Add notes, highlights & stamps to your PDF — click anywhere on a page to annotate
Annotations are baked into the PDF as visual overlays (text, rectangles, stamps). Existing embedded annotations in the source PDF are not editable. All processing happens in your browser — your file never leaves your device.
Annotations are metadata, not pixels — at least until the document is saved. This tool paints a highlight as a translucent rectangle, a note as typed text, and a stamp as bordered text, then records each one as an /Annot dictionary attached to the page. The /Subtypetells a PDF viewer what to render, the /Rect entry says where on the page, and/C carries the color. Clicking Apply serializes those dictionaries into the output file's page objects so any reader can display them.
Each annotation is a self-contained dictionary. Readers that support the /Subtype draw the overlay from /Rect and /C; others safely ignore it. This is why annotations survive a re-save without burning pixels into the page.
A vendor agreement needs a reviewer's marks before it goes back: a highlighted clause, a sticky note, and an APPROVED stamp.
Mark up PDFs with notes, highlights and stamps. No printout, no upload, free.
This tool marks up PDFs with the annotation set reviews actually use: text highlighting in colors you assign by reviewer or topic, sticky notes anchored to specific passages, stamp marks like APPROVED and DRAFT, and freehand drawing for arrows, circles, and margin scribbles. Load a PDF, annotate directly on the page, and download the marked-up file — annotations embed in the document so they travel with it into email and other viewers. Everything renders locally; contracts and drafts never upload for someone else's review cycle to see.
Teams reviewing contracts highlight clauses and attach questions for counsel without printing. Editors mark up manuscripts and reports with highlights and margin notes. Students annotate readings and papers, color-coding by theme for exam review. Managers stamp approvals and sign-offs on invoices and requests. Anyone whose review workflow used to be print-scribble-scan-redo does it digitally in one pass — with confidential documents staying on their own machine.
(1) Load a PDF — pages render for direct markup. (2) Choose a tool: highlighter with color selection, note placement, stamps, or freehand drawing. (3) Annotate by dragging over text, clicking positions, or drawing directly on the page; each annotation saves to the document structure. (4) Download the annotated PDF — highlights, notes, stamps, and drawings are embedded and visible in standard PDF readers. Because annotations are PDF-native objects rather than burned pixels, recipients can often toggle or reply to them in their own viewers.
Practices that keep markup useful rather than noisy: assign colors meaningfully at the start — yellow for must-fix, green for approved, pink for questions — and say so in your cover note, so recipients decode without asking. Prefer sticky notes for anything longer than a phrase; paragraphs inside highlights get lost when text reflows. Stamps carry decisions — APPROVED, NEEDS REVISION, CONFIDENTIAL — better than freehand text ever will, and they read at a glance in a thumbnail. Circle and arrow sparingly; three precise marks communicate more than thirty scribbles. When the round finishes, flatten a clean copy (annotations applied into the page) for filing while keeping the annotated original for the audit trail. And for multi-reviewer documents, run sequential passes rather than parallel chaos — or extract pages per reviewer with the split tool, merge the results, and keep everyone's comments intact.
You can add sticky notes, text highlights in 5 colors, freehand drawings, stamps (Approved, Rejected, Confidential), and typed text boxes. Annotations are embedded into the PDF layer so they display correctly in Adobe Reader, Preview, and any PDF viewer without requiring special software.
Yes. Add color-coded highlights and comments for each reviewer, then export the annotated PDF to share. Because annotation runs entirely in your browser, sensitive documents like NDAs or merger agreements never leave your device—no cloud storage or third-party server access required.
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