This tool adds a highlight, a sticky note, or typed text onto a PDF page without touching the words underneath, free, with no account needed.
Marking up a contract for a colleague, leaving yourself a reminder on a form, or writing a quick note in the margin — upload the PDF, pick Highlight, Note or Text, and drag it onto the page. Nothing underneath ever changes; you're only ever adding, never removing. This one is for marking up a page with highlights, notes or text on top, without changing the text that's already in the file. Rewriting existing paragraphs is a job for a full desktop editor.
By ShinobiTools Team · Last updated: August 2026
This adds marks — it never removes or hides anything. A highlight, a sticky note or a line of typed text all sit on top of the page; the original content underneath is completely untouched, still selectable and still there if you print or copy it. If what you actually need is to permanently cut something out of a document, this is the wrong tool — Redact PDF does that instead. Your file is only ever handled in memory here, never written to our disk.
Highlight draws a translucent layer over a passage of text — the text itself stays exactly where it was, selectable and searchable, the same as marking a printed page with a highlighter pen. Note pins a small sticky-note icon to a spot on the page; hover or click it in a PDF reader to read the text you typed. Text writes your typed words directly onto the page as visible content, readable in any viewer without needing annotation support at all. As a PDF annotator it only adds marks on top and never edits the sentences below them, and the PDF annotator free tier has no fee per page. If you only want a highlighter, stay on the Highlight tab: it works like a highlighter marker PDF readers show in yellow. Pages you plan to send back for review are the typical use.
You annotate online on our server, with no install and no account, so how to annotate online comes down to the three steps above, and you can annotate a PDF online free of charge. Because it works as a web page rather than a native app, it opens the same way on iPad, Android or Windows, or straight from a Google Drive file.
To annotate document pages like a signed contract for review, drag Highlight, Note or Text onto the page and download the result; up to 25 pages are free. Students who annotate documents for a research review can do the same on the PDF itself: highlight a passage, pin a note next to it, and the source stays untouched underneath.
These are opposite operations, and it matters which one you reach for. Annotating adds something on top of a page and leaves everything underneath intact — that is what this tool does. Redacting cuts content out of the file for good, so it can no longer be read, selected or recovered. If the goal is "mark this so someone notices it," you want this tool; if the goal is "make sure nobody can ever read this again," you want Redact PDF.
PDF markup here always means the same three marks, and it never rewrites the sentences underneath them. If you're marking up a PDF for the first time, start with the Highlight tab, which needs no typing. There is no daily limit, so you can mark up one document after another.
Your PDF is processed entirely in memory on our own machine and handed back in the response — it is never written to our disk for this tool, and nothing is kept afterwards.
Marked something up and need it gone for good, not just flagged? Redact PDF cuts it out of the file itself. Want to add a drawn, uploaded or typed signature to the same document? Sign PDF places it the same way — drag it onto the page. Not sure how to annotate a pdf the first time? Drop the file in and try the Highlight tab first — it needs no typing.
Sticky PDF notes are the small yellow icons on the page, the kind of notes PDF readers open with a click. The text you typed opens when someone clicks or hovers over it in Acrobat, Preview, Edge or another PDF reader, so the page itself stays clean while you leave several comments. That makes it a good way to add comments to PDF drafts before sending them back. If you would rather write notes on PDF pages that everyone sees, and that also show up on paper, use the Text tab instead: typed text is part of the page, while many readers leave sticky notes out when printing.
Upload it, pick Highlight, Note or Text, then drag a box onto the page. Highlight works straight away; Note and Text ask you to type the text first. Press Annotate and download the result. That is how to annotate a PDF here, whatever device you're on.
This tool only adds marks on top of the page: a highlight, a sticky note, a line of text. The original content underneath stays exactly as it was. Redact PDF does the opposite and cuts content out of the file for good. Use this one to mark something up, and Redact when you need to remove it.
Yes. Switch between the three tabs as often as you like before pressing Annotate; each placement remembers its own type. So how to annotate PDF pages with several kinds of marks takes one pass, with up to 500 marks.
Yes. A highlight is drawn as a translucent layer over the text; the text itself is untouched underneath, so selecting, copying and searching all keep working exactly as before.
Real annotations. Highlights and notes are standard annotation objects in PDF files that any PDF reader recognises and can show or hide; the typed text is placed as actual page content, visible in every viewer without needing annotation support at all.
25 pages and 250 MB per file on the free tier, or 200 pages and 500 MB with a pass. For a longer document on the free tier, save it in parts from your PDF reader (Print, choose a page range, Save as PDF). There is no account, no watermark and no daily cap, so you can annotate PDFs one after another.
No. There is no text reflow or page redesign here; it is a focused PDF tool for highlighting, adding sticky notes and writing free text on top of a page. If you're after a free PDF editor to rewrite existing paragraphs, that is a job for a full desktop editor.
Yes, with no app to install. You can annotate PDFs on iPad in Safari, or on Android and Windows in Chrome or Edge, because the work is done on our server. It works as an online annotator on any device.
Pick the Text tab and drag your typed line to an empty part of the page; that is how to write on PDF pages next to what's already there. Typed text becomes part of the page, so it shows in every viewer and on paper.
Yes. The highlight, note and text tools work the same on a scan, so how to annotate a text PDF and a scanned one is identical. On a scan with no text layer, a highlight simply marks the image, since there is no text to select underneath.
Highlights and typed text are visible in print. Sticky notes print only if your PDF reader is set to print annotations; by default many readers hide them on print.
A mark added on top of a page without changing what's underneath: a highlight, a sticky note, or a line of typed text.
No. It is processed in memory on our own machine and handed back in the response; nothing is written to disk or kept afterwards.
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