Add text to a PDF
Put text, images, shapes and white-out boxes on any page and save the result as a PDF, without the file ever leaving your device.
How to Save edited PDF
- 1
Add your PDF
Drop the file into the box or pick it from your device. Your browser opens it and draws the first page, so nothing is uploaded and nothing waits in a queue.
- 2
Add text, images or shapes
Choose a tool, click the page and place your object. Drag it and resize it; text, images, rectangles and ellipses also rotate, while lines, arrows and freehand strokes do not. Undo anything with Ctrl+Z.
- 3
Save the edited PDF
Press Download PDF. With Print objects into the page left on, as it is when the editor opens, your objects are printed into the same pages of the original document and the file downloads with an -edited suffix. Switched off, typed text is saved as a separate text annotation instead.
It opens on the Text tool at 14 points
Add a PDF and this page opens on “Text”, while Edit PDF opens on “Select”. Under “Tool settings”, “Font” is Helvetica, “Text size” is 14 pt and “Colour” is #111111. “Match the text you click next to” and “Print objects into the page” are both on. The default is larger than the text in our test files: 12 pt Georgia and 11 pt Arial.
A click beside a line copies its size
With “Match the text you click next to” on, a click beside a line takes that line’s size and color. In our check on October 30, 2026, in Chrome on a Mac, we clicked right after a line of 12 pt Georgia. The panel changed to Times, 12 pt and #000000. On the “Name:” line of an A4 form in 11 pt Arial, it chose Helvetica, 11 pt. The font is the nearest of Helvetica, Times and Courier, not the same one: the saved page holds the standard Times-Roman beside the embedded Georgia. With the box off, the same click gave Helvetica 14 pt. Pick a font, size or color by hand and the box switches itself off.
The typed line stays text after you save
After “Download PDF” we ran pdftotext, a tool that reads the text out of a PDF. It found “Maria Example” in the saved form, on the “Name:” line. The form weighed 30,732 bytes before and 30,058 after. With “Print objects into the page” off, the page holds no new text. The editor saves a text annotation at the same place instead, 30,050 bytes, and pdftotext read that too. A viewer may draw annotations its own way, so leave the switch on for files you share.
Where a line goes wrong
A line does not wrap by itself. We clicked at 520 pt on a page 612 pt wide and typed “Added line TEST-4711”. The saved page shows “Added line TEST-4”: the last three characters fall past the edge. Chinese worked: four characters were set in Noto Sans SC, pdftotext read them back, and the form grew from 30,732 to 72,571 bytes. Korean did not. Five syllables came out as five empty squares, the file grew by 23 bytes, pdftotext found nothing, and the editor gave no warning. We did not test Japanese. Check “Result file” before you download.
Where your file is processed
The PDF is read, drawn and written by your own browser. It is never uploaded, never queued on a server and never stored anywhere we can reach. There is no account and no email step. To continue in another tool, PulsarKit may store a local copy of your input or result in this browser. It can remain after you close the tab or restart the browser. Clear PulsarKit’s site data to delete it.
Frequently asked questions
Can I change the text that is already in my PDF?
No. This tool adds a new layer on top of the page; it does not rewrite the text that is already there. Double-click existing words and the page says “Existing PDF text cannot be changed here. Cover it with a white box and type new text on top.” Press “Try again” and it switches to the White-out tool.
How do I replace a line of existing text then?
Cover it and retype it. Pick the white-out tool, click the old line to drop a white box there and stretch it over the line, then type your replacement on top with the text tool. The box only paints an opaque white rectangle over the page: the old line is hidden on screen and on paper but stays in the file underneath, where it can still be selected, copied or extracted. If the words must be gone from the file, use Redact PDF, which rebuilds the marked pages as images and checks that the text is gone.
Why can't existing text be edited in place?
Because a PDF stores positioned glyphs, not paragraphs. The font may be embedded as a subset with only the characters already used, and there are no line or paragraph boundaries to reflow. Editing one word can break the layout of the whole block.
Does it support Cyrillic, Greek, Chinese or Korean text?
Cyrillic and Greek work: when your text needs characters the standard PDF fonts cannot encode, a Noto font is embedded automatically as a subset. Chinese works too: in our check on October 30, 2026, four Chinese characters were set in Noto Sans SC and came back as text from the saved PDF. Korean does not work. In the same check, five Korean syllables came out as five empty squares with no text to copy, and the editor gave no warning. Arabic and Hebrew are not in the fonts the editor uses either, and we did not test Japanese. For Korean, Arabic or Hebrew, type the line in another app, save it as a PNG and place it with the Image tool; it will be a picture, not searchable text.
Are links, bookmarks and form fields kept?
Yes. Only the pages you added objects to are touched, and even there the existing content stream is left alone. Links, outlines, attachments and interactive form fields come through the save untouched.
Will the file get bigger?
Text and shapes add little, and the save can even make the file smaller, because the whole PDF is written out again in a more compact form. In our check on October 23, 2026, a 20-page, 145 kB PDF printed from Chrome came back at 85 kB with one line of Helvetica text on page 1; the same line in Cyrillic gave 87 kB, the extra 1.9 kB being the embedded Noto Sans subset. Inserted images are the exception: however small you draw a photo, the editor embeds it at up to 4000 pixels on its longer side. Make the photo smaller first with Resize Image, or run the result through Compress PDF.
Does my file go to a server?
No. Everything happens inside the browser tab: rendering the pages, placing objects and writing the new PDF. Nothing is uploaded, so a confidential contract stays as private as the device it is sitting on.
What can I do with a scanned document?
A scan is a picture, so there is no text to work with, but everything else still applies. You can add your own text, sign-off notes, arrows and white-out boxes on top of the image, just as on a digital page.
Guides
- An iFillPDF Alternative: What Matches and Where Your File GoesOn October 30, 2026, we matched the 49 PDF tools on iFillPDF's list against PulsarKit. Of those, 39 had a counterpart, 4 matched in part and 6 had none, among them PDF translation and PDF to HTML.
- A BentoPDF Alternative: What Matches and Where Your File GoesOn October 21, 2026, we matched the 118 tools on BentoPDF's home page against PulsarKit. 60 had a counterpart, 7 matched only in part and 51 had none, from editing existing text to certificate signatures.
- A Stirling PDF Alternative: What Matches and Where Your File GoesOn October 21, 2026, we matched the 56 tools listed in Stirling PDF's docs against PulsarKit. 28 had a counterpart, 4 matched only in part and 24 had none, from editing existing text to certificate signatures.
- Free Alternative to Adobe Acrobat Online: What Matches, What's MissingOn October 20, 2026, we went through the 50 tool cards on the Adobe Acrobat online tools page. PulsarKit had a counterpart for 34 of them, with no account and no paid plan.
- What a Free PDF Editor Can and Cannot DoOur free PDF editor puts text, white-out, shapes and images on top of a page and leaves the existing text alone. Here is what that does to your file, and what to use when the words themselves must change.
Related tools
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