Add text to a PDF
Two kinds of text: new text boxes you place anywhere, and corrections to lines that already exist in the document. Both stay editable and both export as real PDF text.
How to do it
- Open the editor and load the PDF.
- Pick the text tool and click where the text should start.
- Type, then set font family, size, weight, colour and alignment in the inspector.
- Drag the side handle to wrap long lines; the box grows vertically as you type.
- Export the PDF. The new text is written as vector text, not as an image.
Editing text that is already there
With the text-edit tool, click a line from the original document. PdfCanvas reads it with PDFium and lets you change the content and the style. This is what most online editors do not do: they only paste overlays on top.
Some PDFs store each character separately, for example after a scan or an export from certain tools. PdfCanvas groups them into editable line runs, which works for most documents but can still fail on unusual encodings.
Fonts and limits
If the original embedded font can be reused, it is. Otherwise the editor falls back to bundled Work Sans or an Arial-metric face, which keeps line lengths close but may not match every glyph. Check accented characters and symbols in the export.
Frequently asked questions
+Is the added text selectable in the exported PDF?
Yes. It is written as PDF text, so it can be selected, searched and copied.
+Can I add text to a scanned PDF?
Yes, as an overlay. There is no OCR, so the scanned content itself is not recognised or editable.
+Does it work with non-Latin scripts?
The bundled fonts cover Latin characters. Other scripts depend on the fonts embedded in the original document and may not render correctly.