• Add as PDF to iTunes is a PDF Service workflow that, when installed, will be available in the PDF pop-up menu of the Print Dialog. It allows you to save the current document as a PDF file (from any application that uses the Print Dialog) and add it to iTunes.
• PDF Adder is an applet that will let you choose an existing PDF file and add it to iTunes. It can be installed in iTunes' Scripts folder for easy access from iTunes Script menu.
• PDF Dropper is a droplet that lets you add a PDF file to iTunes by drag-and-drop.

PDFs added to iTunes with these scripts will appear in the "Books" library and can sync with the iBooks app on iPhone or iPad.

Crarko's note makes no sense. How would sending a PDF to, say, Preview get a website or doc into iBooks?

Crarko's note makes no sense. How would sending a PDF to, say, Preview get a website or doc into iBooks?

I think he's just commenting that you can also add other apps to the PDF menu in the print dialog to quickly create and open a PDF in them.

Yes, he was. :)

• Many people will most likely need to create the PDF Services folder in: ~/Library/

• Once the alias is made, you can rename it and that name will appear in the PDF menu (for example, I renamed my alias to Save PDF to iTunes)

Thanks for the info - it works perfectly.

It may be worth mentioning that using the Print menu only works in Preview. If the PDF document is open in Adobe Reader, this hint will not work.

It worked fine for me in Safari, TextEdit, Mail, and even Word 2004.

I suspect the only thing it doesn't work with is Acrobat, because Adobe circumvents the normal Print to PDF functionality in general there.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Instapaper yet. Sure, it's ten dollars, but it's synced over the internet (which you'll likely have if you're also sitting at your computer to sync your device).

Bonus: in Safari 5, if you select Reader first (not always available) you can print the cleaned up version of the web-page for use in iBooks. The printer icon in the HUD-type control bezel in Reader works nicely too, giving you a full print dialog.

That is a bonus! I have only recently went MAC and am trying to convince my wife to do the same. She always complains about how IE crashes on her and I always tell her how nice Safari is, but she still won't switch. :(

Oh well...I'll add this to my list of perks to keep throwing out at her. :)

Just a reminder to a new user that it's spelled Mac, as in Macintosh.

MAC in all caps stands for Media Access Control address (MAC address) "a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces for communications on the physical network segment." (Thanks, wikipedia!)

Welcome to the Mac!

Unfortunately, in Snow Leopard any time you open the Print menu, OS X wakes up your printer, creating wear-and-tear as well as wasting energy as a laser printer's hot roller heats up. Someone at Apple probably thought it was a clever way to speed up printing. Since I save PDFs to files far more often than I print, I'd prefer an option to shut that pointless behavior off.

Even better would be a new File menu option called "Digital" that'd handle digital outputs such as all the PDF options and (hopefully soon) ePub. Why should we go through a print menu when we're not printing?

Unfortunately, in Snow Leopard any time you open the Print menu, OS X wakes up your printer, creating wear-and-tear as well as wasting energy as a laser printer's hot roller heats up.

This worked for me (thanks) but I'm wondering where iTunes is storing what I send to it using the technique described in this tip? I looked in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Books/PDFs/ where items imported directly into iTunes are kept but the files weren't there. Suggestions?

Edit: Sorry, meant to reply to the root. I'm having one of those days.

Um, no it doesn't. No printer suddenly warms up just from you bringing up the Print dialog box. You are completely and totally 100% wrong.

For me, simply printing to PDF and saving to:

~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Books gets you the same result.
Much faster, and easier for the average Joe to understand :)

Scott

This is fine if you want to keep a copy of the pdf around in your iTunes library.

For ocasional reading of something that you will not want to keep around, or for something that is already properly kept in the right place in your hard drive, I prefer not to let iTunes duplicate it somewhere (deep within its library hierarchy).
In this case, I just drag the file from the Finder right onto my iPod Touch icon on the left pane of iTunes window. I have been doing this for years with videos and it also works great with PDFs with iBooks and iOS4. So you might just save as PDF (to your Desktop, say), drag it onto your iPhone, and trash it when you're done.

Firstly, I don't have a books collection in the sidebar of iTunes 9.2; how do I get one!?

But also, if you only want the pdf on your iPhone/iPad, not in iTunes, or even if you don't use iTunes to sync (I don't, other than manually transferring music; I use MobileMe for OTA synching), iOS4 includes an easy way to get pdf's into iBook. Read any pdf on your phone/pad (eg if it was an e-mail attachment), and you'll get an "Open in iBook" option, which should have been called "Save in iBook", because even after you delete the original copy, it'll still be there in iBook.

This has completely replaced FileMagnet for me.

Mark

This works great and thanks for the tip of printing the "reader" view. That's awesome.

Does anyone know how to do a similar thing with the OS X Services menu? If I have a PDF open in Preview, I would like to have a "Save to iTunes" option in the Services menu. I tried to put an alias of iTunes in ~/Library/Services but it doesn't show up. This would allow me to bypass the need to "print" the PDF. Correct me if I'm wrong but do you not lose some of the PDF information when you print it? (e.g. resolution, hyperlinks, etc.)

This can also be enable entirely through the settings.

From the print dialog box click PDF -> Edit Menu -> + to add iTunes to your PDF menu. No library trickery required.

To the poster who doesn't have a books icon in their iTunes, you can enable it by checking the Books box under iTunes Settings -> General.