Highlight PDF
Mark up passages in colour — the text underneath stays selectable.
- Zero-transmission processing
- No watermark
- Limited daily trial
- Unlimited on Pro
Drop your PDFs here
or pick them from your device
Your files are never transmitted. Nothing is uploaded.
Good to know
- Accepts
- Files at once
- One at a time
- Transmission
- None — nothing is uploaded.
Chain it
Run this tool and the next one back to back — nothing to download in between.
How to do it
- 1
Add your file
Add the PDF you want to mark up — a contract under review, a paper you are reading, a report to hand back.
- 2
Set it up the way you want
Draw over the passages that matter and choose the colour. Several colours let you separate questions from agreements.
- 3
Download the result
Download the marked-up file. The highlight is part of the page, so it shows the same way in every reader.
Questions about Highlight PDF
- Does the text under the highlight stay selectable?
- Yes. The mark is drawn with transparency, so the words underneath can still be copied, searched and read aloud by a screen reader. An opaque rectangle of the same colour would hide the text instead of highlighting it — that is erasing, not marking.
- Why is my highlight so pale?
- Transparency is what makes text readable through colour. Raising the opacity darkens the mark but starts to swallow the words; the default sits at the point where the highlight is clearly visible and the text still reads cleanly.
- Will these highlights open in other PDF readers?
- Yes, everywhere, because they are drawn into the page rather than stored as reader annotations. The trade-off is that they cannot be clicked and deleted later, so highlight the version you intend to hand over.