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Sign PDF
Add a signature or initials. Free, no sign-up.
How to sign PDF
Your signature is drawn onto the page and saved into the document.
- Open your PDF. The document opens in an editor.
- Create your signature. Draw it, or type it and pick a style.
- Place it and download. Drag it where it belongs and save.
How your signature becomes part of the page
Drawing captures your strokes on a 600 x 200 pad at your screen's pixel density; typing sets your name in the first script face your device has from a short list, falling back to whatever the browser calls cursive, so a typed signature looks a little different from machine to machine. Either way the result is cropped tight to the ink with an eight-pixel margin and kept as a transparent PNG, which is why it sits on the page rather than arriving inside a white box. There are three ink colours, and the pad holds one mark at a time.
Click a page and the signature lands there at about a quarter of the page width; drag the middle to move it, the corner handle to resize it with its own proportions locked. On save that PNG is embedded once and drawn into the content stream of each page you placed it on, scaled to fit the box without stretching, with the page's own rotation taken into account so a signature on a sideways page lands where you put it. Ten placements of one signature embed one image, not ten, so the file barely grows.
It is a picture of a signature, and the document stays editable
Because the image is drawn into the page rather than added as an annotation, no reader can select it, drag it off or delete it — it behaves like ink on paper, in Acrobat, Preview and browser viewers alike. What it does not do is fix the rest of the document. The paragraph above your signature can still be changed by anyone with an editor, and nothing in the file records that it was.
If that matters, add the lock as a separate step. Protect PDF encrypts the finished file and can withhold editing permission, and if you are signing a filled form, run Flatten PDF first so the typed values become page content and cannot be quietly re-entered before the file is forwarded.
Questions
Is this a legally binding digital signature?
This places a visible signature image, which is what most documents ask for. It is not a cryptographic certificate-based signature — that requires a certificate and is available in Folia for Desktop.
Can I add my initials or a date as well as the signature?
Yes, though the pad holds one mark at a time. Place the signature first, then reopen the pad and draw your initials — that replaces what the pad is holding, but anything already placed on a page stays exactly where it is — and place those. Either mark can go on as many pages as you like. For a typed date, <a href="/edit-pdf-text">Edit PDF text</a> drops a text box anywhere on the page.
Is my signature saved for next time?
No. It exists in this tab and is gone when you close it, or when you start another document — nothing is stored on your device or anywhere else. Typing your name reproduces the same result on the same machine; a drawn signature has to be drawn again, which is the trade for never keeping a copy of it.
Why does my signature look rough when I print the page?
It is an image, at most 600 pixels across the ink, multiplied by your screen's pixel density. At about the size a real signature would be — roughly the quarter-page width it is dropped at — that prints cleanly. Stretched across half a page it starts to soften. Draw large in the pad and place small on the page, rather than the other way round.
Are my files uploaded to a server?
No. Every tool on this site runs inside your browser, using the same engine as the Folia desktop app. Your file is read from your disk into your browser’s memory, processed there, and handed back as a download. It never crosses the internet, so there is nothing for us to store, leak or hand over.
Is there a file size limit?
We impose none. The only ceiling is your own device’s memory, which differs from one computer to another — so we read what your browser reports about this machine and show the resulting limit on the page. Light tools like merge and rotate handle far more than heavy ones like OCR, which must render every page. For anything larger, Folia for Desktop has no limit at all.
Is it really free? Do I need an account?
Yes, and no. Every tool is free and unlimited, with no watermark and no sign-up. Ads pay for the site, and your own computer does the work, which costs us nothing. Signing in with a paid Folia plan simply removes the ads.