Edit PDF
Add text, images and shapes to a page, and patch over what should not show.
This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your file is never uploaded, and you can verify that in your browser's network tab. Verify it yourself: open your browser's network tab and watch. You will see one small request asking whether you have tasks left - a tool name and a hash, never the file.
What this does
This adds new content to a page: a text box, an image, a rectangle, an ellipse, a line or a white patch, placed where you put it. What it cannot do is re-type the words already there. A PDF stores glyphs at coordinates in a font usually subset to the characters it already uses, so turning March into April may need a letter A that is not in the file at all. Anything you add is written into the page's content stream.
Reach for it to date and initial a printed form, to drop a logo onto a cover page, to write a correction beside a wrong figure, or to cover a phone number before a document goes further round the office.
How it works
- Drop the PDF onto this page. It is rendered for you and you work on the page you can see.
- Choose what to place - text, image, rectangle, ellipse, line or whiteout - and drag out the area it should occupy.
- Set what that item needs: size, colour, opacity and rotation for a shape; family, weight and alignment for text.
- Carry on across as many pages as you need. One pass takes up to 2,000 items.
- Press Apply edits and the download starts on its own.
Every tool that appears to edit existing PDF text does one of two things: it rebuilds the page from a guess at its structure, which moves the layout, or it covers the old text and draws new text over it. This tool does the second, openly. For genuine paragraph editing, convert with PDF to Word, edit there and convert back - a route that re-flows the document rather than reproducing its pagination.
A whiteout patch covers text. It does not delete it. The words underneath stay in the content stream and can still be selected, copied and searched, so a covered bank detail is a bank detail you have published with a rectangle over it. Redact PDF rebuilds the page from pixels, which is the only version of this that removes anything.
Embed the font decides which faces your text is drawn in. On, it uses Noto Sans and Noto Sans Mono - about 2 MB, served from this site's own origin and cached after first use - which covers accented Latin, Greek and Cyrillic. Off, it uses the standard faces every reader already has, which adds no bytes but can only encode WinAnsi. Neither set covers CJK, Arabic or Indic, and characters outside the set are folded to the nearest the face can draw rather than aborting the job.
Images are placed at the size of the box you draw, so a 2,000-pixel logo does not arrive 2,000 points wide. PNG and JPEG are accepted and nothing else, and transparency is kept, which is what makes a PNG signature sit on the page rather than in a white square. The image is read from your disk locally and embedded in the browser; it is not posted anywhere first.
What this tool cannot do
- Text that is already in the document cannot be re-typed here. You can cover it and draw new text over the top, or convert to Word, edit, and convert back.
- A whiteout patch hides text rather than removing it; the words remain in the file and can still be copied or searched. Use Redact PDF when the content must be gone.
- New text is drawn in Noto Sans, Noto Sans Mono or a standard face, not in the document's own font, which is normally subset and cannot accept new characters. CJK, Arabic and Indic scripts are not covered by either set.
Questions people ask
- Can I change the text that is already in the PDF?
- Not directly. The file holds glyphs positioned individually in a font subset to the characters it already contains, so the letters you want may not be present at all. Two routes work: cover the old text with a whiteout patch and type new text over it, which leaves the rest of the page untouched, or convert to Word, edit there and convert back, which gives you real paragraphs but re-flows the layout.
- Is a whiteout patch the same as redacting?
- No. Whiteout is a white rectangle drawn over the page; the text beneath is untouched and can be selected, copied or found with a search. Redact PDF rasterises the area so there is nothing left underneath. If you are hiding a name, an address or an account number, use redaction.
- What image formats can I place on a page?
- PNG and JPEG. A PNG keeps its transparency, which is what you want for a signature or a logo with no background. Anything else is rejected rather than quietly mangled, so convert it first.
- Why does my text look different from the rest of the document?
- Because it is drawn in a font we can embed rather than in the document's own font, which is usually subset to the characters already used and cannot spell anything new. Pick the closest family, match the size in points, and for a short correction the difference is rarely noticeable.
- Should I convert to Word and back instead?
- If you need to rewrite paragraphs, yes. If you need to add a line, a date, a signature image or a patch, no - the round trip re-flows the document, so line breaks, page breaks and spacing can all move. Editing in place changes only what you place.
- Is the document uploaded while I edit it?
- No. The page is rendered by PDF.js and rewritten by pdf-lib, both in a Web Worker on your device, and any image you add is read from your disk locally. Open the network tab and edit a file: the one request you will see asks whether you have tasks left, and it carries a tool name and a hash, never the document.