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?

@ArupRakshit Even after switching to this version? https://www.pdflabs.com/tools/pdftk-the-pdf-toolkit/pdftk_server-2.02-mac_osx-10.11-setup.pkg — Nathan Hazzard, Sep 07 '17 at 17:23

Baoshan Sheng · Accepted Answer · 2021-01-06T16:20:42.043

243

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).

edited Jan 06 '21 at 16:20

answered Oct 02 '16 at 07:26

Baoshan Sheng

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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and the creator said he'd update the website link immediately, but of course, the link on his website is still out of date. – Nathan Hazzard Oct 03 '16 at 14:24
Working on 10.12.2 – Dielson Sales Jan 31 '17 at 02:36
Working on 10.12.3. Very glad I found this. Thanks. – Geoff Feb 18 '17 at 19:58
Works on 10.12.5, too. You rock. – Randoms Jun 08 '17 at 18:41
Thank you so much - I've been chasing this down for two days after moving to a new dev machine – kylekeesling Jun 27 '17 at 14:40
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? – Thuyen Trinh Aug 30 '17 at 02:34
@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? – Baoshan Sheng Aug 30 '17 at 14:29
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](https://github.com/tiepvupsu/tiepvupsu.github.io/blob/master/assets/latex/book_CVX.pdf). I've found a [similar thread](https://superuser.com/questions/1033264/pdftk-flatten-loses-fillable-field-data) to this issue. I'm gonna move to that thread. Thanks a lot for the help! – Thuyen Trinh Aug 31 '17 at 04:05
Works on 10.13. – vcsjones Sep 27 '17 at 15:25
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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. – jvhang Nov 16 '17 at 17:23
Still a problem - I'll try to reinstall it now, see if this helps. – Tom Granot Jan 05 '18 at 17:51
anyone for windows, just in case – Theophilus Omoregbee Feb 15 '18 at 00:57
you're my absolute hero and savior of the last remaining strands of hair I had yet to pull out. – Individual11 Feb 22 '18 at 01:43
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Still relevant as of April 2018. – marcotama Apr 10 '18 at 00:33
Still relevant as of Septemer 2018, on Sierra 10.13.3 – adamors Sep 20 '18 at 11:59
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Also relevant for Mojave. – clifgriffin Oct 02 '18 at 17:26
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Still relevant as of October 2018, awesome! – 130nrd Oct 09 '18 at 07:32
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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. – AJ H Dec 07 '18 at 03:49
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Amazing! This is still the fix when it hangs indefinitely. Please update the link if you're reading this, maintainer!!! – electrichead Feb 01 '19 at 22:57
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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. – dgbt Mar 20 '19 at 10:57
Not working on MacOS Mojave 10.14.4 (18E226 beta build) – roblogic Mar 27 '19 at 12:11
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Working ok with MacOS Mojave 10.14.4 – kami4ka Apr 09 '19 at 07:45
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may 2019, still relevant :-) – Panthro May 08 '19 at 11:38
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) – tschloss Jun 18 '19 at 17:49
Thanks for the solution. Had the same problem when downloading from website. The link you gave worked perfectly fine. Thanks – Robert Jul 23 '19 at 14:09
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Can confirm: working in Catalina January 2020. Website is *still* out of date. – Ashton Wiersdorf Jan 23 '20 at 16:51
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Working in December 2020 on Big Sur – Geoff Dec 03 '20 at 23:12
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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. – LarsH Jan 05 '21 at 16:55
Confirming on Mojave Feb 2022 – jack kelly Feb 18 '22 at 18:30

PDFtk hanging on MacOS Sierra

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