Late to the party, giving pdf-tools a try.
The macOS install instructions have a prerequisite:
brew install poppler automake
Installed with:
(use-package pdf-tools
:ensure t
:mode ("\\.pdf\\'" . pdf-view-mode)
:config
(pdf-tools-install)
(setq-default pdf-view-display-size 'fit-page)
(setq pdf-annot-activate-created-annotations t))
ps. (pdf-tools-install) may not find libffi on macOS. Try:
(setenv "PKG_CONFIG_PATH"
(f-join
(file-name-as-directory
(nth 0
(split-string
(shell-command-to-string "brew --prefix"))))
"Cellar" "libffi" "3.2.1" "lib" "pkgconfig"))