No uploads. No accounts. No watermark on the output. Filoraio lets you add text, shapes, lines, and highlights to any PDF page — click to add, click to delete, save when you're done — all locally on your device.
Filoraio runs the merge directly inside your browser using a small WebAssembly engine. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is queued, and you can verify it yourself — open your browser’s DevTools, switch to the Network tab, and watch it stay quiet.
They’re read into your browser’s memory through a standard file picker.
The merge runs locally — no request leaves your device while it processes.
The combined PDF lands in your downloads folder, the same way any other download would.
No upload bar, no progress spinner waiting on a server. Works offline once the page is loaded.
From upload to edited download in under a minute. Each tool sits in a toolbar at the top — pick the one you need, click on the page, and the annotation appears immediately.
Drag a PDF onto the picker or click to choose one. Your file stays in this tab — no upload, no quota, no account.
Choose Text, Rectangle, Circle, Line, or Highlight from the toolbar. For text, click where you want it and start typing. For shapes, click and drag to set the size. Use the page arrows to navigate to other pages — each page has its own annotations.
Click Save. The edited PDF assembles locally with all your annotations baked into the page content — no watermark, no expiry. Open in Acrobat, Preview, Chrome, or any reader.
Anywhere a PDF needs a few annotations added — fill-in fields, sign-here marks, highlights, draft notes — without paying for Acrobat or routing through an upload service.
Add text to non-fillable PDF forms (school permission slips, government tax forms, doctor intake forms) — click into each field, type the answer, save the filled copy.
Mark up a draft document for the author: highlight passages to keep, cross out lines to delete, add text comments in the margins, draw arrows between related sections.
Annotate student PDF submissions with feedback marks — highlight strong passages, circle errors, draw arrows to point at the bigger issue, type a comment in the margin.
Add quick text notes on a draft exhibit, redact a phrase by drawing a black rectangle over it (visible redaction; for true secure redaction the underlying text would need replacement — see FAQ), or highlight the clauses you want to discuss.
Mark up client mockup PDFs: draw circles around design issues, add text notes explaining each suggestion, highlight regions for redesign — instead of a separate annotation app.
Skip the print-fill-scan loop entirely. Drop the PDF here, type into each blank line, save as a filled PDF — way faster than printing, signing, and re-digitising.
Four common reasons people search for a way to edit a PDF — and the exact workflow each one collapses into.
The form is a static PDF — clicking on the blank lines does nothing in Preview or Acrobat Reader. Pick the Text tool, click each blank line, type your answer. Save the result as a real PDF — looks exactly like a typed form, no print-and-scan loop.
You need to flag the conclusions on pages 12, 18, and 27 of a 60-page report before the team meeting. Pick the Highlight tool, drag a yellow rectangle over each passage on each page, save. The highlights are real PDF objects — they show up in every reader, in print, and on screenshots.
The contract is a scan with several typos you want fixed before signing. Add text annotations pointing at each one ('change to 30 days', 'remove this clause'), draw a circle around the section that needs deletion, save and send back with notes.
You're marking up a colleague's draft. Use text boxes to add comments, circles to flag sections that need rework, and highlights to mark passages that should stay. The author sees every comment in the order you placed them — no separate review app needed.
Four small habits that turn a quick markup into a polished result — especially when you're filling forms or marking up for someone else's review.
Black text for filled form fields (matches the printed form). Red or coloured for editorial comments. Yellow highlight is the universal 'pay attention to this' colour — readers recognise it instantly. Save the brand colours for branding work; for markup, stick to the conventions.
Click the Select tool (the cursor icon) and then click any annotation on the page — it'll prompt for deletion. Faster than the Undo button when you want to remove something added a few steps back.
All annotations on a page belong only to that page — they don't accidentally jump to other pages when you navigate. Work through the document sequentially, saving in between if you want a checkpoint.
This tool adds NEW elements on top of the PDF — it doesn't modify the existing text content. If you need to change the words baked into the PDF, run the file through our PDF to Word tool, edit the .docx in Word, then save back as PDF. Two steps but achievable.
Side by side with the average online PDF editor — including the ones with millions of monthly users.
| Feature | Filoraio | Typical online PDF tools |
|---|---|---|
| Where files are processed | On your device | Uploaded to servers |
| Annotation tools on free tier | All six tools, unlimited | Often 1–2 tools free, rest paywalled |
| Per-page editing | Yes — full navigation | Often limited to first page on free |
| Watermark on output | None | Often added on free tier |
| Account required | No | Often required to download |
| Output format | Real vector PDF with selectable text | Sometimes flattened image PDF |
Quick answers to the things people ask most often before using this tool.
Yes. No account, no email, no daily quota, and no watermark on the output. The page is supported by ads — never the file you download. Edit as many PDFs as you need.
No. The editing runs entirely on your device using an open-source PDF engine and the browser's PDF renderer (for the page rendering). The PDF never leaves the browser tab — which is why this works on confidential documents.
Text boxes (any colour, any size), rectangles, circles, lines, and highlights (semi-transparent rectangles, yellow by default). Each annotation is a real vector PDF object — selectable, scalable, indistinguishable from elements drawn by Acrobat. Page-by-page navigation lets you add annotations to any page in the document.
Not directly — this tool *adds* new elements on top of the source PDF rather than modifying existing text. True in-place text editing requires reading the PDF's embedded fonts, finding the specific glyphs, replacing them, and reflowing surrounding text — that's the hard problem Acrobat Pro charges for. For our tool, the practical workflow: run the PDF through our PDF to Word converter, edit the .docx in Word or Google Docs, then save back as PDF.
Click the Select tool (cursor icon, leftmost in the toolbar), then click any annotation on the page — it'll prompt for deletion. Alternatively, the Undo button removes the most recently added annotation from the current page. Clear page removes everything on the current page; Clear all pages wipes the entire document's annotations.
For signatures, use our Sign PDF tool — it has dedicated draw / type / upload modes for signatures. For images / logos, use our Watermark PDF tool — it embeds an image with full control over position, size, and opacity. This tool is focused on text + vector shapes; the sibling tools cover image annotation cleanly.
Yes — and in Preview (Mac), Foxit, Chrome's built-in PDF viewer, every browser, and every mobile PDF reader. Annotations are added as standard PDF text + vector primitives. The output is a fully portable PDF with no Filoraio-specific structure.
Yes for text annotations — the text you type becomes real PDF text, fully searchable and selectable. Shapes (rectangles, circles, lines) are vector graphics so they're not text-searchable, but they print and display identically across every PDF reader.
Yes. Open this page in Safari (iOS) or Chrome (Android), drop your PDF, and use the touch-friendly toolbar. Tap to add text, drag to draw shapes — the same workflow as desktop. The edited PDF saves directly to Files (iOS) or Downloads (Android).
Filoraio handles owner-restricted PDFs (printing/copying locks) automatically — restrictions come off as part of the editing process. For PDFs with user passwords (encryption requiring a password to open), unlock the file first with our Unlock PDF tool, then edit the unlocked output here.
You can VISUALLY redact by drawing a black rectangle over the text — readers won't see the underlying content. WARNING: this is visual redaction only. The original text remains in the PDF's content stream and can be recovered by copying or by PDF inspection tools. For true secure redaction (text actually removed from the file), use a dedicated redaction tool like Adobe Acrobat Pro's Redact feature.
For static PDFs without form fields — yes. Use the Text tool, click on each blank line, type your answer. For PDFs with proper fillable form fields (PDF AcroForm fields), most PDF readers (Acrobat Reader, Preview, Chrome) handle form filling natively; you don't need a separate tool for those.
There's no hard cap. Annotations are lightweight (a few hundred bytes each), so even thousands of them barely affect the output file size. The practical limit is your patience and screen real estate — a busy page with 50+ annotations becomes hard to read.
Annotations live in your browser tab while you work — closing the tab discards them. For now there's no cloud save (consistent with our no-upload privacy promise). Workflow tip: do all edits in one session, save the result, then re-upload the saved file later if you need to add more.
Tools picked because they pair naturally with the one above — the next step in a typical PDF workflow.