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How to edit a PDF in your browser

Replace existing text, add new text, draw shapes and freehand lines, highlight, and place images on any PDF — all processed locally in your browser, with scanned pages recognised automatically.

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Edit changes a PDF entirely in your browser — replace existing text, add new text, draw shapes and freehand, highlight, and drop in images. The file is never uploaded; everything runs on your device.

Before you start

  • Edit is free and doesn't need an account.
  • Everything runs locally. The PDF never leaves your device — you can open your browser's DevTools network tab and watch.
  • Password-protected PDFs won't open. Remove the password first with Unlock, then come back.
  • Scanned PDFs work too: when you use Replace text, AttachKit automatically recognises the text on image-only pages with on-device OCR (24 languages, English by default).
  • Nothing is changed until you click Apply & download — your original file stays untouched, and edits you haven't downloaded are discarded if you close the tab.

Steps

  1. Open Edit and drop your PDF onto the drop zone, or click it to pick a file.
  2. Pick a tool from the toolbar. It sticks to the top of the page, so it stays reachable while you scroll a long document.
  3. Use the options that appear for the active tool (colour, width, fill, font — see the table below), then click or drag on the page.
  4. To change what's already printed on the page, choose Replace text (details below).
  5. Switch to Select to move, resize or delete anything you've placed — a Delete button appears while an object is selected. Undo and Redo are always in the toolbar, or press Ctrl+Z / Cmd+Z to undo and Ctrl+Shift+Z (or Ctrl+Y) to redo.
  6. Click Apply & download to bake your edits into a new copy of the PDF.
ToolWhat it does
SelectMove, resize or delete objects you've placed
Replace textClick a line of existing text and retype it
TextClick to add a text box — Enter starts a new line; Esc or clicking away finishes
DrawFreehand pen — click and drag
HighlightDrag across text; the marker snaps to the lines you sweep (no text layer? it highlights the area you draw)
Box / Ellipse / LineDrag to draw shapes — outline only, or filled via the Fill option
ImagePick a PNG or JPEG, then click on the page to place it; resizing keeps the aspect ratio

Tool options

  • Color sets the ink for text, shapes and the pen. With Highlight active it becomes Marker, with five presets — Yellow, Green, Pink, Blue and Orange. Highlights bake translucent, so the text underneath stays readable.
  • Width (1, 2 or 4 points) sets the stroke for Draw, Box, Ellipse and Line.
  • Fill (Box and Ellipse only) toggles a fill colour on top of the outline.
  • Font (Text only) switches between Sans, Serif and Mono. Text sizes itself to fit its box — switch to Select and resize the box to change the text size.
  • Shape and pen tools stay active so you can draw repeatedly; Text and Image switch back to Select after each placement. The Done button exits any mode.

Replacing existing text

  1. Click Replace text. The tool scans the document ("Finding editable text…") and outlines each editable line.
  2. Click any highlighted line. The original is covered and an editable box opens on top, matched to the spot, colour and size of the original (typeface and spacing may shift slightly).
  3. Retype, then click away or press Esc.

If the document is scanned or pages are image-only, OCR runs automatically the first time you enter Replace text — you'll see "Recognising image text…" with a progress percentage and a Cancel link. A Scan language picker appears when OCR is relevant (the choice is shared with the Redact tool); change it and click Re-recognise to redo recognition in another language. If text inside a picture or figure isn't highlighted, use the Recognise it (OCR) link to recognise the whole document.

One honest caveat, shown in the tool itself: replacing text is a visual edit. The original text is covered and your new text drawn on top, but the old text remains in the file's hidden text layer, where search or copy-paste can still find it. To remove text for good — for anything sensitive — use Redact instead.

Result

Clicking Apply & download bakes everything into a new file named after your original with -edited appended (for example lease-edited.pdf) and downloads it. The original file on your device is untouched. A toast then offers a Fill it → shortcut that opens the edited copy in Fill, so you can fill it out or sign it without re-importing. The bake happens in your browser too — on a very large or image-heavy document it can take a while, and a Cancel button is available next to "Applying…".

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