Free PDF Editor Online — Edit, Annotate & Sign PDFs in Your Browser

SaveDelete's free PDF editor lets you add text, images, signatures, checkmarks, stamps, shapes, highlights and watermarks to any PDF — directly in your browser. There is nothing to install and no account to create, and because every edit happens locally on your device, your files are never uploaded to a server. It runs in any modern browser on Windows, macOS, Linux and Chromebook, and it adds no watermark of its own.

How to Edit a PDF Online (4 Steps)

1. Upload your PDF. Click Upload Your PDF and choose the file. It opens in your browser and stays on your device.
2. Choose a tool. Pick Add Text, Add Image, Add Signature, a shape, the highlighter, a checkmark or any of the 15+ annotation tools.
3. Click and edit. Click the page to place text, ticks or shapes, then drag to reposition or use the handles to resize. Added text can use your choice of font, size and colour.
4. Download. Click "Download PDF" to save your edited document with every change baked in. All pages are preserved.

Everything You Can Do

The editor includes more than 15 tools for marking up and completing documents:

• Text: add and format text with custom fonts, sizes, colours, bold, italic and underline.
• Images & signatures: insert logos, photos or a scanned/drawn signature.
• Shapes & drawing: rectangles, circles, lines, arrows, freehand drawing and a highlighter.
• Stamps: checkmarks, X-marks, date stamps and sticky notes.
• Branding: watermarks and page numbers.
• Page tools: rotate or delete pages, plus drag, resize, copy, delete, undo and redo.

What People Use It For

Common uses include filling out and signing contracts, forms and job applications; adding checkmarks and notes to checklists; marking up documents for review; stamping invoices with dates or an "approved" note; and adding a logo or watermark to branded PDFs — all without paying for Adobe Acrobat.

How to edit existing text in a PDF

The Library of Congress describes PDF as a format for delivering finished documents to readers.

Inside the file, text is mostly stored as characters from fonts, placed on the page. Paragraphs and headings are recorded only if the program that made the PDF added them. So there is often no paragraph to reflow when you change a word.

That is why this free PDF editor online never rewrites a PDF's own text. Instead, it covers the old words and writes new ones on top:

1. Check that no tool button is highlighted.
2. Click the words you want to change. An Edit Text box opens at the bottom of the page view.
3. Type the new wording, then press Enter or click Save. Press Esc to cancel.

The editor hides the old words under a white box and writes yours in black Arial, at about the original size.

• Keep the new wording about as long as the old. Longer text runs past the white box onto the next words.
• On a coloured background, the white box will show.
• To delete words, clear the box and save.
• One click may pick up a whole line or only part of one. It depends on how the PDF stores its text.

Scanned and password-protected PDFs

A scanned page is a picture of paper, so the editor finds no words to click. It has no OCR, the text recognition that Adobe says turns scanned documents into editable, searchable PDFs.

On a scan, you can still add things on top: text, ticks, a date or a signature. You can't change the words already there.

Encrypted PDFs, including password-protected ones, won't work. The editor has no password prompt, and it can't save encrypted files. If a file opens but Download PDF does nothing, it is probably encrypted. Remove the protection in the app that set it, then use the unlocked copy.

Fill in and sign a form, step by step

Use a computer with a mouse or trackpad. The page listens for mouse input only, so dragging and drawing may not work by touch.

The editor doesn't fill a form's built-in fields. It shows each page as an image and places your answers on top.

1. Click Upload Your PDF and choose the file.
2. Click Add Text and type your answer in the box that appears. Pick a font, size and colour.
3. Click where the bottom of the letters should sit. The tool switches off after each use, so click Add Text again for the next answer.
4. For tick boxes, use the checkmark (a green tick) or the X mark (a red cross) under Quick Tools. Each lands just below and right of your click.
5. The date stamp, also under Quick Tools, adds today's date in your device's format.
6. Click Add Signature and choose an image of your signature. Drag it into place and resize it from a corner.
7. Click Download PDF.

No signature image? Choose Freehand Draw and sign with your mouse or trackpad.

Getting the signature right

• The signature arrives three times as wide as it is tall. Crop your image to a similar strip so it isn't stretched.
• Use a PNG with a transparent background. JPEG can't store transparency, so the paper around your signature would cover the line.
• This places a picture of your signature. Adobe defines a digital signature as one generated using a digital certificate. This editor can't create one.

Add a logo, QR code or watermark

Add Image puts your picture near the top-left of the page. Large pictures are squeezed into a small box, which can squash a wide logo. Drag a corner to fix the shape.

If your logo sits on a white background, the background remover can turn it into a transparent PNG. Unlike this editor, it processes your image on our server.

For a QR code, download a PNG from the QR code generator and add it with Add Image.

The Watermark icon under Quick Tools uses the text in the Add Text box, or the word WATERMARK. It drops pale diagonal text at a set spot on the current page. Drag it into place, and repeat on each page that needs it.

Page Number adds a label such as "Page 2" where you click, one page at a time.

Writing a new letter rather than editing an old one? The letterhead maker builds the whole page as a PDF.

What your downloaded PDF contains

• A new file, named after yours with _edited added. Your original isn't changed.
• Untouched pages, copied as they were.
• On edited pages, your additions as an image layer. They show and print, but nobody can select, search or edit them as text later.
• Pages where you replaced text, saved as a single picture. No text on those pages can be selected or searched.

Your edits exist only in the open tab. If you reload or close it before downloading, they're lost.

Undo (Ctrl+Z, or Cmd+Z on a Mac) reverses added items, moves and resizes. It doesn't undo a page rotation, and deleting a page clears the undo history.

Covering text is not redaction

Hiding words on screen doesn't always remove them from the file. The US Court of Federal Claims warns that a black box over text "merely hides the data". It adds that copying the box into a word processor can reveal what lies beneath.

In this editor, only replaced text gets the save-as-a-picture step. An image or sticky note over words leaves those words in the file. The Box, Circle and Highlight tools are see-through, so they don't hide text at all.

Even a page saved as a picture isn't a full redaction. The editor doesn't clear the file's metadata, such as its title and author, or its bookmarks.

For sensitive PDF documents, follow the court's simplest advice: leave the information out of the original document before you make the PDF. Then search the final file for those words before you share it.

Frequently Asked Questions