# PDF Annotator

Mark up a document for review: highlighter, pen, shapes, arrows and stamps, with an undo history deep enough to experiment.

Live page: [https://freetoolsfr.com/pdf-annotator](https://freetoolsfr.com/pdf-annotator)

Annotating is a different job from editing, and it has different requirements: you are adding a layer of commentary on top of a document you are deliberately not changing. The tools here are built for that. The highlighter draws translucent marks that sit over the text rather than obscuring it. The pen is pressure-sensitive on a stylus and smoothed on a trackpad, so a circle drawn quickly still looks like a circle. Rectangles, ellipses, lines and arrows have separate fill and stroke controls for pointing at things without hiding them. Stamps put a checkmark, cross, dot or the date down in a single click, which is what you want when working through a checklist. Everything is selectable and movable after the fact, with multi-select, alignment, z-ordering and a hundred levels of undo. On export the annotations are written into the page content, so the marked-up copy opens correctly in any viewer.

## How it works

1. **Open your PDF** — Drop in a file — it's read in your browser, never uploaded
2. **Make your changes** — Edit text, annotate, sign, and rearrange pages
3. **Export** — Download the result, with a password if you want one

## Use cases

- **Reviewing a draft**: Highlight problem passages and draw attention to them with arrows and notes
- **Marking student work**: Annotate submitted PDFs and stamp them as checked
- **Design and print feedback**: Circle the element you mean and write what should change
- **Checklists and inspections**: Stamp checkmarks and crosses through a form quickly

## Tips

- **Set the colour first**: With nothing selected, the properties panel shows the tool's defaults — set your colour and width before drawing rather than fixing it after.
- **The eraser removes strokes**: It deletes whole pen strokes rather than rubbing out pixels, so a mistaken line goes in one pass.
- **Marquee-select to move a group**: Drag on empty space with the Select tool to lasso several annotations and move or align them together.

## FAQ

### Are annotations editable after I place them?

Yes. Select any annotation to move, resize, recolour or delete it, and use multi-select to work on several at once.

### Will the annotations show in other PDF readers?

Yes. They are written into the page content on export, so every viewer renders them.

### Can I remove them later?

Within the editing session, yes — undo or delete. Once exported they are part of the page, so keep the original if you may need a clean copy.

### Does the highlighter hide the text?

No. It is drawn with partial opacity so the text underneath stays readable.

### Does it work with a stylus?

Yes, including pressure sensitivity where the device reports it.

## Tool

This page is powered by the [pdf-editor](https://freetoolsfr.com/pdf/editor) tool.

## Related

- [pdf-editor](https://freetoolsfr.com/pdf-editor)
- [edit-pdf](https://freetoolsfr.com/edit-pdf)
- [edit-pdf-online](https://freetoolsfr.com/edit-pdf-online)
- [free-pdf-editor](https://freetoolsfr.com/free-pdf-editor)
- [pdf-editor-no-watermark](https://freetoolsfr.com/pdf-editor-no-watermark)
- [edit-pdf-in-browser](https://freetoolsfr.com/edit-pdf-in-browser)

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Source: https://freetoolsfr.com/pdf-annotator
Site: https://freetoolsfr.com