Free PDF Editor

Worked example

Press "Try a sample form". It opens a one-page rental application on A4 paper (595.28 by 841.89 points), the file chip reads "1 page", and the page is shown from a render whose longest side is 1,600 pixels (1,131 by 1,600). Pick "Edit text" and tap the line "Move-in date: 1 March 2026". The tool puts a white box over that line and a text box on top with the same words at 13 pt in black, ready to retype, so change it to "Move-in date: 1 April 2026". Then pick "Tick" and tap the "No" box next to "Pets:". Press "Save edited PDF". The page says "Saved: 3 changes written into the PDF." (the text edit counts as two, the cover and the new text) and the file downloads as "rental-application-sample_edited.pdf". The old words are still in the file under the white box.

Which settings to use, and the limits

• Pick the tool that matches the job. "Edit text" outlines the pieces of text it can find. Tap one and the tool covers it with a box and puts a text box on top holding the same words at the same size, ready to retype; the new text uses the font chosen under "Font" (Sans at first), not the original font. "Add text" puts new text wherever you tap, and "White-out" hides what you drag over. Scanned pages have no text to find; tapping there shows "No text found there. Scanned pages have no text to edit: use White-out and Add text instead." Rotated and vertical text is not offered by "Edit text".
• Choose the font and size before you type. Text has "Size (pt)" from 6 to 96, a "Font" of "Sans (Helvetica)", "Serif (Times)" or "Typewriter (Courier)", and a bold button, B. The colour is black, blue, red, green or white, or "Other colour". Letters that a standard PDF font can spell are saved as real, selectable text. If a text box has any character it cannot spell, such as Arabic, Cyrillic, Chinese, Devanagari or emoji, the whole box is saved as a picture of the text: it looks right, but it cannot be selected or searched.
• Use ticks, shapes and pictures to fill in a form. "Tick" and "Cross" drop a mark where you tap, sized from "Size (pt)": 1.2 times it, at least 8 pt, which is 14.4 pt at the default 12. "Rectangle", "Circle", "Line" and "Draw" make outlines only, with a "Line width" of 0.5, 1, 2, 3, 5 or 8 pt (2 at first). "Picture" places a logo, stamp or photo at 35% of the page width for you to move and resize. A picture larger than 2,000 pixels on its longest side is scaled down to 2,000. If it cannot be read you see "This picture could not be read. Try a JPG or PNG."
• Match white-out to the page, and highlight without hiding. "Highlight" offers four marker colours (yellow, green, pink and blue) and is saved at 40% strength blended over the page, so the text underneath stays readable. "White-out" is white at first; with it selected, pick another colour or "Other colour" to match a tinted page, and "Edit text" then covers old text in that same colour. Tap without dragging to drop a default-sized box, then drag the round handle to resize it.
• Move, resize, undo and delete. With "Select", tap something you added to select it, drag it to move it, and drag the round handle to resize it. Text is resized with "Size (pt)" instead, and lines and drawings can be moved but not resized. "Undo" steps back up to 60 changes, and so does Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z on a Mac) when you are not typing in a box. "Delete" removes the selected item, as do the Delete and Backspace keys, and Escape lets go of the selection. There is no redo.
• Saving writes onto your original pages. "Save edited PDF" draws everything you placed onto your original file, so its text and graphics stay as they were, and it saves under the original name with "_edited" added, such as "contract_edited.pdf". The page you see is only a preview drawn at 1,600 pixels on its longest side. Edits on every page are saved together. On an iPhone nothing downloads by itself: use the "Save / Share file" button that appears under the message. The PDF is opened and saved in your browser and is not uploaded.

Common problems and how to fix them

It says "This PDF is password-protected. Unlock it first with PDF Unlock, then edit it."

This appears when the PDF needs a password to open. It can also appear after you press "Save edited PDF", when the PDF opens for viewing but is encrypted in a way the saver cannot rewrite. Remove the password with the Unlock PDF tool on this site, open the unlocked copy here, and make your edits again.

It says "This file could not be opened as a PDF. It may be damaged."

The file could not be read as a PDF at all. Open it in a PDF viewer to check that it opens there; if it does, print or export it to a new PDF and use that copy. If only one page fails with "This page could not be shown. Try another page or another PDF.", move to another page with the arrow buttons.

"Edit text" says "No text found there. Scanned pages have no text to edit: use White-out and Add text instead."

The spot you tapped is not on a piece of text the tool could read. With "Edit text" selected, the pieces you can tap are outlined, so tap inside an outline. A scanned page is a picture and has none. Cover the old words with "White-out" and type new ones with "Add text". Rotated or vertical text is not outlined either.

The old text can still be copied or searched after I used White-out or Edit text.

That is how it works. The page says "White-out hides text but does not delete it from the file. To remove private details for good, use PDF Redactor." The cover and your new text are drawn on top of the original page, and the original words stay in the file underneath. For anything private, use PDF Redactor instead of White-out.

It says "The edited PDF could not be saved in this browser. Try a smaller file."

Writing the edits into the PDF failed. Your edits stay on screen, so you can try again after removing a large picture you added, or try a smaller file, or another browser or computer. The whole PDF is held in memory while it is read and written, and the tool does not check the file size when you choose it.

How it compares

"Edit text" is cover-and-retype, not true editing. A PDF usually stores only the letters of a font that it uses, so the original font cannot be reused: your new words are in Helvetica, Times or Courier, and the old words stay in the file under the cover. The new text does not wrap or reflow, so a longer replacement just runs on. A desktop PDF editor can reflow paragraphs, edit images, and add, remove or reorder pages. This tool does none of that, has no text recognition for scanned pages, and does not change existing form fields; it places text, marks, shapes and pictures on top of the pages. In exchange the original page content is kept, there is nothing to install, and the PDF is not uploaded.