PDF Editor

What this PDF editor can do

A PDF is built for printing, not for editing. Every letter is placed at an exact spot on the page, so changing one word is not like changing it in Word. This editor works the way a pen and a bottle of correction fluid would, only neater. It adds new things on top of your pages:

• Text in Helvetica, Times or Courier, in any size and colour, bold or italic, over several lines
• Whiteout boxes that cover a mistake, an old date or a wrong amount
• Rectangles to frame a figure or mark an area for someone else
• Highlights in see-through yellow (or any colour) over important lines
• Freehand drawing for ticks, arrows, circles and quick signatures
• Images such as a logo, a stamp, a photo or a scanned signature

Everything you add can be moved, resized, recoloured or deleted until you save. Undo and redo cover every step.

How to edit a PDF, step by step

1. Open the file. Choose a PDF or drop it on the box. The pages appear one under another.
2. Pick a tool from the toolbar. The line under the toolbar tells you what a click or a drag will do.
3. Add your changes. With Text, click where the first letter should go and start typing. Press Enter for a new line. With Whiteout, Rectangle and Highlight, drag across the area. With Draw, hold the mouse button (or your finger) down and draw. With Image, choose a picture and then click the page where it belongs.
4. Adjust. Switch to Select, then drag an item to move it or drag the round handle at its corner to resize it. Double-click text to change the words. The arrow keys nudge the selected item by one point; hold Shift to move ten points at a time.
5. Save. Click Save edited PDF. Your new file downloads with “-edited” added to its name, so the original stays untouched.

Changing a word that is already in the PDF

This is the most common job, and it takes two steps:

1. Choose Whiteout and drag a box that just covers the old word. If the page is not pure white (for example a cream form or a grey table cell), pick a matching cover colour in the toolbar.
2. Choose Text, click on the whiteout box and type the new word. Pick the font that looks closest to the original. Most office documents use a sans-serif font, so Helvetica is a good first guess. Books and letters often use a serif font, so try Times.

Zoom your browser in (Ctrl and +) to line the new text up with the old baseline. Nudging with the arrow keys is the easiest way to get it exact.

An example

A tenancy agreement says the rent starts on “1 March 2026”, but it should be “1 April 2026”. Drag a whiteout box over “March”, choose Times at 11 points to match the body text, click inside the box and type “April”. Save, and the printed page reads correctly. If you instead need to hide the tenant’s bank details before you share the file, do not use Whiteout. The covered text would still be in the file. Use Redact PDF, which turns the affected page into an image so the hidden words are really gone.

Honest limits

We would rather tell you up front what this tool does not do:

• It does not retype existing text. Words already in the PDF stay where they are. Covering them with whiteout makes them invisible on screen and on paper, but they remain inside the file, and anyone can still copy or search them.
• Fonts are limited to the 14 standard PDF fonts. They are built into every PDF reader, which keeps your file small and makes the text selectable. If you type in a script they do not include, such as Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, Russian or Chinese, the tool saves that text as a high-resolution picture. It looks right, but it cannot be selected or searched.
• You cannot reorder, add or delete pages here. Use Organize PDF for that, before or after editing.
• Fillable forms are better filled with the form tool. If your PDF has real form fields, Fill PDF Form types into the fields themselves, which keeps them tidy and editable.

Editing in your browser vs typical online editors

Most online PDF editors upload your file to their server, edit it there and send it back. This one does the work inside your browser instead.

That last row is the trade-off. Server-based editors that “edit existing text” have to guess the original font, and on many PDFs they swap in a different one, so the edited line still stands out. Cover-and-retype is simpler and it never damages the rest of the page.

Tips for a clean result

• Match the size first, then the font. Body text in most documents is 10 to 12 points. Headings are often 14 to 18.
• Use black, not “almost black”. Office files usually print text in pure black (#000000). Pick the same so your new words do not look faded.
• Whiteout with a margin. Make the box a little bigger than the old word so no stray pixels of the letters show around the edges.
• Highlight after the text is final. Highlights are drawn underneath your new text and images, so text you add stays crisp on top.
• Keep the original. The tool never changes your source file. Keep it until you have checked the edited copy.

What happens to your file

When you click Save, your browser loads the PDF with pdf-lib, a well-known open-source PDF library, and adds your changes as new drawing commands on each page. Text uses the standard fonts, so nothing needs to be embedded. Images are stored once, even if you place the same logo on many pages. The rest of the file, including links, bookmarks and form fields, is kept as it was.

None of this involves a server. You can check it yourself: open your browser’s developer tools, switch to the Network tab and save a file. No upload appears.

After editing

Once your PDF looks right you might want to sign it, compress it for email, or turn it into an editable Word file with PDF to Word if you need to make bigger changes to the wording.