Reading and marking up a PDF

Read a PDF in the note or full screen, and draw on it with a pen, a highlighter, shapes and post-its.

A PDF in a note shows its pages in place, with a small toolbar above them for the page number and the zoom.

Opening the reader

The expand button in that toolbar, Open full screen, to read and mark up, is what opens the reader. Clicking the pages themselves doesn't.

The same row also has Pull the text into the note, which drops the document's words into the note as text you can edit.

Finding your way

The pages run in one column you scroll. Type a page number into the box at the top to jump to it.

⌘F searches the text of the document itself, not the page you're looking at, so a match on page 40 turns up from page 1.

Quoting it in the note

Select some words on a page and press Quote in note at the top of the reader. They go into the note as a quote under the PDF, with a line under it, From Lease.pdf, page 2. Press that line later and the PDF opens at that page with the words lit, so you can see them in context.

Marking it up

Nine tools, each picked up with a letter: read (V), pen (P), highlighter (H), underline (U), strikethrough (S), a text note (T), a post-it (N), shapes (R) and the eraser (E). Draw straight onto the page with a mouse, a finger, or a stylus.

Everything that leaves a mark has colours behind its chevron. The eraser has a size instead, and a choice between rubbing out part of a mark or all of it.

Undo, redo, hiding every mark at once, and wiping them all sit at the end of the bar. On a touch screen there's a toggle for whether one finger draws or scrolls. It draws by default.

Where the marks live

In Scratchpad, beside the PDF, not inside it. The stored file is never rewritten.

That's what makes the marks yours: a share link shows them, and Download everything in Settings brings them along. A Markdown export has no way to carry a drawing, so they're not in that one.

Getting a copy out

Two different downloads, and the difference matters:

• The download button in the reader gives you a copy with the marks burned into the pages, named "(marked up)", so it looks and prints the same everywhere.
• The download button on the PDF's row in the note gives you the file exactly as it arrived, with nothing added.

Last updated 25 September 2026