Edit a PDF on iPhone for free, no app needed

You can edit a PDF on iPhone free in Safari with this viewer: open the file from the Files app, sign with a finger, highlight, add text, delete pages, then save a new PDF. Nothing is installed and nothing is uploaded.

What you can do with a PDF on iPhone here

iOS has Markup for quick scribbles and a Files app that previews PDFs, but when a form arrives by email and needs a signature, text and a page removed, Markup runs out of road. This viewer runs in Safari and covers the common jobs without an app from the App Store.

• View: open from Files, pinch-zoom, page thumbnails, search in the text, dark mode for reading at night, document properties.
• Annotate: highlight in seven colors, draw with a finger, add text, insert a photo (PNG or JPG), draw a signature and place it, add a sticker, whiteout a box over private details, erase, undo and redo.
• Pages: rotate 90 degrees, delete a page, reorder with thumbnails, add a blank page, append another PDF.
• OCR: make a short scan searchable with an invisible text layer.
• Unlock: remove print and copy restrictions from a PDF that opens without a password.
• Save: Download produces a new PDF with everything embedded.

Private: the PDF stays on your iPhone

Nothing is uploaded. Safari reads the PDF with JavaScript inside the tab, and editing, OCR and saving happen on the phone. Closing the tab removes the document. The only thing fetched from the network is the OCR engine with its language data, once, and that has nothing to do with your file.

On a phone this matters more than on a desktop, because the PDFs that arrive there are the personal ones: a lease to sign, a lab result, an insurance claim, a court notice. Mailing those to an upload site to add a signature is an unnecessary copy. Local processing keeps them in two places only: your mail and your Files app.

How to edit a PDF on iPhone in three steps

1. Open. Tap the drop zone. Safari opens the Files picker, where you can choose from iCloud Drive, On My iPhone, or a connected provider like Google Drive or Dropbox. For a PDF in Mail, save it to Files first with the share sheet.
2. Edit. Tap a tool in the toolbar. For a signature, choose Signature, draw it with your finger, then tap where it should go. Use Text for dates and names, Whiteout to cover a number, and the thumbnails to delete a page.
3. Save. Tap Download. Safari saves to the Downloads folder in Files (iCloud Drive by default; you can change it in Safari settings). Share it from there back to Mail or Messages.

The step-by-step for signatures lives at sign a PDF without printing.

iPhone specifics: Safari, touch, printing

Safari is the browser to use; Chrome and Firefox on iOS use the same engine and also work. Highlight, Draw and Signature respond to touch, so a finger does the job; an Apple Pencil is not needed. Printing uses Safari's share sheet with AirPrint, and the same sheet offers Save to Files if you prefer that route.

The screen is small, so zoom in before placing text or a signature, and use undo if it lands in the wrong spot. Thumbnails are easier to drag in landscape.

Limits on a phone

A PDF that asks for a password to open will not open here; you need to remove the password elsewhere first, as covered in PDF passwords explained. Form fields are shown but not typeable as fields; add text on top. No conversion to Word or images, no compression, and no rewriting of the original text, only covering and replacing it.

Memory is the real constraint on iPhone. Normal documents and short scans are fine, but a scan of hundreds of pages can run out of memory or crawl, and OCR on long scans is slow. For those, do the work on a Mac or PC and send the result to the phone.

Markup vs Acrobat app vs this viewer on iPhone

Frequently asked questions