Edit PDF — change the text, add text and sign

How to Edit PDF

1. Choose a PDF, or drop it on the box above. It opens in the editor; the file stays on your device.
2. To change words that are already there, pick Edit text and tap a line. Type the new text and press Enter or Done. You can also change the font, bold, italic, size and colour, delete the line, or drag it to a new place.
3. To add something, pick Add text, Picture, Sign, Draw, Shapes, Highlight or White-out. Tap anything you added to move it, resize it or delete it. Undo and Redo step back and forward.
4. Press Save PDF. A new file ending in -edited.pdf is downloaded. Your original file is not changed.

Edit PDF text with the same font

When you change a line, the old letters are taken out of the page itself — they are not hidden under a white box — and the new text is put in at the same spot. The rest of the page is left exactly as it was, and other pages are not touched.

The new text uses the font already in the PDF whenever that font really contains every letter you typed; the editor checks the font itself. Most PDFs carry only the letters they use, so a new letter is often missing. Then only the words with that letter get a look-alike with the same letter widths: Arimo for Arial and Helvetica, Tinos for Times, Cousine for Courier, Carlito for Calibri, Caladea for Cambria, and the closest of these for other fonts.

You are told both times: while you type, the editor lists the letters this PDF’s font lacks, and afterwards it says “Some letters are not in this PDF’s font, so a similar font was used.” Choosing Bold or Italic also switches to the look-alike in that style, because the PDF’s own font cannot change style.

If the new text is longer or shorter, the rest of the line moves along; other columns stay put, and the text can still be copied and searched. Arabic is shaped with joined letters in Noto Naskh Arabic, keeps its right edge, and Arabic digits such as ١٢٣ work too.

Add text, pictures, a signature and more

Everything you add becomes part of the page, so it looks and prints the same in every PDF reader. Until you save, tap it again to move, resize, recolour or delete it; Undo (Ctrl+Z or ⌘Z) goes back one step at a time, and the counter shows how many changes you made.

• Add text: tap where it should start and type, in Sans, Serif or Mono, any size and colour, bold, italic, on several lines if you like.
• Picture: PNG and JPG are added as they are, other pictures are converted, and phone photos are turned upright. Drag a corner to resize it.
• Sign: draw your signature in black or blue, or use a picture of it with the paper made see-through. This is a picture of your handwritten signature (an electronic signature), not a certificate-based digital signature.
• Draw, Shapes and Highlight: freehand lines, rectangles, ellipses, lines and arrows, and see-through bands over the words you drag across.
• White-out: drag a box to cover something with white, or with a colour that matches the page.

What it cannot do

Password-protected PDFs and PDFs with limits set by their owner (such as no editing) are not opened; remove the password with Unlock PDF first, using the password you know. A digitally signed PDF needs a tick first, because any change makes its signature show as invalid.

• It does not re-flow paragraphs: a longer line just gets longer, without moving words to the next line. A centred line stays anchored at its left edge (right edge for Arabic).
• Scanned pages are pictures, so Edit text finds nothing to change on them; you can still add text, a signature or anything else on top.
• Vertical text, text inside a drawing repeated on the page and a few old fonts cannot be changed (the editor says why), and only Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew and Arabic letters can be typed.
• Filled-in form fields and comments are not page text, so this editor does not change them. Flatten PDF turns them into ordinary page content first.
• White-out only covers. The text underneath is still in the file and can be copied out. To remove words or numbers for good, use Redact PDF.

Private: no upload, no sign-up, no watermark

The editor runs inside your browser. Your PDF is read and changed on your own device and is never sent to our server or anyone else, which matters for contracts, payslips, forms and ID papers. There is no account and nothing to install, and the saved file has no watermark.

The look-alike fonts and the Arabic text shaper are fetched from this site only the first time an edit needs them (about 0.1 to 0.7 MB each), and only the letters used are put in your file. Saving writes the whole file again, so the words you replaced cannot be recovered from an older copy hidden inside it.

Edit a PDF on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows or Chromebook

Open this page in Safari on an iPhone or iPad, or in Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari on a Mac, Windows PC or Chromebook. On a touch screen, tap a line to type and drag the round handles to resize; the zoom buttons make small text easier to tap. On a computer, the arrow keys move a selected item and Delete removes it.

Everything happens in your browser: your PDF is never uploaded to any server. The first time an edit needs a font, your browser downloads it from this site — fonts come to your device, nothing goes out. You can check: once your file is open, turn on airplane mode and keep editing. If a change needs a font that has not been downloaded yet, the editor tells you and keeps the rest of your work.

Questions

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