Edit and Annotate PDF
Add text, highlights, freehand drawings, shapes, images and links on a live page preview.
Drop a PDF to start marking it up
Highlight and comment, draw with a pen or marker, add filled shapes, arrows, text boxes and stamps. Everything stays editable until you download.
- Highlight text
- Pen and marker
- Filled shapes
- Arrows
- Text boxes
- Sticky notes
- Stamps
- Images
- Links
Opens in your browser. Drop or paste a file anywhere. Nothing is uploaded.
Edit and Annotate PDF, free and private
Edit and annotate a PDF in your browser. Highlight, underline and strike through text, draw with a pen or marker, add rectangles and ellipses with any fill, lines, arrows, text boxes, sticky notes, stamps, images and links.
Every mark stays editable until you download: move it, resize it and change its colour, fill, line style or opacity. Highlights, notes, drawings and shapes are saved as real PDF comments, or you can flatten them into the page. The tool is free and your PDF is never uploaded.
How to edit and annotate a PDF
- 1
Open your PDF
Press Select a PDF file or drop the file onto the page. It opens full screen with page thumbnails on the left and a list of your annotations on the right.
- 2
Pick a tool from the dock
The dock on the left holds every tool. Press a tool with a small corner triangle again to see related tools, such as Ellipse, Line and Arrow next to Rectangle. Each tool has a one-key shortcut.
- 3
Mark up the page
Select text to highlight, underline or strike it through. Drag to draw shapes and lines, click to place text, notes and stamps. Use the style bar at the top to set colour, fill, line width, dashes and opacity.
- 4
Download
Press Download, choose Keep editable or Flatten into the page, and save. The file name ends in -annotated.pdf unless you change it.
Why use PDFToolz for this
Filled shapes and line styles
Give rectangles and ellipses any fill colour with its own opacity, and draw outlines, lines, arrows and pen strokes solid, dashed or dotted.
Everything stays editable
Select any mark to move, resize or restyle it. Undo and redo cover every change, and the annotation list jumps to any mark in one click.
Real PDF comments
Highlights, sticky notes, drawings, shapes and links are saved as standard annotations, so Acrobat, Preview and browsers can show, edit or delete them.
Each tool remembers its style
Your pen, marker and shapes each keep their own colour and width, with recent colours and an eyedropper in every colour picker.
Free and private
Pages are drawn, edited and saved on your device. There is no sign-up, watermark or page limit.
How to annotate a PDF with each tool
Changing the style while nothing is selected sets it for the next mark. Changing it on a selected mark updates that mark, and becomes the tool's style when that tool is active.
- Highlight, Underline and Strikethrough work on text you select. The highlighted words are saved with the comment.
- Pen draws freely with a mouse, finger or stylus. Marker draws a wide see-through stroke, which also works on scanned pages with no text to select.
- Rectangle and Ellipse draw outlines. Add a fill colour and set its opacity from the Fill button in the style bar.
- Line and Arrow draw from where you press to where you let go. Drag their ends to adjust them later.
- Text places a text box where you click. Set the font, size, bold, italic, alignment, colour and a background colour.
- Sticky note pins a comment that opens in any PDF reader. Stamps add APPROVED, DRAFT, PAID and other labels with today's date, or your own text.
- Image places a PNG, JPG, WebP or GIF where you click. Link turns an area into a clickable web address. Whiteout covers an area with a solid colour.
Keep editable or flatten
Keep editable saves highlights, underlines, strikethroughs, notes, drawings, shapes, lines and links as PDF annotations that other apps list as comments. Text boxes, stamps, images and whiteout are drawn into the page either way.
Flatten into the page draws everything into the page content, so it prints the same in every viewer and can't be removed as a comment. Keep your original file if you may need a clean copy.
What this tool cannot do
It adds marks on top of your pages and does not change the existing text. To retype words that are already in the PDF, use the PDF Editor. A shape or whiteout over text does not delete the text underneath, so use Redact PDF to remove sensitive content for good.
Related tools
To type text onto a page quickly, use Add Text to PDF. To sign a document, use eSign PDF. To put the same text on every page, Watermark PDF and Add Header / Footer are faster than placing it page by page. To export the comments in a PDF, use Extract PDF Comments.
Frequently asked questions
Open the PDF, pick a tool such as Text, Highlight or Rectangle, mark up the page, then press Download. There is no sign-up or watermark. To change text that is already in the PDF, use the PDF Editor.
Draw a rectangle or ellipse, then press Fill in the style bar and pick a colour. The fill has its own opacity slider, so you can make a solid box or a see-through one.
Yes. With the Select tool, click a mark to move or resize it and change its style. You can also pick it in the annotation list, and undo any change.
Yes, if you choose Keep editable. Highlights, notes, drawings, shapes and links are standard PDF annotations. Choose Flatten into the page to make them permanent instead.
Yes. Letters such as ș, ț, ł and ż, plus Greek and Cyrillic, are drawn correctly. Chinese, Japanese and Korean are not supported.
No. Pages are drawn and edited in your browser, and the annotated PDF is created on your device.
Last reviewed . See how we build and test our tools, or report an error.
