How to add or edit a PDF’s table of contents

A PDF’s table of contents, also called its bookmarks or outline, is the clickable list in a PDF app’s sidebar. Scans and many exports have none, and merged files often end up with clumsy ones. Sheafly lets you add, rename, reorder, indent and remove entries on a Mac, iPhone, or iPad, and can print the result as a linked contents page at the front of the file. It works on a single PDF as well as a merge.

Mac, iPhone & iPad
About 3 minutes
Works offline
Updated for Sheafly 2.1

Quick answer

Open the PDF in Sheafly. One file is enough.
Open the editor: Inspector › Edit TOC on Mac, Edit TOC in the iPad inspector, or Table of Contents on iPhone.
Use + to add an entry (a title and a page), − to remove one, and Indent / Outdent to nest them (⌘] / ⌘[ on Mac).
Optionally turn on Settings › General › Add a Table of Contents page, before or after editing. Then choose Save Merged PDF.

Add bookmarks to a PDF that has none (Mac)

Our example is a six-page Seed Library Catalog with a section per plant family and no bookmarks at all.

Open the PDF in Sheafly and choose Inspector › Edit TOC. Even a PDF without bookmarks gets one top-level entry named after the document.
Add an entry. Select the row it should follow and click +. Type a title and set the page. Pages are counted in the finished file, and the sheet shows the total. Then click Add. The entry links to the top of that page.

The Add TOC Entry sheet in Sheafly for Mac with the title Beans and peas and page 1 of 6 — Adding a bookmark: a title and the page it should open.

Nest the entries. Select an entry and press ⌘] to indent it under the entry above, or ⌘[ to outdent. Right-click an entry for Rename, Add Entry After, Indent, Outdent, and Remove.

Sheafly for Mac showing the Seed Library Catalog with six hand-added bookmarks, from Beans and peas on page 1 to Tomatoes and peppers on page 6, indented under the document entry — Six hand-added bookmarks, nested under the document’s own entry.

Optional: add a printed contents page. Turn on Settings › General › Add a Table of Contents page. It goes in front of page 1, so every page moves back by one. The entries you added move with their pages.
Save with Save Merged PDF.

The same six hand-added bookmarks after turning on the Table of Contents page, now pointing at pages 2 to 7 — After turning on the contents page: “Beans and peas” now opens page 2, still the first page of the catalogue.

The generated Table of Contents page of the saved Seed Library Catalog listing six plant families with page numbers 2 to 7 — The contents page in the saved file, rendered from the output. Each line links to its page.

Clean up bookmarks after a merge

When we merged four handbook chapters (see how to merge PDFs and keep bookmarks), each chapter’s own outline began with an entry repeating the chapter title, so the combined outline read 1. Welcome and Orientation › Welcome and Orientation › About the garden. Two clicks per chapter fixed it:

Select the duplicate entry in Edit TOC.
Click − (or press Delete). The entry goes, and its sub-entries move up one level, so nothing below it is lost.

Sheafly for Mac Edit TOC tab with a duplicated Welcome and Orientation entry selected beneath the 1. Welcome and Orientation chapter entry — Before: each chapter’s title appears twice.

Sheafly for Mac Edit TOC tab after cleanup, with sections such as About the garden and Plot guidelines directly under each numbered chapter — After: one entry per chapter, with its sections directly beneath.

To rename an entry, select it and press Return. To rename a whole document’s top-level entry, double-click its title in the document list. Restore Automatic TOC throws away every edit and starts again. If you’d rather not get the automatic entries at all, turn off Add a top-level entry for each document or Carry over each document’s own entries in Settings › General.

Change settings without losing your edits

You don’t have to settle every option before you start editing. After cleaning up the handbook, we turned on the Table of Contents page, Flatten into the page, and page-number footers. Every edit stayed. The page numbers moved by one to make room for the new contents page.

Sheafly for Mac Edit TOC tab after turning on the Table of Contents page: the cleaned-up outline is unchanged and 1. Welcome and Orientation now starts on page 2 — The same cleaned-up outline after changing Settings. Chapter 1 now starts on page 2.

Entries a setting hides come back as you left them. Turn off Carry over each document’s own entries and on again, and your renames and removals are still there.
Removed entries stay removed, and entries you added keep pointing at the same page of your document.
What does start afresh: adding, removing, or reordering documents, or choosing different pages. Restore Automatic TOC also discards your edits on purpose.

Edit bookmarks on iPhone or iPad

On iPhone, tap Table of Contents under Merged PDF. It’s the same editor: tap an entry to select it, use + and − at the bottom, and touch and hold an entry for Rename, Add Entry After, Indent, Outdent, and Remove. Tapping a document and then TOC Entries shows just that document’s part of the outline.

Sheafly’s Table of Contents editor on iPhone showing the cleaned-up handbook outline with page numbers and add, remove and Restore Automatic TOC controls — The TOC editor on iPhone after removing the duplicates.

The same iPhone Table of Contents editor after turning on the contents page, flattening and footers in Settings, with the edits intact and chapter 1 now on page 2 — After changing Settings: edits intact, pages shifted by one.

Sheafly’s viewer on iPhone on page 3 of 8 of the saved handbook after tapping the Seasonal fees bookmark — Tapping “Seasonal fees” in the saved file jumps straight to page 3.

On iPad, the editor is the Edit TOC tab of the inspector column, right beside the document list.

Sheafly on iPad in landscape with the handbook’s four chapters listed on the left and the Edit TOC inspector on the right showing the cleaned-up outline starting on page 2 — iPad: the document list and the TOC editor side by side.

Split a PDF by its table of contents

Bookmarks work in the other direction too. File › Split PDF by TOC on Mac, or Document Actions › Split PDF by TOC on iPhone and iPad, turns one PDF into a separate PDF for each top-level entry (plus a Front Matter file for any pages before the first entry), and each chapter keeps its nested bookmarks.

Limits

Hand-added entries open the top of a page. They can’t point to a spot halfway down a page. Bookmarks carried over from a source file keep their exact position.
Edits belong to this set of documents. They survive changes in Settings, but changing which documents or pages are combined resets them. To come back later, save the whole setup as a session with File › Save Session on Mac. On iPhone and iPad, in-progress sessions are kept in the library. Saved sessions remember your edits too.
Sheafly edits the outline, not the page text. The printed contents page is generated for you, but it isn’t a full PDF text editor.

Try it on your own files

Sheafly is a one-time purchase on the App Store, and one purchase covers Mac, iPhone, and iPad. No subscription, no account, and your documents never leave your device.

Requires macOS 14 or later, or iOS/iPadOS 17 or later.