Highlight PDF: Drag to Mark or Find Every Word

1. 00

   What's great about our PDF highlighter

   • Your PDFs never leave your device. Every highlight is added right in your browser.
   • Drag to highlight any part of a page, or find words and highlight every match at once.
   • Five marker colours and your own, with a strength slider.
   • Move, resize, Undo and delete any highlight before you save.
   • Highlight many PDFs at once, with a ZIP download.
   • Free, no limits, no watermark, and it works offline after your first visit.
2. 01

   Add your PDFs

   Choose PDFs or drag them into the preview. The first PDF opens as a vertical list of large pages, which is the easiest place to highlight. Use Add More to add others later.

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   Highlight

   • Pick a colour and a strength, then drag across the text you want to mark.
   • Or double click a word, triple click a sentence, or click four times for a whole paragraph.
   • Or type words under Find Words, one per line. Matches are underlined in red. Click Highlight Matches to highlight every one.
   • Click a highlight to select it. Drag it to move it, drag a square to resize it, or press Delete. Undo steps back.
   • Press Ctrl+A (Cmd+A on a Mac) to select every highlight in your PDFs, then change the options to change them all.
   • Press Ctrl+C then Ctrl+V (Cmd+C then Cmd+V on a Mac) to copy the selected highlight and paste it where your pointer is on the page.
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   Highlight PDF and download

   Click Highlight PDF, then Download. Change anything and the button goes back to Highlight PDF, ready for another run. Several PDFs download together as a ZIP.

5. 04

   Loved it?

   • If you're on computer, bookmark this page to your browser.
   • If you're on mobile, add it to your home screen for one-tap access and offline use.
     • Android: Visit this page in Google Chrome > tap three-dot icon (⋮) at top > Install and create shortcut.
     • iPhone and iPad: Visit this page in Safari > tap menu icon in address bar > Share > Add to Home Screen.

How it works

A highlight is a coloured box drawn over the page with a multiply setting, the way a real marker lets the ink show through. Because the page itself is never redrawn, its text, fonts, images, links and forms stay exactly as they were, and the text under a highlight stays selectable and searchable.

When you find words, the PDF's text is read page by page, and a box is placed over each match. After the file is made, it is opened again and compared with your original: the page count, page sizes, rotation, text and links must all match what they should. If anything differs, no file is produced for that PDF.

Frequently asked questions

• Is my PDF uploaded anywhere? No. Everything happens in your browser, on your device. Your PDF is never sent to a server.
• How do I highlight a part of a page? Press on the page, drag across the text you want to mark and let go. A highlight appears. To change it, click it: it gets a dashed blue outline, and you can move it, drag the small squares to resize it, or press Delete.
• Can I highlight a word, a sentence or a paragraph with a click? Yes. Double click a word to highlight it, triple click to highlight its whole sentence, and click four times quickly to highlight its whole paragraph. If you click one more time than you meant to, the shorter highlight is replaced by the longer one. This works on PDFs that have real text, not scans.
• Can I highlight every place a word appears? Yes. Type a word or phrase under Find Words, one per line. Every match in every PDF you added is underlined in red right away, so you can see what was found. Click Highlight Matches to highlight them all, and you can still remove any single one afterwards.
• Will the text stay selectable and searchable? Yes. The highlight is drawn over the page like a marker pen, using a standard multiply setting, so the text under it is never touched or turned into a picture.
• Can the highlights be removed later? They become part of the page, so they cannot be switched off like a comment. Keep your original file if you might want the page without them.
• Why is a highlight a little off on some words? When you find words, each box is worked out from how wide the letters of that line are. On unusual fonts it can be a letter out. Drag a box or its squares to adjust it, or delete it and drag one by hand.
• Why does Find Words say nothing was found? The PDF may be a scan, which holds pictures of pages and no text to search. You can still drag highlights by hand on a scan.
• Which PDFs are not supported? Password-protected PDFs cannot be processed. Remove the password first with PDF Password Unlock. Digitally signed PDFs can be processed, but rewriting the file invalidates the signature.

What happens to your file

Nothing is uploaded, stored on a server or tracked. Your PDFs stay in your browser's memory until you remove them or close the page. The highlights become part of each page, so they cannot be switched off afterwards.

How to get the most out of it

• Use the vertical list of large pages for hand highlighting. Zoom in with the + button for small print.
• For a long document, use Find Words first, then fix any box by hand.
• Lower the Strength for a paler look on dark text or images.
• Use different colours for different meanings, such as yellow for key points and green for dates.
• To underline or cross out text instead, use Underline PDF Text or Strikethrough PDF. To hide text for good, use Redact PDF.
• Keep your original file. Highlights cannot be edited once the PDF is saved.