command I've tried.

PDFtk --version:

pdftk 2.02 a Handy Tool for Manipulating PDF Documents Copyright (c) 2003-13 Steward and Lee, LLC - Please Visit: www.pdftk.com This is free software; see the source code for copying conditions. There is NO warranty, not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Has anyone managed to find any workarounds for this?

Rudman

@ArupRakshit Even after switching to this version? pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/… – Rudman

Answer 1

Use this version:

https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg

Although it’s prepared for El Capitan (10.11), it also works on Big Sur (11), Catalina (10.15), Mojave (10.14), High Sierra (10.13), and Sierra (10.12).

Jen

Ah, thank you so much! I actually found this link previously, and the creator said he'd update the website link immediately, but of course, the link on his website is still out of date. – Rudman

Working on 10.12.2 – Systaltic

Working on 10.12.3. Very glad I found this. Thanks. – Shelly

Works on 10.12.5, too. You rock. – Howenstein

Thank you so much - I've been chasing this down for two days after moving to a new dev machine – Bothwell

My mac is 10.12.6 already. It turns out after using the version suggested above, the hanging issue disappears. However, the output file goes blank when opening it despite that it displays correctly in "preview" mode. Has anyone suffered the same problem? – Casmey

@TrinhNgocThuyen Sounds like a caching issue. Post your command may be helpful. Plus, could you verify the generated file on another machine and see if the file is good or broken? – Jen

After trying with various pdf files, I came to realize that the issue happens only to files that were previously modified by the Preview app, like this one. I've found a similar thread to this issue. I'm gonna move to that thread. Thanks a lot for the help! – Casmey

Works on 10.13. – Raseta

I, too, lost hours to the outdated documentation so I emailed the creator to ask him to please update the link. Perhaps he should move his site to GitHub too so we can help him out by doing PRs on the documentation. – Concur

Still a problem - I'll try to reinstall it now, see if this helps. – Hamill

anyone for windows, just in case – Guardian

you're my absolute hero and savior of the last remaining strands of hair I had yet to pull out. – Porous

Still relevant as of April 2018. – Frisco

Still relevant as of Septemer 2018, on Sierra 10.13.3 – Stambul

Also relevant for Mojave. – Hyperaesthesia

Works on my macOS 10.14. And it's surprising that every user since Oct 2016 needs to visit the answer in order to make it work. – Cosec

Amazing! This is still the fix when it hangs indefinitely. Please update the link if you're reading this, maintainer!!! – Lehmbruck

saved my day. Still relevant on macOS 10.14. after the brew installer is broken and the official website link is not working / hanging - it's the final solution to get a quick pdf joiner for Vector based pdfs. – Colecolectomy

Not working on MacOS Mojave 10.14.4 (18E226 beta build) – Addressograph

Working ok with MacOS Mojave 10.14.4 – Dyedinthewool

Not working on one of my two installations: the "burst" action produces the correct files, but the files seem to be broken. Neither QL, nor Preview can open it. (On my notebook everything works great) – Archeology

Thanks for the solution. Had the same problem when downloading from website. The link you gave worked perfectly fine. Thanks – Elias

Can confirm: working in Catalina January 2020. Website is still out of date. – Jenkins

Working in December 2020 on Big Sur – Shelly

Thanks for this answer. I too have emailed the developer asking (politely, because he isn't obligated to provide this tool at all!) to update the web page. – Revolutionize

Confirming on Mojave Feb 2022 – Legendary