Best Subtitle Reader For Mac

It is also a great video player for mac with subtitles. Adw Posted Very useful application for adding subtitles to online video streaming services which do not provide them (such as Now TV, Sky's streaming website in the UK). Subtitle Workshop is considered to be the best free subtitle editing tool with a user-friendly interface. It well supports all the popular subtitle formats like ASS, DKS, SCR, SUB, etc. Besides, it allows you to create, edit and convert subtitles with ease.

Watching movies and TV shows on your computer is easy, but if you do a lot of downloading or ripping, you need a video player that's lightweight, can handle virtually anything you throw at it, whether it has subtitles, was encoded a long time ago with some obscure codec, or came in a strange file format. This week we're looking at five of the best desktop video players, based on your nominations.

Earlier in the week we asked you for your favorite desktop video players; the ones that can play anything, handle subtitles or other attached files, are lightweight and have interfaces that get out of the way of the video you're watching, and load and play your video quickly. You responded with tons of nominations, way more than we can feature, but we're back to highlight the five that rose to the top. Here they are, in no particular order:

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The polls are closed and the votes are counted! To see which of these five great players took the top spot, head over to our Hive Five Followup post to check out the winner, and the standings of the other five!

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PotPlayer (Windows)

Daum PotPlayer is our current pick for the best video player for Windows, and it's clear from the nominations round that a good number of you agree with us. PotPlayer is Windows only, but it's lightweight, free, and plays just about every file format, codec, media container, or type of file you throw its direction with ease. In addition to broad format support, PotPlayer also gives you a wealth of features and controls to get your video playback looking just the way you like, or appropriate for the type of screen you're watching your movies or TV shows on. It packs filters for noise reduction, deinterlacing, brightness, contrast, hue, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. You also get audio controls, tons of skins to customize the UI, and more.

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PotPlayer isn't perfect obviously—if you don't want all of those features and settings, it may all just be fluff to you. However, that degree of power for the low low price of absolutely free is a boon. PotPlayer is Windows only, which leaves Mac and Linux users out of the party, which is a bummer as well. Those of you who nominated it (including our own Whitson Gordon), noted that it can remember where you left off when you stop watching a video, and if you have a naming convention for TV shows, it will even pick up the next episode when one is finished. Read more about PotPlayer (and its other features) in its nomination thread here. You can download it here.

GOM Player (Windows)

GOM Player (Gretech Online Movie Player) is a Windows-only, free (and ad-supported) media player that packs comprehensive file type and video format support right out of the box. One of GOM Player's claims to fame is that if for some reason the player can't figure out how to play the video file you're trying to open, it'll go searching for the required components to play it on its own, without you having to sort it out or try a different player. It's also great at playing broken media files and partial downloads without dying. It too supports a skinnable, customizable interface that lets you change the UI to suit your own needs, and it sports some other useful advanced features (built-in screen and audio capture, video effects, and more.

GOM Player's ad-supported nature has miffed some users, but others don't seem to mind. After you close a GOM Player window or exit the application, a splash screen will hit you with ads before you close it. There are ways around it (available all over the web), and some anti-malware apps have been known to flag it as a potentially unwanted program. Nothing serious, but worth keeping in mind. Those of you who praised the app however highlighted its keyboard and mouse shortcuts, and noted that the app is configured so well by default that you can fire it up and use it right away, without needing a ton of other features in the way. Read more about it in its nomination thread here and here.

MPC-HC (Windows)

MPC-HC (Media Player Classic - Home Cinema) has been around for a good long time, born out of the stalled development status of the original MPC back in 2006. MPC-HC is a community effort that's largely fixed the bugs and issues with the original player, and added a ton of useful features in the process. MPC-HC is Windows only, and remarkably lightweight—in fact, in many cases, you can be up and playing video with MPC-HC before other slower media players bother loading. MPC-HC includes key commands to eliminate screen tearing when watching video, tons of video format and codec support (and can, most often, play anything you send its way without the need for additional codec packs), and there's even a 64-bit version available. It's completely free and open-source (or rather, GNU GPL licensed), and it's also available at a portable app.

MPC-HC isn't totally perfect—the fact that it's so lightweight means it's also lacking in some of the features that advanced users may want in their preferred video player, but that's nothing that can't be extended with plug-ins and external packs. Those of you who praised MPC-HC had tons to say about it, many of you offering video proof that it's better and faster than other players. Some common pluses involved its speed, the ability to handle media containers that other players just can't, a super minimal interface, and way more. You can read all about it —and more—in its nomination thread here.

XBMC (Windows/OS X/Linux)

XBMC is more than just a media center application (although it's definitely our favorite one of those, and the application at the heart of our favorite media center builds) - it's also a highly configurable player that you can use on a desktop or laptop to get a real media center experience on screens large and small. While it's obviously great on a big screen connected to an HTPC, it works just as well on your desktop connected to a large external display, or on your laptop's 15' display while you're on a train or plane. XBMC is open source, available for Windows, OSX, Linux, and a number of other platforms. XBMC can seriously play just about anything under the sun without worrying about file format, encoding, codecs, or even subtitles—if they're in the same place as your video, XBMC can handle it for you. XBMC can also retrieve useful information from the web for you, like movie and TV show information, ratings, episode order, and more, and it'll show all of it to you as you browse and select what you want to watch. It also handles music and streaming video beautifully, and is ridiculously customizable thanks to its wide variety of third-party plugins.

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Granted, XBMC is less of a 'player' than it is a whole media center suite, but you gave it the nominations required to earn a place in the top five. It's not perfect—if you're just looking to watch one thing or fire up a quick movie or download, you could pick lighter-weight applications or tools to do it. XBMC isn't the speediest app in the bunch, and it definitely makes itself at home on your system, but most of that is in order to deliver you it's incredible feature set. Those of you who nominated it praised its versatility and playback performance. Check out its nominations thread here.

VLC (Windows/OS X/Linux)

Ah VLC. VLC is a portable, open-source (or strictly, GNU LGPL licensed), cross-platform, free media player. It earned its reputation a long time ago as being one of the first 'play anything' media players to really take the web by storm. It's never been the only one, but it always had a reputation for making the process painless, being fast and flexible, and packing just enough features to make users happy while simultaneously giving advanced users the control they wanted over their videos and movies. It sports a number of optional third-party plugins to extend its features, supports skins and themes, and as its reputation implies, it really does play just about anything you try to put through it. It doesn't hurt that there's a build for it for just about every desktop OS and flavor of *nix you can think of, making it an excellent all-around player for any device or platform.

VLC isn't perfect, none of the players here are—its UI has gotten a bit cumbersome over the years, and as an application it's definitely fallen victim to its share of bloat. Some of the other players in the roundup are faster and more lightweight, while others offer more advanced features. Still, none of that matters if the player doesn't work on the platform you need to use it on, or if it has trouble with the video you want to watch. Those of you who praised VLC and nominated it pointed that out, and rallied behind it partially because it can play almost anything on almost anything. Cross platform, free, portable, it's an all around great player. Read more in its nominations thread here.

Vote: VLCWhy: so far it opens everything I throw at it. (Period)

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Now that you've seen the top five, it's time to put them to an all out vote to determine the Lifehacker community favorite:

The honorable mentions this week go out to three great alternative players who were tied for sixth in the nominations round, KMPlayer (Windows), MPlayerX (OS X), and SMPlayer (Windows/Linux). Each of the three have their own pros and cons, and more importantly their own devout fan followings.

Have something tosay about one of the contenders? Want to make the case for your personal favorite, even if it wasn't included in the list? Remember, the top five are based on your most popular nominations from the call for contenders thread from earlier in the week. Don't just complain about the top five, let us know what your preferred alternative is—and make your case for it—in the discussions below.

The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it didn't get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it's a bit of a popularity contest. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at tips+hivefive@lifehacker.com!

Best PDF reader for Mac

Read on for our detailed analysis of each app

While it's easy to open PDF's these days, with most browsers and even office suites offering some form of built-in PDF reader, often it's not enough to simply be able to read a PDF.

The Portable Document Forum (PDF) was originally developed by Adobe in the early 1990's, as a way to share documents between users with different operating systems. Additionally, because it couldn't be edited, that meant the document's integrity could be preserved.

The problem for users nowadays is that PDF's now commonly form user agreements which require signing. On top of this, collaborative working means that having to convert PDF files into native documents for editing and then back again just isn't practical.

Therefore it helps to have a PDF reader that has extended features for editing and e-signing.

However, the prevalence of Windows PCs means that sometimes Apple Macs can seem left behind, especially with the continued development of macOS as an app platform.

We've therefore highlighted the best in PDF readers for the Mac, not least where additional features will allow macOS users to do more with the PDF files they have.

We’ve also highlighted the best free PDF readers

Want your company or services to be added to this buyer’s guide? Please email your request to desire.athow@futurenet.com with the URL of the buying guide in the subject line.

1. PDF Reader Premium

PDF Reader Premium

User-friendly interface

Cloud integration

Available to download directly from the Mac App Store, PDF Reader Premium from Kdan Software is one of the most powerful and popular PDF management tools for Apple computers. It functions as a file manager, file converter and page editor.

With the software, you can easily edit PDF files by adding freehand writing, text boxes, sticky notes, hyperlinks and annotations. And to ensure that important documents don’t get mixed up, you’re able to label them by adding tags and color-coding. What’s more, to keep track of all your saved files, you can make use of an import history feature.

The app works with iCloud, too, meaning you can back up and access saved documents on an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. There’s even compatibility with Dropbox, so you can easily import documents from devices that run on other operating systems.

Overall, you should find the app smooth and quick to use. It’s powered by a proprietary rendering engine, which aims to ensure that large files are processed and loaded without any lag. Currently, the app costs $59.99 (£42), although there is a free version that you can try before you purchase.

2. Apple Books

Apple Books

Free to use

Organize PDFs into collections

Apple Books is more than just an app for reading novels-at the heart of Apple Books is the ability to read and organize PDF files. The only stipulations is that they must be DRM-free, which makes it somewhat limited by comparison to some of the more dedicated readers featured here.

However, as a simple PDF reader Apple Books-formerly iBooks-does the job exactly as it needs to. Better still, it's bundled for free with iOS 12 so if you're already up to date with the upgrade cycle then the chances are you already have it but perhaps didn't know it can be used to read PDFs as well as novels and a range of document formats.

The one limitation Apple Books has that some of the other apps here don't have is that it can't be used for editing, anotating, or creating PDF files. However, as we're only focused on PDF readers in this piece Apple Books is still a wworthy and necessary inclusion. Even still, there are other apps available in the App Store that can provide expanded functions for manipulating PDF files, if required.

3. Adobe Acrobat Pro DC

Adobe’s own heavyweight offering

Acrobat Standard DC

$12.99

Acrobat Pro DC

$14.99

Many powerful features

Track changes to a PDF

Adobe not only invented the trusty PDF document in the first place, but the company has also created some top-notch apps to manage them. Acrobat Pro DC is a great example, and it supports both Windows and Mac devices. The software allows you to create, edit and convert PDF files with ease.

Whether you happen to be using a desktop PC, laptop or tablet, Acrobat lets you turn any paper document into a PDF file. You just have to snap a photo of the piece of paper and upload it to Adobe’s platform, then you can subsequently edit it. Acrobat also lets you convert PDFs into any Microsoft Office file format, preserving all fonts and formatting.

Thanks to integration with Excel, you can even edit data in scanned tables, making it easier to edit and analyze financial data. Just like Kdan Software’s PDF Reader Premium, you can keep track of the changes you and your colleagues make to PDF documents.

Acrobat is capable of detecting the differences between two versions of the same PDF, too. You can sign up for a business plan for £15.17 a month, which gives you the option to add more team members in the future.

4. PDF Expert

PDF Expert

Easy-to-use dashboard

Works with iPad Pro and Apple Pencil

PDF Expert is a robust and easy-to-use solution for managing business documents. And with a four-and-a-half star rating in the Mac App Store, it seems to be one of the most popular options out there for Mac users. The software gives you the ability to read, edit and annotate PDF documents from a central dashboard.

One of the great things about PDF Expert is that it’s fast and slick to use. Thanks to smooth scrolling and a fast search function, you can quickly find what you’re looking for across multiple PDF files.

This app lets you edit images, text and links, plus the software can automatically detect fonts, size and opacity of writing. Plus, if you happen to own an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, you can add annotations and notes to documents on-the-go. Like most PDF apps out there, PDF Expert comes with a free download option, but the app for iPad/iPhone costs $9.99 and includes in-app purchases, while the version for Mac costs around $100 for 3 Macs.

Best Subtitle Editor Mac 2017

5. PDFelement

PDFelement 6 for Mac

Multiple editing options

Subtitle Reader For Pc

Extensive fonts

Wondershare has developed a Mac version of the popular PDFelement app, which is positioned as an easy way to edit PDF documents. It gives you the tools to add text, images, links, backgrounds, watermarks, headers and footers to PDF documents.

The software provides an extensive selection of PDF editing options. Not only can you add text to documents, but you can also tweak the font type, size and style. There’s the ability to rotate, extract, replace and crop images too.

PDFelement is a great option for teams in particular, with powerful collaborative capabilities, letting you add sticky notes, comments, text boxes and more. And you can use the tool to fill out business documents such as contracts and tax forms. PDFelement retails at $49.95 for the standard package, but for all features you will need the Professional package priced at $79.99.

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