How to Draw on a PDF for Free Online

Can you draw on a PDF? Yes, and you don't need to install anything to do it. Open the file in Edit PDF in your browser, pick Draw, and draw on the page with your mouse or trackpad. People do it to circle the number that matters on an invoice, sketch where the couch goes on a floor plan, mark up a kid's worksheet, or point an arrow at the typo before a report goes out.

Drawing is free. Downloading the finished PDF takes a free account, and that's the only catch.

How to draw on a PDF

1. Go to Edit PDF and drop your PDF on the page, or click to pick it.
2. When the file opens, click Draw in the toolbar.
3. Pick a color. There's black, yellow, lime green, orange, pink, blue and purple, plus a custom color picker if none of those fit.
4. Set the Line thickness from the menu next to the colors. There are seven widths, from a hairline to a thick marker stroke.
5. Draw on the page. Each stroke lands where you drag.
6. Made a mess? Undo takes back the last thing you did, and Redo puts it back.
7. Click Download, then PDF.

It runs in the browser, so it works the same on a Windows PC, a Mac or a Chromebook. File size limits and what the free account covers are in What Each PDF Tool Does.

A tip for mouse drawing: a few short strokes look better than one long one. A big loop drawn in one go tends to wobble. If you're trying to draw a straight line or a neat circle, there's a better tool for that.

Draw straight lines, arrows, boxes and circles

Freehand is great for scribbles, underlines and quick sketches. For anything that should look tidy, use Add Shape. It has six options:

• Line, for underlining or connecting two things
• Arrow, for pointing at something ("this one")
• Rectangle, for boxing a paragraph, a figure or a signature line
• Ellipse, for circling a word or a number
• Check mark and Cross mark, for ticking off a list or marking what's wrong

Pick a shape, then click on the page where you want it. The shape tool stays on, so you can keep clicking to drop more of the same shape. Click on a shape you already placed and it's selected, and you can drag it to where it should be.

When should you use a shape instead of drawing? Anytime someone else has to read it. A circle drawn with a mouse looks like a potato. An ellipse looks like you meant it. Arrows are the big one: a freehand arrow is hard to aim, and a real arrow points exactly where you put it.

Write on it too

Drawing often goes with a few words. The same toolbar handles that:

• Add Text puts a text box anywhere on the page, for a note like "move this to page 2".
• Markup has Highlight, Underline and Strikethrough, for marking up the text that's already in the PDF.
• Comment leaves a note on a spot on the page.

So yes, you can type and draw on the same PDF, and mix them however you like.

Signing isn't drawing

If you searched for how to handwrite on a PDF because you need to sign it, you could scribble your name with Draw, but there's a button made for that. Click Sign in the same toolbar and choose Add Signature, or Upload image if you have a photo of your signature. Signatures you've added show up in that same menu, so next time you click one instead of making it again.

Make your drawing stick

Here's something most guides skip. A drawing on a PDF isn't part of the page at first. It's a separate mark sitting on top of it, the same way a sticky note sits on paper. Whoever opens your file next can click it in their PDF app and move it or delete it.

That's fine if you want them to. It's not fine if it's a marked-up contract, a graded worksheet, or anything where the marks are the point.

When you click Download after drawing, there's a Lock annotations box under PDF, and it's ticked already. Leave it ticked and your drawings, text and highlights are baked into the page, so they can't be edited or deleted in another PDF reader. Untick it only if you plan to keep editing the marks later.

Already have a PDF with loose marks on it, from us or from anywhere else? Run it through Flatten PDF. It makes notes, signatures and filled-in form fields a permanent part of the page, and the pages look the same afterward.

Why can't I draw on my PDF?

Two reasons cover almost every case.

The app only shows PDFs. A lot of places that open a PDF are just viewers: a preview inside your email, a file preview on your phone, the reader built into some apps. There's no pen because they were never meant to edit. Save the file, then open it in Edit PDF.

The PDF blocks editing. Some PDFs carry restrictions that stop you printing, copying or changing them. If it's your file, Unlock PDF removes those restrictions and hands you a copy you can draw on. If the file needs a password just to open, you'll need that password. Type it in once and Unlock PDF gives you a copy that doesn't ask for it.

If the file opens fine and still won't take a stroke, check that Draw is the tool that's on. Clicking Select or another tool switches drawing off.