Highlight PDF — free forever
Paint translucent highlights onto a PDF.
How it works
Drop your PDF on the Pelican Drop Desk.
Pick a colour, then click and drag across the text you want highlighted.
Click Run and download the highlighted PDF.
Use cases
Study notes
Highlight key passages in lecture notes or research PDFs before re-reading.
Contract review
Flag the clauses that need a lawyer's eye before sending the marked-up file back.
Team feedback
Highlight a paragraph in a draft and email it with a quick note about what to fix.
Free account & email verification
Start working now. Create a free account and verify your email only when your PDF is ready to download. Verification keeps automated abuse off the site — it's the reason we can keep every tool free forever with no paid plan, no watermark, and no upgrade trap.
Your privacy
Your files are processed entirely in your browser — never uploaded to a PDF Pelican server. We only store anonymous analytics about which tools people use, never your file contents.
About this tool
Mark up a PDF the way you'd mark up a printed page. Pick a colour, drag across the area you want to highlight, and the colour is baked into the page so it travels everywhere the PDF goes.
FAQ
Is the highlight transparent?
Yes — the original text shows through at full readability.
Can the recipient remove the highlight?
Not without a PDF editor. It is baked into the page and behaves like ink.
Is anything uploaded?
No. Highlights are drawn in your browser using pdf-lib.