Siri Shortcut

Compress a PDF for Email

Shrink a scanned or exported PDF below an attachment limit without touching a desktop app.

What it does

A scanned contract or a multi-page report exported from another app routinely lands well past the size limit most email providers and upload portals allow, and there is rarely a clean way to shrink a PDF from the Mail app itself. This shortcut fixes that with one action: pick the file and run it through Filemorph's Compress PDF action, which tries two different compression strategies on the phone's own graphics stack — re-encoding the embedded images, and re-serializing the document to drop redundant PDF objects — then keeps whichever result comes out smaller. A bank statement or signed contract never has to be handed to a website just to get small enough to attach. Share the result straight from the same shortcut.

Build it in 2 minutes

There's no one-tap install for this one yet — add each action below in the Shortcuts app and you'll have it running in about two minutes.

The recipe

  1. New shortcut → add action: Get File — pick the PDF (when run from the share sheet, delete this action so the shared PDF flows in directly)
  2. Add action: Compress PDF (Filemorph)
  3. Add action: Share
  4. Name it 'Compress a PDF for Email' → add to Share Sheet (accepts: PDF)

Requirements

FAQ

Is the PDF uploaded anywhere during compression?

No. Compress PDF runs locally; the shortcut works in Airplane Mode, which matters for anything you would not want to hand to an unknown web compressor.

Is PDF compression free?

No, Compress PDF is a Filemorph Pro feature ($29.99/year, 7-day trial). Filemorph's free tier covers image conversions and PDF text extraction, not PDF compression.

Get Filemorph.
Build the shortcut.

Every action in this recipe runs entirely on-device — no upload, no account.

Download on theApp Store