✏️ Annotate PDF while Reading Client

Highlight, underline, strikethrough, add sticky notes, and draw freehand on any PDF. Annotations save to your browser and export into a real PDF.

How annotations work: Select text with your mouse (like in any document) and a floating toolbar appears — pick Highlight, Underline, or Strikethrough. For sticky notes and freehand drawing, switch to the corresponding tool. Annotations are saved automatically in your browser and can be exported into a new PDF.

Open a PDF

Drop a PDF below or click to browse. Previous annotations load automatically if you reopen the same file.

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Annotations

No annotations yet.
Select text or use the toolbar to start annotating.

How to Annotate a PDF

1

Open Your PDF

Drop a file — previous annotations load automatically.

2

Highlight & Note

Select text to highlight, or use the toolbar for notes and drawing.

3

Export

Download an annotated PDF with all your marks baked in.

Frequently Asked Questions

Make sure the Select tool is active (default). Drag your mouse over the text you want to highlight — like you would in a Word document. When you release, a small floating toolbar appears near your selection. Click Highlight to save the annotation.

Annotations save automatically to your browser's local storage, keyed by the PDF's fingerprint. When you reopen the same PDF in this tool, annotations reload automatically. Nothing is uploaded to any server. If you clear your browser data, annotations are lost — so export to PDF if you want a permanent copy.

It uses pdf-lib to bake all your annotations directly into a copy of the PDF. The result is a standard PDF file with real highlights, notes, and drawings that any PDF reader can display. The original file is untouched.

Yes — but you can only highlight on top of images, not on real text. Since scanned PDFs have no text layer, text selection won't work. However, you can still use Note, Pen, and place highlights by dragging (which creates a rectangle). For real text highlighting, run the PDF through our OCR PDF tool first.

No. All rendering and annotation happens in your browser. Annotations save locally, and PDF export runs entirely client-side with pdf-lib.

Done!