# Broken PDFs only on an Intel Mac (they are fine on M1 though)

**URL:** <https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/broken-pdfs-only-on-an-intel-mac-they-are-fine-on-m1-though/75927>\
**Category:** DEVONthink\
**Tags:** devonthink3\
**Created:** [June 6, 2023, 3:09am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/broken-pdfs-only-on-an-intel-mac-they-are-fine-on-m1-though/75927 "2023-06-06T03:09:35Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![juseong](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/43a26b/32.png) [@juseong](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/juseong)\
**Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 3:09am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/broken-pdfs-only-on-an-intel-mac-they-are-fine-on-m1-though/75927/1 "2023-06-06T03:09:36Z")

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I know that there has been an issue where some PDFs in DT3 become uneditable due to an Apple’s PDFkit bug. But I recently found out another issue related to that.

My databases stay synced via CloudKit both on my intel iMac and my Macbook Air M1. And interestingly, those uneditable PDFs on the intel Mac are _editable_ on my M1.  
Here are the screenshot of a PDF, which is uneditable on my intel iMac (light mode) but editable on my M1 (dark mode).

 ![Screenshot_2023-06-05 21.58.21_gxWz1v](https://devontech-discourse.s3.dualstack.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/original/3X/2/7/27be707de78402e2d5eb9c07f906c797eaaaf656.jpeg)  
 ![Screenshot_2023-06-05 18.24.27_gNCmDc](https://devontech-discourse.s3.dualstack.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/original/3X/0/a/0a54b729239bb621f30ae5fa1d9dde8d6e29e42e.jpeg)

What is even more interesting is that, when I edit those PDFs on my M1 and those PDFs are synced back to my intel Mac, the OCR layer is corrupted and the OCR is gone.

So maybe, the Apple’s PDFkit bug no longer exists on macs with Apple Silicon? I don’t know.  
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this.

Do you guys have any ideas?

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**Author:** ![BLUEFROG](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/bluefrog/32/135_2.png) [@BLUEFROG](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/BLUEFROG)\
**Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 4:23am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/broken-pdfs-only-on-an-intel-mac-they-are-fine-on-m1-though/75927/2 "2023-06-06T04:23:19Z")

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Please open a [support ticket](https://helpdesk.devontechnologies.com), compress that file, and attach it to the ticket. Thanks!

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**Author:** ![cgrunenberg](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/user_avatar/discourse.devontechnologies.com/cgrunenberg/32/7172_2.png) [@cgrunenberg](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/cgrunenberg)\
**Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 5:40am UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/broken-pdfs-only-on-an-intel-mac-they-are-fine-on-m1-though/75927/3 "2023-06-06T05:40:59Z")

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> [@juseong](#):
>
> My databases stay synced via CloudKit both on my intel iMac and my Macbook Air M1. And interestingly, those uneditable PDFs on the intel Mac are _editable_ on my M1.

In case of PDF documents not embedding fonts, not all required fonts are probably installed on the Intel machine.

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**Author:** ![juseong](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/43a26b/32.png) [@juseong](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/juseong)\
**Post date:** [June 6, 2023, 12:41pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/broken-pdfs-only-on-an-intel-mac-they-are-fine-on-m1-though/75927/4 "2023-06-06T12:41:08Z")

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I suspect that it has something to do with fonts since I never installed third party fonts either on my M1 or iMac. Moreover, there are numerous PDFs with the issue, not just a few.

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**Author:** ![system](https://devontech-discourse.s3.dualstack.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/uploads/original/2X/4/4e6ff70c96be2eb307a274d890bba8d71ba671b3.png) [@system](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/u/system)\
**Post date:** [June 5, 2026, 12:41pm UTC](https://discourse.devontechnologies.com/t/broken-pdfs-only-on-an-intel-mac-they-are-fine-on-m1-though/75927/5 "2026-06-05T12:41:42Z")

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