Quickly add PDFs to iTunes/iBooks

Being able to transfer PDFs to iBooks on your iPad and iPhone is really handy. But sometimes it's a pain to either make or track down an actual PDF file. Here's how to do it painlessly.

For any non-PDF document, you can print to PDF and open it in iTunes. But you can collapse that with this neat tip from MacWorld.

If you want to quickly add a document or a web page to your 'Books' collection in iTunes, all you need to do is to create an alias of iTunes and drag it to ~/Library/PDF Services. Now, when you're browsing the web or viewing documents and you decide that you want to read them later on a portable Apple device just hit Print, click the PDF button on the bottom left corner of the window and choose iTunes. iTunes will launch and receive the PDF. Next, sync your device and you're ready to go.Source

But what about when you've got a PDF already open in Preview (say you clicked a PDF download link)? Sure you could save to desktop, drag into iTunes, delete it. Or find 18e3764.pdf in your download folder etc. But if you're any kind of Mac commandline nerd, you will already have DTerm installed (if you don't - do yourself a favour and go check it out).

So you have a PDF open in Preview (or any other PDF app) - just hit your DTerm shortcut key combo (mine is Command-Shift-Enter), then type open -a iTunes then hit Command-Shift-V. (this pastes the path of the current window's file into the DTerm commandline) and hit Enter.

Now your PDF is in iTunes, already highlighted ready for you to change the title if needed.