PDF Tools
Add Text to a PDF
Put a line of text anywhere on a PDF — click the page to choose the spot and see it land before you commit.
Privacy
Your file never leaves your device. It is parsed and rewritten by your own browser, so nothing is uploaded, queued or logged.
Tips
- Click the page preview to set the position. The dashed box shows where the text will sit, at the size and colour it will be.
- Use the arrows beside “Page 1 of N” to look through the document. That is only what you are looking at — the Pages box below still decides which pages get the text.
- X and Y are PDF points from the bottom-left corner, 72 to the inch. A4 is 595 × 842, US Letter 612 × 792.
- With the preview focused, the arrow keys nudge by 2 points and shift-arrow by 20, and Page Up and Page Down turn the page.
- Use "all" in the pages box to put the same line on every page, which is how you add a reference or a case number to a whole document.
- The text is drawn in Helvetica. Characters outside Latin-1 — Greek, Cyrillic, CJK, most emoji — will not render, because that font has no glyphs for them.
- To add several pieces of text, process the file once, then feed the result back in for the next one.
Frequently asked questions
Can I change the text that is already in my PDF?
No. This draws new text on top of the page; it does not touch what is already there. Editing existing words means re-flowing the original text, which needs the fonts and the layout the PDF was made from, and most PDFs do not carry enough of either. If you need to change existing wording, edit the source document and export it again.
How do I position the text?
Click the page preview. The X and Y boxes fill in, and the dashed box shows exactly where the line will sit. You can also type coordinates directly, or focus the preview and nudge with the arrow keys.
How do I see a page other than the first one?
Use the arrows beside the page number above the preview, or Page Up and Page Down with the preview focused. Paging through changes nothing on its own: the Pages box decides which pages are written to, and the preview says so if you are aiming at one it does not include. The position you set applies to every page in that box, so a line placed near the bottom of page 3 lands in the same spot on every page you selected.
Can I add more than one piece of text?
One at a time. Add the first line, download the result, then put that file back in for the next one. Each pass is lossless, so you can stack as many as you need.
Are my files uploaded?
No. The PDF is parsed and rewritten by your own browser. Nothing is transmitted, which is why this works offline and why it is safe for contracts and financial documents.