Preview for Mac Is Finally Available on IPhone.
Your iPhone is essentially a pocket computer, so it’s only logical that Apple treats it as such. With the release of iOS 26 , both iPhone and iPad received a new app that had been a Mac exclusive for over 20 years: Preview.
What can you do with the Preview app?
Like macOS, the Preview app for iOS and iPadOS is primarily designed for viewing PDFs and other documents. When you first open the app, you’ll see options to create a new document or scan an existing one using your iPhone’s camera.
However, in most cases, you probably have an existing document you want to open with Preview. In this case, you’ll find the corresponding options at the bottom of the start page. This is Preview’s integration with the Files app: you can preview documents from Files and open any of them with Preview.
Once you’ve uploaded a document, you can view it, add comments, markup, and edit it. If you need to fill in the document with your own information, you can use AutoFill to automatically enter contact information and other saved data. You can add a signature, and if you’re using an iPad, you can draw on the document with an Apple Pencil. Otherwise, you can mark up with your finger.
You can also export documents from the Preview app. Supported file formats include HEIDC, JPEG, PDF, PNG, and TIFF. As with Preview on macOS, a number of export settings are available, such as resolution, text embedding, and saving images as JPEGs.
While there are many features, I believe the main advantage of this Preview mobile app is its ability to work with legal documents. If you need to sign an important document, you can quickly scan it into the app, add your signature, fill in the required information (perhaps automatically using the autofill feature), and then email the document without spending time on your computer.
The iOS preview is still in development.
If you look at Preview’s App Store page , you’ll see mixed reviews. After using the app for a while, I understand why. Preview for iOS is definitely still a work in progress and needs some important updates.
The biggest quirks I immediately noticed were that the main menu was overloaded, and the Files integration felt more like a glitch than a separate window. Speaking of Files, Apple decided to open documents in the app in Preview mode. At first glance, this seems like a good idea, until you experience it firsthand on both iOS and iPadOS. The unexpected shutdown of the Files app is annoying, especially if you’re used to viewing documents directly there.
A workaround is to not use the Files app to open files. Use the Files integration with Preview to stay in the same app. It’s intuitive. You can also uninstall the Preview app, but that’s a bit of a shame considering it’s such a major update for iOS and iPadOS 26.
Furthermore, when selecting “Markup,” there’s no clear way to exit without first closing the entire app. As far as I know, the only way to do this is to click the three dots in the upper-right corner, then click “Markup” to exit that menu. The “Markup” button should remain on the screen, as it does in macOS, so its removal is obvious.