Draw on a PDF online

Draw on a PDF by dropping it here: the Draw tool on the toolbar is a freehand pen, so you can circle, underline, cross out or sketch anywhere on the page. Two clicks and a Download, and the drawing is saved into the file. Nothing is uploaded.

How to draw on a PDF in the browser

1. Drop the file here or press Open a PDF.
2. Click Draw on the toolbar. The cursor becomes a pen.
3. Hold the mouse button (or your finger on a touchscreen) and draw. Release to finish a stroke; start again for the next one.
4. Switch to the Hand tool to pan, or zoom in for fine marks, then go back to Draw.
5. Ctrl+Z removes the last stroke; Eraser removes the stroke you click.
6. Press Download. The new PDF contains the drawings; the file you opened is unchanged.

Drawing is page-bound: a stroke belongs to the page you drew it on, and it moves with that page if you later rotate or reorder pages in the thumbnails sidebar.

Mouse, trackpad, finger or pen

A mouse is fine for circles and arrows; a trackpad is workable for short strokes. For handwriting you will be happier on a touchscreen. The viewer runs in the browser on iPad, Android tablets and phones, so you can open the same page on a tablet and draw with your finger or a stylus. Ask your tablet to keep the page from scrolling by using the Draw tool rather than the Hand tool.

If what you really want is a clean, legible signature, the Signature tool is better: you draw it once in a small box and then place it as a block, which is easier than signing on the page itself. For words that must be readable, the Text tool beats handwriting every time.

Arrows, circles and underlines by hand

There is no separate shapes tool: every mark is a freehand stroke. That is enough for the marks most people make on a document. A loop around a paragraph says "look here"; an arrow from the margin to a line says "this one"; a wavy underline says "wording"; a single diagonal stroke across a block says "cut". Draw at a higher zoom level when the target is small, such as a figure in a table, and the stroke comes out steadier. Keep each mark a separate stroke so Eraser can remove it on its own without taking the neighbor with it.

If a marked-up page needs a legend, put a short typed key in the margin with the Text tool, so the person reading it knows what a circle means versus an underline.

What the drawing looks like in other readers

Download writes the strokes into the PDF with pdf-lib. Open the saved file in Adobe Acrobat Reader, Preview, Microsoft Edge, Chrome or a phone reader and the lines are there at the same position and size. Zooming in another reader scales the drawing with the page, so a circle around a paragraph stays around that paragraph.

Because the drawing is in the file, it survives emailing, uploading to Google Drive and printing. Printing from the viewer's Print button or from any other reader puts the marks on paper too.

Limits and gotchas when drawing on a PDF

• Eraser removes a whole stroke, not part of one. Draw in short strokes if you expect to correct details.
• Drawings do not edit the text. Crossing out a sentence leaves the sentence in the file. To hide it, use Whiteout; to actually remove it you need a real redaction tool.
• Password-protected files that ask for a password to open cannot be opened here.
• Very large scans on phones can run out of memory; use a laptop for a 300-page scan.
• Form fields are displayed but not editable as fields; drawing over them works, typing into them does not.

Other apps that let you draw on a PDF

• Microsoft Edge: the PDF viewer has a Draw pen with color and thickness choices, and an eraser.
• Chrome: the desktop viewer offers freehand annotation on PDFs; save through the download control.
• Preview on macOS: Markup includes a Sketch tool that can smooth shapes and a plain Draw tool.
• Adobe Acrobat Reader: the free reader's Comment tools include a pencil for freehand drawing.
• Xodo: popular on tablets for stylus drawing, with pressure-aware pens in its apps.
• PDF-XChange Editor (Windows): pencil tool plus shapes, arrows and measurement.
• Google Drive: the preview is built around comments rather than freehand drawing; open the file in another app for pen input.
• Smallpdf, iLovePDF: web editors with a pen tool; your document is uploaded to their servers to use it.

Frequently asked questions