How to Edit a PDF Online (Add Text and Shapes, Not Rewrite It)

A vendor sends over a contract PDF and you need to fill in a missing date, or block out a line item that got quoted wrong before you forward it along. You don't want to buy Acrobat for one edit, and re-typing the whole document in Word isn't an option — you just need to add a few things to the page that's already there. That's the entire job "edit PDF online" is searched for, and it's one of the most-searched PDF tasks on the internet because almost everyone runs into it eventually.

What this editor actually does

It's worth being precise here, because "PDF editor" means very different things depending on the tool. DOcomint's editor covers two primitives: click anywhere on a page to drop in a text box, or drag to draw a rectangle. That's it — no freehand drawing, no sticky notes, no highlighter, no built-in signature pad. If you need those specifically, the site has dedicated tools for them: Sign PDF for a drawn or typed signature, and Redact PDFif a rectangle needs to actually destroy what's underneath it rather than just cover it.

Both text and rectangles are new content added on top of the page, not changes to what's already there — the original text and layout stay fully intact underneath. That's a real constraint worth knowing before you start: if a contract has a typo baked into the original text, this tool doesn't let you delete or retype that text. You can only add something new next to or over it.

Why edits autosave as you work

Every text box and rectangle you place is saved to this browser's local storage a few hundred milliseconds after you add it, before you ever click download. Close the tab by accident mid-edit, or have your laptop die, and reopening the tool on the same file offers to restore your in-progress edits. Nothing about that draft is sent anywhere — it lives in the same origin-scoped storage every other in-browser tool on this site uses, and downloading the finished PDF clears it.

How to edit a PDF, step by step

1. Open the Edit PDF tool and add your file.
2. Pick a mode — "Add text" or "Draw rectangle" — from the toolbar above the preview.
3. Click to place text (type your value, press Enter to commit), or drag to draw a box, anywhere on the current page.
4. Use Previous/Next to move between pages — edits are tracked per page, and you can remove any edit from the list before finishing.
5. Click "Apply & download" once you're done. Your edits are baked into a new PDF on your device.

Why this runs in your browser, not a server

Adding text and shapes to an existing PDF page doesn't require rendering a new document from scratch — it's layering new content objects onto pages that already exist, which pdf-libcan do directly in JavaScript. Your file is read, rendered to a preview canvas, edited, and re-saved entirely on your device. There's no upload, and the draft-recovery feature above only works because of that — a server-side tool would have nothing local to recover from.

When you actually need a heavier editor

Need to change text that's already in the document?This tool can't do that — it only adds new content. If the underlying text itself is wrong and needs correcting (not just covered or supplemented), your realistic options are re-exporting from the original source document, or converting to Word with PDF to Word, editing there, and converting back with Office to PDF.

Need to permanently remove sensitive content, not just cover it? A rectangle drawn in this editor sits on top of the page — the content underneath is still technically present in the file. For anything actually sensitive (an account number, a name that has to come out), use Redact PDF instead, which rasterizes the page so the covered content is genuinely gone.

Need a signature, not just a text box?Typing your name in a text box isn't a signature. Use Sign PDF to draw or type one in a dedicated signature tool built for that.

Marking up before sending it back

If what you actually need is a bold, page-wide marker — "DRAFT," "CONFIDENTIAL," a company name — rather than a specific text box in a specific spot, that's a job for Add Watermark, which stamps it across every page automatically instead of placing it by hand once per page.