Annotate PDF

Annotate and highlight a PDF

Mark up a draft the way you would with a pen and a highlighter: draw on it, box the part that needs work, point an arrow at the number that is wrong. Every mark is an object you can restyle or remove until you export.

How to annotate and highlight a pdf

  1. 1

    Open the PDF

    Any PDF works, including scans — annotation does not need a text layer.

  2. 2

    Pick a mark

    Highlighter, freehand pen, line, arrow, rectangle or ellipse, each on a single-key shortcut: H, D, L, A, R and O.

  3. 3

    Adjust it

    Colour, opacity, stroke and rotation are all editable after the fact, and the eraser removes a mark outright.

  4. 4

    Send it on

    Export a PDF with the annotations drawn into the pages so they render for whoever opens it.

Works on scans too

Highlighting and drawing operate on page coordinates, not on text objects, so a photographed contract can be marked up just as readily as a born-digital one.

Marks stay editable until export

A highlight in the wrong place is a selection and a drag, not an undo-everything moment. Opacity and colour can be revised long after the mark was made.

Keyboard-first

The tools sit on single keys, so a review pass is highlight, comment, arrow, next page without going back to the toolbar between each mark.

Questions

Yes. They are written into the page content on export rather than left as reader-specific annotation objects, so they render everywhere.

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