# Ask a Document — Ask questions about a PDF on Mac, privately

Ask a question about PDFs, scans or documents and get an answer from what they say. Part of OneMacTools, 151 private tools in one native Mac app (macOS 26 or later); category: On-device AI. Runs on your Mac; nothing is uploaded.

Type a question like "When is the payment due?" and OneMacTools finds the most relevant passages and answers with Apple Intelligence's on-device model. The answer is saved with the passages it came from, so you can check it.

Page: https://www.onemactools.com/tools/ask-a-document · Download: https://www.onemactools.com/download · Pricing: https://www.onemactools.com/pricing

## How to use it
1. **Add the documents.** Drop one or more PDFs, scans, photos of pages, Word documents or text files onto Ask a Document. You can ask across several files at once.
2. **Type your question.** In the right-hand panel, type it into Question, for example “When is the payment due?” or “What is the notice period?”.
3. **Click Ask.** OneMacTools reads the files, using on-device text recognition for scans, and finds the passages that best match the words in your question. Apple Intelligence's on-device model then answers from those passages only.
4. **Read the answer.** A short version of the answer appears in the window. The full answer is saved as a Markdown file named after your question, in a new dated folder in Downloads › OneMacTools.
5. **Check the source.** Open the file with the Preview (eye) button. The passages the answer came from are quoted underneath it, with the name of each file, so you can confirm it before you act on it.

## Options
- **Question:** The question you want answered; the tool won't run without one. Passages are found by matching the words in your question, so use the words the document is likely to use, such as “termination” or “refund”.

## Tips
- Ask one specific thing at a time. “What is the late payment fee?” works better than “Tell me about payments”.
- Use the document's own wording. “Notice period” finds a clause that says “notice period” more reliably than “how long before I can leave”.
- For anything important, such as a date, an amount or a legal term, read the quoted passages under the answer. The answer is only as good as those excerpts, and AI can misread them.
- If the answer says the excerpts don't contain it, rephrase with different words or ask about a narrower point.
- For an overview rather than one fact, use Summarize instead.
- Only the first 60 pages of each PDF are read. For a longer report, take out the section you need with Extract Pages first.

## Questions
**How do I ask questions about a PDF on a Mac without uploading it?**
Drop the PDF onto Ask a Document, type your question in the right-hand panel and click Ask. The file is read and the question answered on your Mac with Apple Intelligence's on-device model.

**Can I ask one question across several documents?**
Yes. Drop them all in. The best-matching passages from any of the files are used, and each quoted passage shows which file it came from.

**Does it work on scanned PDFs and photos of documents?**
Yes. Scanned pages and images are read with the text recognition built into macOS before your question is answered.

**How do I know the answer is right?**
Every answer is saved with the passages it was based on, quoted underneath with their file names. Check those before relying on a date, a figure or a clause.

**What happens if the document doesn't contain the answer?**
The model is told to say so plainly rather than guess. If nothing matches the words in your question at all, you'll see “Nothing in these documents seems to match that question.”

**Can I keep a record of my questions and answers?**
Yes. Each question saves its own file, named “Answer – ” followed by your question, so asking several questions builds a set of answers you can keep with the documents.