Annotate a PDF

Highlight, draw and leave notes on a PDF

Mark what matters — highlights, freehand circles and ticks, boxes and arrows, sticky notes — and download a PDF that shows them in any viewer.

Drop a PDF here

or

PDFs under 5 MiB (25 MiB on Pro), up to 100 pages. No sign-up needed to try.

How it works

Three steps, in your browser

  1. 1

    Upload the PDF you are reviewing

    Drop it above and it opens in the editor, every page ready to mark.

  2. 2

    Pick a tool and mark the page

    Highlight, Draw, Shapes or Note in the tool rail. Each mark can be moved, resized, restyled or deleted afterwards.

  3. 3

    Send back the marked-up copy

    Sign in for free and download a PDF with your marks drawn in — the copy to send back, while your upload stays as it was.

Four tools for marking up

  • Highlight

    Click a line to drop a highlight on it, then stretch it to fit, in the colour you choose. The words underneath stay readable.

  • Draw

    A freehand pen for circling a figure, ticking a box or underlining a clause, in the colour and weight you pick.

  • Shapes

    Rectangles, ellipses, lines and arrows, with your own stroke and fill — to box a paragraph or point at a total.

  • Notes

    A sticky note on the page with your text in it, in the colour you choose.

Common questions

Before you start

Are these PDF comments?

No. Every mark is drawn onto the page itself, so it looks the same in every PDF viewer and when printed. It won’t appear in a viewer’s comments list, and it can’t be hidden or replied to there.

Can someone remove my highlights later?

Anyone with a PDF editor can change a PDF, so a mark is not a seal. What the exported file shows is your page with your marks drawn on it, and the file you uploaded is left as it was.

Can I change a mark after I’ve made it?

Yes: select it to move, resize, recolour or delete it, and undo works on every step. Your changes stay with the document, so you can come back, change a mark and export again.

Can I annotate a scanned PDF?

Yes. You can add notes, drawings, shapes, images and signatures to a scanned PDF. The text in the scan cannot be changed, because we don’t read text out of scans (OCR).

Same editor

Other things you can do here

Got a PDF to mark up?

Drop a PDF here

or

PDFs under 5 MiB (25 MiB on Pro), up to 100 pages. No sign-up needed to try.